What exactly did you do? Those gland nuts are difficult to remove for the first time after 15 years. A pipe wrench works well in case you're using channel locks. Some people use a drift and hammer, but the gland nut usually just tears apart.

If you didn't destroy the actual tube and threads yet, take it to a shop and see if they can heat the gland nut with a torch to break the bond. That worked on my '90 240 with ~145k miles when I did the struts at a friends shop. Nearly destroyed the gland nut before getting out the torch.

The ABS strut has a toothed wheel pressed on behind the hub. I've heard that the wheel can be removed, but I don't know for sure if there is some difference in the spindle, so I don't know if it will go onto a non-ABS strut. Also, the spindle has a hole for the speed sensor, right? You won't find that on non-ABS struts.

The early strut tubes up to about '82 use a smaller wheel bearing. Stick to '83+ if you do try to use a non-ABS strut.

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