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Strutts & failed PA car inspection
I guess I finally have to give up on my Suburu Legacy '90. It has served me well. I am not in a position to purchase a new car and it failed PA inspection because of rust and it needs strutts. Well I've got 10 days to find a new car or be without a car. I need a few more months to search for a car and determine financing.
My car drives fine, I didn't notice anything unusual about the ride or cornering. What is the story with strutts??? The body rust is minor and I can resolve that, but the strutts are $340. I don't want to invest that into a car that has 190,000 miles on it..but 10 days is a little short to come up with the money for a car and to search for a used car I'd be happy with..I might ask around and see if I can find someone who does a shabby inspection...but if it comprises my saftely.....absolutely not. I only need the car a few months beyond inspection date....any suggestions, advice, whatever...HELP!!!
My car drives fine, I didn't notice anything unusual about the ride or cornering. What is the story with strutts??? The body rust is minor and I can resolve that, but the strutts are $340. I don't want to invest that into a car that has 190,000 miles on it..but 10 days is a little short to come up with the money for a car and to search for a used car I'd be happy with..I might ask around and see if I can find someone who does a shabby inspection...but if it comprises my saftely.....absolutely not. I only need the car a few months beyond inspection date....any suggestions, advice, whatever...HELP!!!
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Comments
Otherwise, I'm not sure how a shop "tests" the struts without removing them...unless they have seen fluid leaks.
If there's no record of your failure, sure, try again somewhere else. If the rust is structurally dangerous, you'd want to know that.
Your comment about struts being harder to move than tube shocks calls for a real rant. In the old days a shock absorber (better called a damper) failed by going soft as the internal valves failed or the fluid leaked out. One of the most annoying features of the miserable invention called the McPherson strut is that they fail often by going hard. As nearly as I can make out, the body of what would have been just the damper with old-style dampers, gets bent by impacts from the wheel, since this part does double duty as a wheel locator. The bent strut tends to bind at the normal ride height, at best. My 1990 Voyager had a bad case of this with the original Monroe struts that went hard during 19,000 miles. The replacment KYBs lasted 7,000 miles. Still later Monroes did better.
The best struts ever are the upside-down ones from Bilstein that appear to have a 4 cm diameter piston rod, rather than the 17 mm rod that is so common. Second best are KONIs that are built conventionally, but of harder materials.
Bilstein invented digressive valving. That is, small bumps are damped, but large bumps are damped very little more. This gives some of the best luxury car rides available since 1985. KONI and others have adopted this style of damping. One result is that it is hard to move the vehicle up and down by hand. However, conventional dampers with this style of damping are equally hard to move by hand, so it is NOT a property of struts.