Strut info?

[gnomee]

Hello Guys,

I was wondering how long struts will last. How do you know when they are bad? Same as shocks? If you push on the body to compress the shock and then it bounces instead of coming up and stopping its bad? Are the struts really any harder to change than the back shocks on the F-Body?

[Fastcar]

Hello Guys,

I was wondering how long struts will last. How do you know when they are bad? Same as shocks? If you push on the body to compress the shock and then it bounces instead of coming up and stopping its bad? Are the struts really any harder to change than the back shocks on the F-Body?

Ride and handling are very difficult to describe in writing; however if you push down on the car and it bounces instead of just coming back to the start point then I might suspect that your shocks/struts are shot. If you drive and hit a bump and the car "porpoises" (keeps going up and down instead of immediately damping the bump) then that's a fairly sure sign that you need need new shocks. It's much more difficult to change standard MacPherson struts than shocks because you need a spring compressor. The strut body itself is a suspension member and the spring sits on a spring mount that is part of the strut body. You have to compress the spring to remove the strut from the car. The replacement strut cartridge (the actual shock itself) threads into the strut body. You then put the strut back into the car.