I guess the question would be how much will it cost to get a custom urethane insert fitted/manufactured. I'm guessing it won't be cheap. the only 'non' off the shelf use of urethane I can think of at the moment is early valiant pitman arms. the original tapered pin (that goes into the drag link) has a socket joint inside it (like a human shoulder joint) afaik that is what they start with. anyway, you can't get (maybe they are available for US lhd models) a replacement pitman arm, so what they do is cut open the socket/cap area of the pitman arm, clean out the inside and force a urethane bush in there around the ball part of the tapered pin. As it is forced in there, it compresses and really holds the pin in fairly tightly (not 100% perfectly, but certainly more that satisfactorily) They then weld the cap back on, a tiny bit at a time, to avoid overheating and wrecking the urethane.

If anyone has a contact who can get the urethane moulded into a stock strut top, I'd be keen to know any info they can find! Who did you go through Tommo to get them done like that? And what did it cost? One thing - only a couple of years ago, doing ball joints for a mate's panel van - we could still get genuine factory ball joints for the HQ-HZ/WB models (and only found that out because the non genuine ones we got were craptastic, and didn't fit properly, let alone the fact they were flimsy). We were shocked to find that out - never thought to look for genuine. Are any left for the toranas? On a similar note, you can still (or could a few years ago when I last had any reason to check) get new gear sets for holden 'aussie' m21 gearboxes. NFI about now, but that too surprised me, and I never thought to try holden initially, until a bloke doing historic touring car racing mentioned it on a internet mailing list.


At this stage though, I'm still pursuing a modified pulsar strut top just because they are common at wrecking yards (and or could be had new) and the alteration to make them bolt into a 1200 strut tower is pretty simple (just a little time consuming, as, much like the pitman arm example, only a little bit at a time can be welded).

At the end of the day, I reckon I'd be able to get a pair of the pulsar ones done for about $60-80 the pair if someone supplied the strut tops. If I had to source the strut tops new and then modify them, it'd be maybe over $150 outright (i.e. here's $!50, here's a set of new tops that have been modified to fit).

The big aims here are cost, sufficient change in camber to be worthwhile in the first place, ability to literally bolt in, original mounting height for the strut insert pushrod. Secondarily - I'm not a huge fan of the pillow mount bearings. They don't last forever, and if you consider how they all mount together, they end up putting the top cap over the spring on a slight angle, altering the consistency of the spring rate (at least they can potentially). Last if not least, retaining the rubber insert (or to a lesser extent a new urethane one) allows for a little bit of 'compliance' which should smooth out the suspension function and allow for (with the right driving style and other suspension adjustments) a slightly better grip/predictability over minor bumps, and perhaps just a little less NVH (minor difference I'll readily acknowledge).

I'll keep plodding away at it.