I hate working on cars. Also, I may be an idiot.

I attempted to replace the front struts on my daughter's '07 Fit Sport today. She's been having a rattle from the upper-right front over bumps that's been progressively getting worse over the last year-ish. To me it sounds like an upper strut mount about to fail & punch through the hood, so I ordered a cheap pair of complete strut assemblies off Amazon. 
 

Unfortunately, what I found after I got the car in the air & opened up the new parts, was that they don't look the same at all. This is the strut mount on her car - the shock shaft protrudes up through the body & upper mount, with a retaining nut threading down to hold it tight. 
 

However, these are the new struts.

Of course there was a sticker on top warning "don't remove this bolt or you'll die"...I do have a spring compressor though.

Anyway, obviously this is completely different - and something I've never seen - using a bolt from the top that threads down into the center of the strut shaft. So I contacted the vendor & told them I got the wrong parts, put the car back together & called it a day. Then I started second guessing myself & wondering if these new struts might actually fit, but they just use a completely different mounting method than OE?

So am I an idiot, or did they ship the wrong parts?

Looks like it may fit just using a slightly different method. To me, it looks like the spring compression would end at the metal part near the top and that the center nut just holds 2 black plastic/rubber pieces together. Looks like taking the nut off would allow top disc to come off and the black cone looks similar to the shape of the sheet metal. Push cone up wheelwell into the metal body cone and put top disc down on top from engine bay and tighten bolt down. Unless I'm missing something.

It looks like the top bushing might be the same just flipped over.

Go to rockauto.com

Put in the car and parts that you're looking for.

Look up the Honda parts for the car, compare against what you've got.

From there check a couple YouTube videos for how to install if it doesn't make sense.

Fix it Felix here seems to make it look like the spring is retained by an additional nut.  I'm pretty sure those struts are correct and you have to remove that bolt.  I'd put my spring compressor on just to be safe but take that bolt off I'd imagine the strut has a coupling nut on top and your strut looks basically the same.  

This parts diagram shows it has 2 nuts, #8 and #17

I would put the spring compressor on it and take the top nut off.  Looks like no other way to retain the top of the strut to the frame other than be sandwiched  between #s 14 and 13.

Mr_Asa said:

Go to rockauto.com

Put in the car and parts that you're looking for.

Look up the Honda parts for the car, compare against what you've got.

I always do this. I've received too many wrong parts from online places and stores, so I always try to cross-reference part numbers across several sources, especially the part manufacturer, to make sure I'm getting the right thing.

In reply to BionicTigerShark :

That definitely looks like the OE setup, which means #8 would be retaining the spring, and the shaft would protrude through the upper mount & be retained by #17.

In reply to nocones :

This is what I'm starting to think too. The strut body appears the same - though I didn't actually compare them side-by-side. The completely different upper mount attachment had me convinced they were the wrong part though, at least for a little while. 
 

Regardless, at this point I guess I'll just wait for a reply from the vendor. If they take them back & pay shipping(which has been my previous Amazon experiences) then I'll order from someplace local so I can visually ID the parts before I take them home. Otherwise I'll attempt to install them again & see what happens. 

Does #14 unscrew without taking #17 off? Try knocking it loose with a block of wood and a mallet.  If it does, then you put in in the hole and screw it back on from the top.

Is it possible the missing part from her car is the source of the rattle?

Stampie has a point. The top of the strut has clean threads almost like a nut has been on there. The threads right below it are rusty. So I think the Fit is missing something.

After a bit of Google-fu, it seems pretty straight forward.

In reply to Stampie & dculberson :

There were rubber boots protecting the hex on the top of the strut shaft from getting packed full of crud. I'd removed them for disassembly, but slid them back on when I gave up for the day.

In reply to Ian F :

Except the new shocks in that post have the same long shaft as the OE ones they removed(unlike the new struts I received).

I wanted to provide some closure to this dilemma. The results are in, and yes, I am an idiot. 
 

Remember that sticker on top of the new strut's center bolt warning of death? 
 

This is what if found when I removed that last bit of sticker. 

<facepalm>
 

And yes, once installed they look just like the OE ones did...

The one good thing is I confirmed the bearing in the upper mount on the passenger's side was the death rattle I'd been hearing, so that's now resolved. 

I love it when I can confirm I'm the idiot. Makes things cheaper.