bagged maxima with AIM kit?

I have a bagged maxima, I removed the spacer and made a new strut mount. instead of the nut being low in the factory strut mount mine is on top. It actually made my car 2 inchs lower in the front.

Edited: 2/17/2006 9:39:41 AM by loudciv

i think you could "double nut it and leave it 'loose' and it would probably make a bunch of noise when you drive." or...maybe look into a different year nissan that has a bearing in the upper strut mount?

Edited: 2/17/2006 11:38:28 AM by AVTekk

ya i might do that, swing thru the junkyard and check out other cars, altho its gonna be kinda hard to take the strut apart without the compressor, might have to bring the cordless sawzall

i havnt fucked with it since, ill see if i can ruin it tonight.

I THOUGHT I HAD IT FIGURED OUT A COUPLE TIMES, BUT THEN I SAW SOMETHING ELSE THAT WOULD HAVE FAILED.

You don't have to have the rubber in there, it's not gonna hurt anything. I've had custom mounts w/o the rubber for a few years now using strutbags, then cylinders, and now juice and it hasn't given me one problem. I've even had to trim some of the strut tower to allow the wheel to come up further and it didn't hurt it. I'll see if I can find some pics of how I did it for you.

Edited: 2/18/2006 12:41:57 PM by AVTekk

Ok well on the advice of Billy Blanco, I just went ahead and installed the kit to see what it would do. He claimed that the center shaft of the strut does turn, and that the bag assembly will move up once inflated to take up the gap between the bearing and provided spacer. I tried wrenching on it to make it turn, even hitting it with a mallet to make it go into the bag, wouldnt work.

So before I went too crazy, I cut the nub down on the rubber mount like I planned too, and installed the thing. Filled it up with air, nothing happened. Started jacking up the control arm to put weight on it, nothing happened. Kept jacking until the car was teetoring on the jackstands then BLAM!, the seals released their death grip on the shaft and the bag moved right up and put the weight on the bearing. Car turns freely and everything.

So basically I was worried about nothing, but I always like to make sure things work on the bench before I install them and have something break from binding. Ive done airstruts before but not AIM ones so I hope these work out ok.

As for the Maxima kit, since theres nothing else on the market, I suggest buying this one. Everything bolted right up. The front has 3 brackets, two for abs wire and another for the brake line. One abs bracket wasnt right so I had to ziptie the wire there, no big deal. The rear of the car has two little nubs inside the lower mount to locate the stock strut, I ground those off and the cylinder bolted right in.

The only problem was the top of the cylinder sat far away from the strut tower, so the trunk would eventually fill up with water and debris. To solve this I made a gasket out of 1/8" rubber and a plate out of 1/8" metal and sandwiched it over the strut tower. I think itll be good, maybe a little silicone around the line to make it 100% sealed.

Ill put the pics up when I can, thanks again Billy!

Any time