I started unhooking the 2.8 to remove from my 85. I am enlisting the help of a friend who is a mechanic. We have very limited space so engine will have to come straight back. He wants to leave the struts in to help with clearance, so I was wondering what the downside to leaving the struts in would be. I am thinking alignment but front right was out before wonder if we could accomplish this with the home alignment procedure shown in the how to section. thanks

You can get it close. But Fieros are really finicky about proper alignment. After you get everything back together I would take it to an alignment shop and have them do a proper 4 wheel alignment. And have them get as close to spot on as possible. "In the green" sometimes just isn't good enough.

You can mark them and get them back close, I would leave them in the car, I just did this and it worked out fine. I pulled mine straight out the back also. Larry

Thanks for the advice. I will mark them and see how it goes.

You can disconnect the knuckle at the ball joint and not ruin the alignment. Disconnect the rear toe link at the knuckle as well. Pull the axles out of the knuckles and drop the knuckle/strut out of the way by removing the three nuts on top of the strut tower.

[This message has been edited by olejoedad (edited 09-09-2013).]

you can take the 2 control arm bolts out and drop the strut to the control arm out as an assembly and u wont affect the alignment at all when u put it back in. same method as olejoedad but i found this easier than separating the ball joint, and if u take the nut off the tierod at the cradle it also comes out without having to disconnect from the knuckle

[This message has been edited by wickedjester (edited 09-10-2013).]