{Camber Plate and Pillow Ball mount install}

{OEM's camber plates and pillow ball mounts for the J-body installation}

First you want to remove these two bolts that hold on your strut to  your knuckle.  They take an 18mm socket or wrench. 

Once the nuts are removed, gently take a hammer and push the two bolts out as they're notched.

Gently pull out the knuckle from the strut and the strut should hang free from the three bolts that hold it in on the strut tower.

Here are the three nuts you've go to remove.  Use a 13 mm socket or wrench for this to work.

Here are the three nuts removed from the struts and the strut assembly should fall down.  Try to keep you hand on it while this happens.

This is the complete strut assembly now off of the car.

To remove the strut mount from the strut assembly, you'll need a 10mm socket and 15/16 socket.

Here's how I did it to make it easy.  Worked out really well in the next picture you'll see. 

This is how I got the leverage I needed to remove the top of the strut. 

Buy a good spring compressor such as you see below.  They make cheaper but this one locks onto the spring for safer removal. 

Proper mounting of the spring compressor.  Easy to use and works nicely for removing the spings from the strut. 

Once you've removed the center strut nut with the springs compressed, the strut mount should look like this. 

Mock up of the camber plate to the top of the strut tower.   

Cut your bump stop if you're going to be using lowering springs like I'm using.   Eibach ProKits.   

Once the dust boot is removed, you'll see the bump stop that will have to be cut as you can see below.  I threw out the boot.   

Next install the aluminum spacer as shown if you're doing the OEM camber plates or standart mounts.    

Take the lower part of the new 2000 or higher strut mount and push the aluminum spacer into the mount as shown.     

Here's a better picture of it installed and fit into the lower section of the new strut mount with the bearing in it.       

Opposite side of the installation of the above.         

Here's the final order of how it all goes together for the OEM front mount/ camber plate sans spring.         

Another view of the assembly and how it should all come together.          

Backside view of the assembly for the OEM mounts.           

Finished and fully assembled strut assembly with spring.           

Reinstallation is quite easy with installing the strut into the strut tower lining up the three studs with the holes and bolting them down.  Then attach to the knuckle with the two bolts and tighten.           

Next it's time for the rear struts to be changed.  Removal is pretty straight forward with a 22mm socket to remove the lower bolt that holds the shock to the trailing arm and 10mm with long extensions to gain access to the bolts at the underside of the strut tower.

Make sure that you remove the single nut on top of the strut tower before removing the two remaining bolts holding the strut to the strut tower.

Here's what the strut mount looks like once removed.  Removal will require the use of an adjustable crescent wrench and 18mm socket, similar to the way the front strut mounts were removed.             

Remove the bump stop from the boot and cut it similar to what you see here if you're using lowering springs.  If not, keep it the same.  Once again, I removed the plastic boot altogether.           

If you decide to remove the dust boot, the bump stop will fit perfectly into the OEM mount as shown below.  It snaps right in.           

Unfortunately I had to modify the OEM spring pad because with the ProKit springs, it wouldn't fit inside of the springs properly.  It actually worked out quite well doing it this way.           

Here's what the spring pad looked like before I had to cut it down for it to work properly.            

Putting the new OEM mounts on is pretty much straight forward so I'll bypass all that.

I did have to modify the mounting holes of the strut tower because the original bolts were not long enough to house the RKSport rear strut bar.  Problem fixed.             

Here's the topside of the strut tower with the strut bar plate from the RK bar.              

That's pretty much it for the installation of the mounts.

           

Update to the page since I lost the collars needed to do the rear pillow balls correctly.

So I had to take them back off and pull it all apart once more.

Here are collars I had to fab up using old control arm bushing collars from the Prothane kits.  

           

This is how the color mounts in the strut for it all to work.  

           

Here is how it looks on a close up.  The large washer came with the OEM kit and this is how it's done.  

           

Here is how it looks fully assembled.  

           

This is what it's going to look like.  I had to use a couple of extra washers to make it all fit but it still worked out perfectly.  

           

That's all there is to it if you want better collars for this setup.

Reinstall and enjoy.