http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/susp...ll-joints.html
http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/susp.../tie-rods.html


Front end. There is more to consider than just dampers and springs with a worn suspension/steering. If your mechanic is good, he/she should be able to tell you what joints, bushings, etc. are worn and should be replaced to tighten everything back up.

Aside from your struts going out.. How's the reliability of your car been so far?

I'd suggest you get a second opinion - :iono:


humfrz

Doesn't that mean wheel bearings??

i know how to change the oil myself.. so i do it religiously every 5k

but now i need to do the valve spring recall anyways... so that might F everything up.

only problem i've had, has been the throw off bearing on the clutch went bad. So i replaced it all, new clutch, new flywheel, new TOB, etc.

that's the plan :)

Now just need to figure why i need in addition to the shocks and top hats...

depends on the kind of motion, a dead wheel bearing would be play in the wheel, you wouldn't be articulating the suspension to show it and without having an eye on the hub to see if the motion is wheel to hub, or hub to control arms you can't be sure if it's a bearing or a ball joint.

Soft travel can be indicative of a dead shock, but unless the spring is dead or the mechanic has a side job as a power lifter I wouldn't describe the wheel motion as 'easy', and there's lots of cars with 400k+ with springs that are perfectly fine so I'm not sure what's going on.

If I had to replace dampers for OE-purposes I'd lean towards Bilstein, those are pretty commonly regarded as having a ~100k mile life and can be rebuilt for half the cost of buying another set or about the same price as buying a cheap set of shocks, which are usually only good for ~20k-50k miles.

Yep, can't tell anything without a complete inspection.


I have Bilstein for all 3 of my sports cars. My experience with them is, like you say, they last longer than any other brand I've tried. Other brands were good when new (KYB and Koni to name a couple), but wore out quick. I have yet to wear out a set of Bilsteins.

Get new Penske suspension.

Yeah, someone else's less used OE takeoffs is a close second to Bilstein but only if they're cheap as again you'll probably get much less than 100k miles out of them and they're not rebuild-able. I want to try Koni's but I know they don't have the same rep as Bilstein and are prone to leaking pretty early on (whether that's by user error or QC who really knows) as well as there's no real need to adjust for the average owner.

Dampers are tricky beasts, it's easy to think 'it rides exactly the same!' without realizing that the degradation is a very very slow process, so even if the OP is being taken for a ride and the mechanic just wants some easy work with a high price tag (I mean, around here, easily charge 4 hours of labor + alignment could be anywhere from $500-$1,000 to someone not willing to fight back on the costs) a fresh(er) set of dampers is probably going to be a noticeable improvement at ~125k miles.

But the description of 'easily push up the wheel' is an odd way to show it and I'm not sure how to take that...

Easily push the wheel up sounds like a broken spring, but if that's the case you should see the car sitting funny. A blown shock won't make the spring rate any lower, so you'd still be fighting it to push the wheel up.

Or, he removed the shock and is lying to convince you to pay for more services.

A bad bearing will have play in any direction. A bad ball joint would only have play between 12 and 6 (not 9 and 3), and a bad tie rod would have play between 9 and 3 (but not 12 and 6). If you've got a bad ball joint AND tie rod, or a bad bearing, it would have similar play.


You're right though, if you're looking at it from behind you can see if the play is between knuckle and hub, or knuckle and LCA, or knuckle and tie rod (or inner tie rod and rack).

Not to mention "suspensions shot".

This. Sounds shifty to me.