So, I got the car back together today and took it for a test drive. Now I have a much louder rattle noise in the front end. I think it's from the one strut casing that I ended up cutting to remove the old insert. I believe the insert is loose inside the old casing. So needless to say, I will be purchasing bilsteins in another day or so. I want to see if I can return these inserts to vertex but judging by the return policy they have, I think I'm SOL. This was educating to me so I am not too upset that I am spending more money than I would have if I had just done it the right way from the start. Now that I have done this project, taking everything apart again will go very quickly. Once I have the new shocks, it should be a very quick swap.
I do believe that if I did not have to cut the casing, this probably would have worked. I was tempted to buy a used strut so that I can just use the casing, but I have already spent so much time at this that its time to spend the extra money and have the peace of mind!
If anyone else wants to try this, I would be happy to let these inserts go for half of what I paid. I'll even include the two old strut cases so you can see where I went wrong. Basically, if you can successfully remove the old inserts, this should work.
These pictures are of the successful strut:
