Shortened Housing Issue: HELP

[bigredguy]

I will be getting my top hats today, and the rest of the parts I need for the car tomorrow, and it is also supposed to warm up, so I plan on trying again then. I will try to thread it on, but if it wont thread on would boring out the gland nut ever so slightly so that I can screw it into place be a bad idea? Shock is an iX bilstein HD

[CubbyChowder]

Not that it's going to help you much now, but I used a big pipe cutter to cut my housings. Makes a much cleaner and perfectly square cut, unlike other methods like saws-all or cut off wheels. If you end up getting other housings to straighten it out, try this method. Clamping pieces of angle iron to the strut with c-clamps will help you get it straight when you go to weld it back together.

Those are both very good alternative methods to the ones I used in my tutorial video, probably even better actually.

Hope you get it figured out man! I will have a set of original strut housings for sale here within the next few days if you end up needing to start over.

[dsm2002]

just a thought. is there a high spot in the weld that is pushing the strut insert off centre? a little grinding could help

[CubbyChowder]

just a thought. is there a high spot in the weld that is pushing the strut insert off centre? a little grinding could help

That is definitely worth checking out as well, take the shock out and look down in there and make sure you don't have any weld bead sticking out into the inner part of the housing. If you do, take a file and grind her flat

[bigredguy]

all of the inside of the housing is grinded flat. I made sure I did that. It has to be the weld that is slightly off. Tomorrow when I get back to the garage I will reassess the problem as I only was there for a little bit and the metal was all cold from negative degree days. Tomorrow I will be throwing the heat on in the garage and getting to work.

[nsxguy7]

I would cut again and start over.
I think I have come up with a pretty foolproof method for shortening struts.
Go to harbor freight and buy a tubing expander ( about 15 bucks ) I think it's the medium sized one. Take your cut strut tubes and grind a nice bevel on the cut edge where they will mate together. Put the tubing expander into both tubes and tighten. The expander will hold both parts of the tube aligned perfectly. You will want a gap between the two tubes of 1/16" to 3/32", so the weld will have good penetration. You may want to coat the tubing expander with a SMALL amount of motor oil to keep the tack welds from sticking to it. Next, working in a criss- cross pattern, make about 10 SMALL tack welds around the tube. Remove the tubing expander and finish welding with a TIG welder. I cannot recommend using a MIG welder as I have not used one for this job but I really think the chance of warping them is much greater. If you REALLY want to play it safe, take a die grinder and grind a little "valley" about a 1/4" wide by 1/4" deep around the circumference of the tubing expander. Then line up the area you are about to weld over the "valley" and tighten. Now you are free to weld all the way around without fear of warping your housings or welding them to the expander. I have used this simple jig several times now with stellar results..

[Gertech]

I would cut again and start over.
I think I have come up with a pretty foolproof method for shortening struts.
Go to harbor freight and buy a tubing expander ( about 15 bucks ) I think it's the medium sized one. Take your cut strut tubes and grind a nice bevel on the cut edge where they will mate together. Put the tubing expander into both tubes and tighten. The expander will hold both parts of the tube aligned perfectly. You will want a gap between the two tubes of 1/16" to 3/32", so the weld will have good penetration. You may want to coat the tubing expander with a SMALL amount of motor oil to keep the tack welds from sticking to it. Next, working in a criss- cross pattern, make about 10 SMALL tack welds around the tube. Remove the tubing expander and finish welding with a TIG welder. I cannot recommend using a MIG welder as I have not used one for this job but I really think the chance of warping them is much greater. If you REALLY want to play it safe, take a die grinder and grind a little "valley" about a 1/4" wide by 1/4" deep around the circumference of the tubing expander. Then line up the area you are about to weld over the "valley" and tighten. Now you are free to weld all the way around without fear of warping your housings or welding them to the expander. I have used this simple jig several times now with stellar results..

Awesome idea using the tubing expander! I even have one of these but didn't think about using it in that way...putting that in the memory bank!