Driver's Side Front Notes

I started with the driver's front because of how the car was situated in my garage, and I knew that the fronts were going to take a lot longer than the rears.

1. Jack up the front of the car and remove the front tire.
2. Do NOT remove the upper three mounting nuts yet, the suspension will drop and you might screw up your brake lines. Furthermore, you're going to need the strut to be solidly mounted while you get leverage on the lower two bolts on the strut.
3. Remove the brake line clips on the struts, and clear the lines from the mounts. I had to temporarily remove my caliper to get enough play to do this. I suggest putting the caliper back in place with the bolts finger tight if you have to remove it.
4. Put a bottle jack or other small jack under the lower a-arm to support it at the current height.
5. I would suggest removing the bolt that is holding the sway bar to the a-arm. If both of the front wheels are off the ground, then this will be easy. If not, then there will be alot of energy stored in the sway bar, and you might not want to try getting it off until both wheels are off the ground. I suggest just lifting the car under the engine brace in the middle so both wheels are hanging loose, and then taking out this one bolt temporarily.
6. Use an impact wrench or breaker bar(or both) to get the two lower bolts loosened on the strut.
7. I suggest using one of the air wrenches to finish backing the bolts back out of the holes, versus just beating them out of the holes, as it'll ruin the threads, but if they're finger loose, you should be able to just push them out. Again, make sure the a-arm is supported by the jack or other apparatus. Raising or lowering the a-arm a little may facilitate their removal.
8. Now carefully loosen the three nuts on the top of the strut tower in the engine bay. Loosen each one a little at a time so the whole assembly slowly lowers. When they're nearly off, reach down and grab hold of the strut, supporting it, and taking the weight off the nuts. Then remove the three nuts and set them aside(They're $4 each from Nissan, and they fit a GREAT MANY things on the car). Now slowly remove the strut through the wheel well, being careful not to hit stuff, like brake lines and cv boots, which could tear easily.
9. Now is a good time to set the initial height of your new struts, as you've got both out where they're easy to mess with, and you have a stock one for comparison. I turned the collars all the way up until I couldn't turn them by hand because they were compressing the springs. This effectively got me a zero preload to start with. In retrospect, examining my current ride-height after sag, I should have given it between 2 and 4 turns of preload while I had them off and easy to mess with, since I only have about 1/2" of clearance between the fender and the tire. I'd like about 3/4" for street use.
10. We now come to fun part. The following diagram shows a side view of the strut tower mounting point in the engine bay. The arrow is pointing towards the engine, and the red line shows what you will need to remove, per the GC instructions. You need to grind down the lip so that the camber plates have clearance. For this, I used a high speed angle grinder with a fiber wheel, and cylindrical and beveled stone grinding wheels.
11. I suggest using a good pair of protective goggles, a hat to cover your hair, long cotton sleeves, non-flammable gloves, and a dust mask while grinding. Having a fire extinguisher that can handle chemical fires is a good thing to have nearby, as you'll be generating a LOT of sparks and heat near a lot of flammable things in the engine bay.
12. I started out by using the sharpie to mark half-way down the lip, per the GC instructions, and half-way around. This picture shows a side view of what I'm talking about. Everything to the left of the red line should be removed. The arrow is pointing towards the engine.
    
13. I then used the cutoff wheel to make vertical cuts down to my half-way mark, effectively leaving little teeth pointing up. I then used the cutoff wheel to grind down the teeth to the same level. Then smooth out the edges/surfaces with a stone grinding wheel.
14. Take apart the top of the camber plates(three bolts with nylon inserts, and four allen-headed bolts that are threaded into the little gray top on the strut). Basically, you just need to remove the large camber plate on top so you can slide the strut into the hole. But before you do that, read #14.
15. Now the thing that REALLY hacked me off after I did it wrong the first time. Somewhere in here, I managed to cut myself on something sharp. Time to first blood drawn: 1 hour, 12 minutes. Before you get excited, and shove the strut into the hole you just made and start mounting things together. Take off that silver ring that's probably resting on top of the spring assembly. It should have four holes in it, two that are far apart, and two right next to each other. Put it underneath the strut tower mounting holes, and line up the two holes that are far apart with two of the holes in the strut tower. If the third hole isn't even remotely lined up with one of the other two, flip the ring over, and try again. I found that I had to grind the hole a little bigger in the strut tower using the beveled grinding stone before I could get the bolts through all of the holes. Use the sharpie to estimate how big you need to grind the hole while you're holding the ring there. And WHILE you're standing there with the ring in hand and the sharpie out, put some marks on the ring that say something like "THIS SIDE UP". I screwed that up on the second strut I did, by which time I was REALLY upset.
16. So, you've ground out the holes and labeled your ring. Make sure you grab the right strut(they have sides, indicated by where the brake line mounting point is). Put the ring on top of the strut, and then bend the little gray top over to one side so it's as vertical as possible. Now slide one edge of that top into the hole in the strut tower, and then angle it up and in so that the whole piece goes through the hole. This may be difficult to do without whacking something like a brake line or cv boot, but try anyhow. You can kind of "hang" the strut off the strut tower hole by this gray bracket once you get it in there.
17. The camber plate has a definite direction to it, as does the little gray top on the strut that it bolts to. Check to make sure you have them pointing in the right direction before you bolt the two together. The best way to tell if you have it right is to line up the top plate with the three holes in the tower. If all three will line up, it's facing the right way, if only two line up, flip it 180 degrees and that should be right. Now compare the odd shape of the gray strut topper to the hole in the bottom of the top plate. If it looks like it can slide back and forth without hitting the sides of the plate, you've got it right, if the round hump looks like it will hit either the tower or the plate sides, then turn the top of the plate 180 degrees.
18. Thread the four allen bolts in first by hand, making sure to remember the washers.. You may only be able to get one in without raising the strut a little because of the length of the bolts. Once you've got them all in, and the strut is hanging by these four bolts, start putting in the three large mounting bolts with the nylon insert nuts. Insert the bolt from the bottom of the wheel well, reaching around to hold it while you stand up and put the washer and nut on. Resist the urge to set the washers on the fender top, as there is a lip they can slide under very easily, and they can be hard to retrieve. The hardest one to put in will be the one in the very back of the wheel well, as you have to reach around the strut.
19. Now that you have the top pieces all loosely bolted together, line up the lower strut with the holes in the driveshaft mount. You'll probably have to raise the jack that's holding up the a-arm to make them line up. If you didn't remove the bolt from the sway bar, this might be more difficult, and will DEFINITELY be more difficult when you get to the other side. The whole assembly can rock back and forth as well as slide in and out, but be careful not to rip the CV boots or pull out the drive shaft(not sure if it's possible, but why not be careful anyhow ;)
20. Put the bolts into the lower end of the strut, being careful of the threads again, and tighten the nuts down to the torques spec'd in the shop manual.
21. I suggest pushing the top of the camber/caster plates as far towards the driver's side mirror as possible to start out with. I didn't find that I had a lot of play in where I could put the caster adjustment, but there is considerable play with the camber. I pushed mine all the way towards the fender wells, and still ended up with -2.2 degrees of camber.
22. Tighten down all of the bolts on the camber plates. I had to use a speeder with two extensions to get enough length and leverage to hold the bottom of the one bolt that is nearest the engine. Otherwise, a plain socket wrench and extension worked fine, and I used the air wrench with a socket to tighten down the nuts, so that I could hold onto both sides of the bolt at the same time. Having a friend to help for this part would be easier however.
23. Now reattach your brake lines to the struts with the clips. I'm running the BABK with SS lines, and I had to bend the mounting tabs down a bit so that they werent putting stress on the connections. YMMV, but just be careful with it. If you had to remove the calipers to reroute the lines, make sure you remember to tighten the calipers back down afterwards.
24. I would suggest leaving the sway bar disconnected until you have finished with the other side. Just put your tire back on(if you are going to turn the car around, if not, just leave it jacked up of course) and turn around slowly. I had to turn my car around in order to work in my garage.

Time to completion of driver's side front strut: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

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