Well time to spend some time on my '74. The front end looks like the motor has been removed and I can place my fist upright on the tire and the fender clears it. Both sides have noticeable positive camber and I've heard tell that they are very difficult to align. Likely this means that the camber was the problem. Back in the day the cure was Moog camber plates and it's no surprise my goon came with them.
I had such good results lowering the goon that I'm going to do something similar with the sedan. I won't be replacing the struts with Maxima ones just modifying the stock ones. Thanks to Jason I have a spare set from a '77 goon and will get them ready and I can just swap them in quickly one weekend. The '77s have slightly different calipers and pads than what's on the '74. The '74 has the wedge shaped pads. The goal is to lower the sedan 2-3 inches and have adjustable ride height, increase the spring rate, firm up the strut dampening and do this for $30 or less.
My contraption for compressing the spring... Somewhat easier (lighter to handle) if you remove the caliper.
Pail of dirt and water for counter weight... Now it can be compressed with one arm while loosening the nut holding the top hat on.
Loosen and remove the gland nut..
Slide the gland nut up and off. Be sure the strut is clean and free of burrs as there is a seal on the underside.
The insides will not come out easily unless you remove the O ring just below the threads inside the tube. I use a dental pick for this. Go easy on it and you can re-use it.
Gland nut underside seal and O ring.
Have a container handy to catch any oil. Only this much came out of two struts. I used about 2/3 liter to refill the Maxima struts. The FSM suggests about 325cc to fill one, so this seemed like quite a bit less to me. One of the struts could easily be compressed with light pressure before I took it apart. Very soft.... maybe it was low.
Lift the strut damper assy up and out. It looks like this..
Insides pulled out. Store all internal parts carefully in a clean place.
Trim around the TOP of the weld holding the lower spring perch. I used a 6" angle grinder and a metal cutting wheel. The metal is only a mm or so thick and three light passes cut through it.
Hammer loose and slip off the end of the strut.
I used the angle grinder again to remove the weld. Once smoothed down the lower spring perch can slide up and down the strut freely.
When smoothed down it should look like this...
As noted, the calipers should be removed first to make handling easier. I removed them last and polished the rotors, they are in good shape but the pads are really well worn and need replacing.
Here are the 710 struts as far as I went yesterday, needing only new oil. Instead of $17 Bellray fork oil I'm going with cheaper ATF to try it. ATF is also full of anti foam and rust inhibitors and somewhere between 15 and 20 weight I think. The last item are a set of $20 split collars to make these struts fully height adjustable.
I picked up some ATF today... $8 so far. Have to order the split collars from Fastenal. I think they were about $10 each or so. I won't include the disc pads as I could have just used the '74 struts.
Still have to trim the stock springs. On my goon I calculated the spring rate at about 104 pounds per inch. Removing one coil increased the rate by 50%. This reduces suspension travel, (a good thing on a lowered car) and the thicker ATF will dampen more. My goon had Maxima struts that were about an inch and a half shorter plus lowered a couple of inches. The 710 struts will be stock length so lowering will be minimal, just to get it level (actually probably where it should be)... not slammed. Now I will be able to compare ATF to 20W fork oil.