Help. I was trying to take the top nut off the front passenger strut and the hex stripped. I had a 19mm pass through on the nut and a 6mm allen to socket on the hex hole and the damn hex hole stripped. Anything I could do?
Solved: Hammered in a larger allen into the end of the rod. New struts anyway so destruction is acceptable.
Edit 2: Long story short I had the front two struts replaced 30k ago by a shop. I bent one of the new ones just recently so I decided to do all four by myself. The top nuts on both the front struts were tightened to oblivion possibly with an impact wrench. The passenger side one is detailed above. The drivers side one had the same issue but when I tired the same method mentioned above the nut was torqued on so tight I cracked the rod when I tried to loosen the nut. It took me 25 mins to drill out the rod to get the nut off to get the rest of the hardware on my new strut.
Beware of mom and pop shops with impact wrenches and a blatant disregard for torque specs.
Thanks for the detailed wirteup with color pictures.