Hipatchy

Hi all I recently purchased a 2001 in beautiful condition with 60k, seems like the car sat a lot since every strut was blown in the car.
I would like to say that this forum has been a huge help working on the car I have replaced the front hubs, front struts and fixed my tilt wheel with info on this board.
I didn't see any good reviews on Monroe so I thought I'd share my opinion.
Down to the subject. The ride in the car when I got it was so terrible but I have a friend that owns a 400 and thought putting the money in will be worth it since it ws a clean chassis.
I diagnosed the front struts as bad and was desperate to get the car ready to drive since I had a rental for a few more days and the lexus dealer wanted $1200 just for parts.
I found Monroes online for half that and read some good and meh reviews so decided to risk it. I swapped them over in a full day which I was surprised compressing the spring was the hardest part because you have to get the top and bottom mount lined up properly to go back in the car and the spring compressor gets in the way.

I torqued all the bolts to spec and drove the car around. It took the ride from a 1 to a 7. A day later it started clunking lightly so I checked all suspension components but found no play except the wheel bearings but this doesn't cause clunks like I am hearing. The clunking got extremely bad after about a week. I decided to tighten the strut bolts on top about 7 ft lbs each and it drove better for a day then came back. I didn't see locktite on the bolts when I took them out so I didn't install any so I decided to take the bolts out and locktite them and got them as tight as I could with a 1/2" rachet. The next morning it drove very nice, no clunking but unfortunately the drive home from work it clunked which was so upsetting. I have an 18" rachet I use to take off the wheels so I decided to get them real good and tight. Same story, fine in the morning and clunking later. I went ahead and tightened them more and now it always clunks a little bit but not as bad as the worst time. Those babies are on there TIGHT right now. I am so frustrated with these that I am definitely going to get oem strut mounts and bearings and swap them over because this thing not only clunks but it rides awful. I will probably gets shocks as well since i will only be another $300. When the mounts were not clunking I found the struts very stiff which I don't like. Overall review - Struts - 6/10 - Mounts - 0/10.
If only one side clunked I may go through the effort of returning for warranty but both sides clunk bad so these are just a terrible product.
Usually struts should come in the compressed position but these did not and the packaging was destroyed and dusty.

I also ordered Monroe struts for the hood and they work very slow and are noisy, just not impressive at all. I purchased strongarm struts for the trunk and I am very impressed with initial quality on those we will see what kind of longevity I get with them.

I have one concern that I would like to ask. My car has a loose ring at the top of the strut where the nuts go on. Are these there from the factory? I see on the parts diagram that the air struts have a ring I am wondering if the previous owner put this in for some reason. it looks like it's there for structural support though.

Thanks for reading this rant if you did. I had a GS350 and this forum has more information than that section. That car had a lot of it's own problems and it was a 2011, I am glad to be rid of it...