Why won't the "mouse pad/vice grips/hold the strut with your hand" procedure work on inverted struts? Rather than holding the shaft, you're holding the housing, which is the part that will move with the tophat, preventing the assembly from tightening. Am I missing something?
Actually, now that I think about it, this is the same thing that I've done with STi struts, which are also inverted, and it worked fine.