The strut itself is the load-bearing member in this assembly, with the spring and shock absorber merely performing their duty as oppose to actually holding the car up.
can you explain this a little better for me. maybe i`m not thinking straight, but by this description, you could take the spring and shock out of the assembly and the strut (now just a strut tube as the shock absorbing member is removed) would hold the car up? all the McStrut systems I have worked on, if you took those 2 components out and tried to drive the car you wouldn`t make it off the lift.