There's also a factory tool, which is a hard rubber tower that fits between the upper ball joint and the unibody to hold the car up. Its not meant to be driven on but if I ever get stuck somewhere I would fashion something similar with a visit to the local home depot. Let me know if you need any help at all whereever you're at.

 

No way I would have been able to bring the car home after my strut blew. The tow truck dropped me off in my driveway backwards, so I turned the car around in order to work on the front in the garage. It must have been a 5-6 point turn.

 

Or you can use a spare I would think

 

thought that was Jersey, I'd even vote for Mass to be it

 

Fixed

 

Off topic...but when I used to live in Miami in the 80's we had a saying....

"Build your fort up north and point your cannons south"

 

Happy birthday The E looks good slammed doe

 

Ok cool will do. She's back safe in the garage for now, I'm assuming the strut swap is something I can do on jack stands?

Thank you!
Here's a dif pic dumped

 

DAMM she looks pretty.. when did you have those lights updated??

 

Yes you can change it on a jack stand bro

 

Thanks mane I put the facelift lights in while the engine was out last year. I had them the whole time but the primary objective was the engine at the time.

Cool thanx!

 

thats like the only thing i am missing is the updated headlights and i wouldn't even know how to install them even if i had them unless you helped me (cough cough) lol

anyways enjoy your time in AC brotha.. 1 shot for me

 

You'll have to disconnect the upper ball joint..it's easy just loosen the nut and whack it with a large hammer a few times to pop it loose. You may have to bleed the pressure from the new strut with star to get it back in. Everything else is self explanatory.

 

If you remove the upper ball joint, you don't need to release pressure from the new strut... it should fit right in. Whacking it with a hammer is not really the best idea either as you can mess up the threads.

 

that looks sick!! thats how my car sits all the time

 

+1 on coilovers...

 

Along with disconnecting the upper ball joint, you can gain more room to install a fully inflated strut if you loosen the inner control arm nut (1/4 to 1/2 a turn) and by removing the sway bar link attached to the lower control arm. Having part #211.545.23.40 handy would be nice too. I happened to snap the bracket like others have when doing a R/R of a front strut.

Good luck!

 

The trick here is to leave the nut on a few threads to protect them. Then if you miss you hit the nut only.

EDIT: To be more clear, you hit the upper control arm with the hammer, near the joint, NOT the joint itself. This is an accepted industry practice.

 

Yes, you can count on the wire bracket always breaking, if you don't have another one just tuck it back in place, the inner fender liner will keep it secure.

 

Happy bday and good luck man !

From what i've heard/read is that the car starts to show sign before which are usually when you unlock the car it'll go

to it's stock height (after 3-4 hours of staying in one spot) . The only problem is that I don't know how is one suppose to

diagnose the issue properly with just one of that sign.

 

This, so much this. Do not try to hit the threads as you can mushroom them.

 

Sorry to hear bro.

Happy Birthday though.

 

Seriously good looking ride. I hope you get her all patched up soon and Happy Birthday!

 

Happy Birthday Sucks that it happened to you especially on your birthday, talk about kick in the gut. Curse you AIRMATIC Time for coilovers I guess.

 

So that day went from bad to worse, albeit ending with a bang!

Ever have one of those Charlie Brown days when the s**t storm cloud seems to follow you around? That was my bday last week.

So after the E55 airmatic strut denied us of the road trip to Atlantic City, we about said "screw it" and just stayed home. But this girl went out of her way to hook me up big time for the UFC fight so I wasn't going to disappoint her in return. I got us some last minute flight tix that left just a few hours after returning with the limping Mercedes, and we head out to the airport.

So we're halfway there and I realize that I had left my license in the console of the E55 back home. We haul *** back home and the keypad on my garage door opener won't work. The battery appeared to be fine but no open. I had given my personal key to my front door to my neighbor so he can feed my dog and let her out, and my sister has the other key across town. So I have to wake my neighbor up at the *** crack of dawn like a fool, to borrow my own key!

After getting my license and apologizing to my neighbor, we've got to haul *** to the airport. We pull onto MCO property with less than 40 mins before the flight leaves, and we've still gotta park and check in.
Not looking good.
Across the parking garage with burned rubber coming off my shoes and through the conveyer tunnels to the Delta counter, I get our boarding passes printed out at T-31 minutes remaining till departure. And for those of you who have been to Orlando before, the Airport is huge. Not OHare or LAX huge, but close. We make it through security and ride the monorails to the gate , still in frantic mode to see the officer closing the door to board the plane as we approach. He laughs at us and radios to the plane that there's 2 more, and they let us on. You've gotta be kidding me.

The plane trip included a layover stop in Raleigh NC which was a little over three hours, but that was okay because the fights didn't start until 6:30, and we were sceduled to land into Philly in the early afternoon which left us plenty of time to rent a car, and make the 1hour drive over to Atlantic City.

Wrong.

While killing time during the three hour layover, we toured the small, but beautiful Raleigh airport stuffing out faces with a nice early lunch at a seafood spot they had there. The lady and I hadn't slept at this point, and after the lunch burned up the remaining waiting time with a little nap. Or should I say big nap because we burned up all the remaining wait time for the flight plus seven minutes extra.

Dammit.

While punctuality might not be my chief virtue, I have never missed a flight in my life so was a little perplexed as well as embarrased. Delta says no problem, they'll give us a ride on the next flight to Philly , which doesn't leave unfortunately until 5:50! So this would put us there at 7, when the fights start at 6:30. I contemplated just throwing in the towel at this point and returning home but I'm a determined ****er and hate to lose. So I find other flight to Philly with another airline with room on it but they want over $1000 to be on it. I already spent that much on the fares we already bought so ****. That.

I contemplated flying into NYC, Trenton, Baltimore, DC, but the time saved on any of those flights would be eaten up by extra time in transit in the rental car. So wait some more we did, I considered just getting my mail forwarded to the Raleigh airport as long as we were there.