I realized today that once the struts are back on the car, you can use a torque wrench on the top nut of the rear struts (I BELIEVE) without anything spinning. I torqued those to 41ft-lbs...actually I had a ways to tighten after my little whirl with the impact wrench. This has me a bit worried about the front struts top nut being too loose...I'm still unsure how I would torque these down with my torque wrench. When I gave it a quick try there was a scary noise...clearly stuff was spinning since (unlike the rears) the front top hats allow swiveling.
It seems like something like this would work, but I can't find anything like this in the sizes we need:
Actually I just figured something out that works for torquing these nuts down, although it involves a crowfoot wrench so I'm not sure how accurate it is. Here's what I used:
6mm allen key, glove for holding the allen key in place, 17mm go-thru socket from harbor freight set (
http://www.harborfreight.com/21-piec...set-67974.html), 19mm crowfoot wrench (for top of go-thru socket), and adapter to attach the crowfoot to my torque wrench.
My top nuts now seem to be at least 41 ft-lbs although I think it's possible they are over-torqued from my impact wrenching.