Supra_Strut

Second Generation (MK2) 1982-1986 Celica Supra

While there are no currently avaliable strut rods made for the 1982-1986 Supra the rods made for the AE86 Corolla will fit easily with one minor modification needing to be made to the control arms of your car. These strut rods mount solidly between your front control ars and the cars frame. They keep the control arm in place during hard cornering and braking maneuvers. From the factory your Supra has rubber bushings where the strut rod mounts to the frame, while this works well for eveyday use they do allow some movement of the control arm during hard cornering and braking maneuvers. You may replace these bushings with polyurethane to limit the ammount of movement the control arm has, one downside to this is they cause suspension binding as the control arm moves up and down through its normal range of motion. This can lead to erratic handling keeping the springs and struts from working as intended. They also only minimize this unwanted movement they do not stop it.

The pillowball strut rod uses a spherical bearing in place of the rubber bushing is on the stock car. This completeley stops unwanted fore/aft movement of the control arm during hard braking and cornering while eliminating any binding that the bushing was causing. The bars are also threaded to easily allow for precise caster adjustment. There are several companies that manufacture strut rods for the AE86 Corolla, I chose to purchase through Techno Toy Tuning, due to their helpful and knowlegeable support. Techno Toy Tuning is well known in the old school Toyota enthusiast crowd for creating tough, well engineered, and affordable performance automotive products. At the time of this writing the price for these strut rods is $195 plus shipping for the pair. These strut rods are beefy and heavy they are made of all steel with red powdercoated and anodized finishes.

The tools you will need to complete this project are as follows

Jack and jack stands
23mm Wrench
14mm socket
17mm socket
24mm socket
Pliers
1/2" Drill bit and high speed electric drill
Tape measure
Hammer
Torque wrench

Begin by jacking the car up and place jackstands under the framerails on each side. Remove both front wheels. Make a mark on the bottm ofeach control arm out near where the strut rod bintersects with the control arm. Measure from the strut rod frame mount to the mark you made on each control arm like shown in the picture. Make a not of this measurement on each side, this will allow you to get very close to your original alignment settings. The photo below illustrates this process.

After you have a measurement recorded for both sides remove the large nut on the front of the strut rod with a 23mm wrench. Remove the large front washer and bushing as well.

Next with a 14mm socket remove the 2 strut rod to control arm nuts from the underside of the control arms.

Remove the old strut rod, you may need to use a hammer to ound the studs back up through the control arm, it is a tight fit. The bolt spacing on the new AE86 strut rods is slightly closer together when compared to the Supra strut rods. To make up for this difference enlarge the holes in the control arms with the 1/2" drill bit. This will allow for the AE86 strut rod bolts to tightly slide into position on the Supra control arms as shown in the photo below.

Install the 2 lock washers and the 17mm nuts onto the strut rod mounting bolts. Tighten to 54 ft-lbs.

Using the turnbuckle adjust the length of the rod so that the red plate is flush against the chassis mount hole. Next install the second red plate from the front along with the lockwasher and 24mm nut and torque to 87 ft-lbs.

Usint the measurements you took before you began adjust the turnbuckle untill the strut rod length is correct. Once it is set tighten the lock nuts on each end of the turnbuckle to lock it in place. It is reccomended that you have an alignment done after the installation to dial things in perfectly, but it should be good enough to get you to the shop. Go back and check all you hardware and make sure everthing is tightened correctly. Also check for anything that may be interfering with the movement of the new strut rod. Here is a picture of the pillowball strut rod fully installed.

I am recommending this upgrade to people like me who already have many other supporting suspension mods like coilovers, adjustable struts, bushings, swaybars, RCA's etc.... I would reccomend having all of those items done before this upgrade as a minimum in order to take full advantage of what these strut rods have to offer.

Any questions or comments should be adressed to wjh@ufl.edu