If you didn't see my post about GM28 failure in flight, here's a short recap,  With no green light on the nose gear, I tried "yanking" the A/C around, no help.  Slower to about 65knots, near stall,  and the nose gear fell into down lock.   The gas strut rod had failed at the first root thread.  You might want to see that there is no "bind" in the nose gear without the gas strut hooked up (on the jacks, of course) in which you have quite a bit of safety with the near 100# new strut.. Don Skeele N320J   235/320 +650 hrs.