Life expectancy of struts

[M1911A1]

Hello, I wish to know in your experience, what's the life span of struts assemblies. My 04 has 76000 miles and is becomming noisy with rattles when driving over dirt or bumpy roads. I looked underneath and didn't see any strut leaking or anything loose. I loaded the back with 3 bags of rock salt (120lbs.) and the noise quited down quite a bit. What do you guys think?

 

[jrford]

for the rattles, a lot of times it the sway bar end links that cause it. Only way to tell is try going over bumps right side then left side and see if you can isolate it.

For these struts. . .20,000 miles to 100,000 miles. I've found these (Ex's) are hard to test also the typical bumper push down and up doesn't really show anything. For me it was driving over the cracks in the road, even new pavement i could feel it, While my jeep didnt and its 15yrs old with 180k and 100k on the Monroe shocks i put in at 80k.

This was when the Ex only had 20k and still under warranty. I wasn't about to drive another 80k with that type of ride. I tried to warranty it but the Service Mgr said it wasn't leaking and they couldn't do anything. Worthless warranty to say the least. Now after they swapped all of them for new OEM the ride was 100% better, also on inspection i found the bottom of the shock to have no resistance, obviously worn out. I tried to talk (politely) and show the service manager, but he really didn't care and dismissed it and me. In the end i got good deal, they tried to charge me $800 for it, but i said the wall sign says $200 a pair struts all ford cars and trucks. Well its funny they honored the sign but not the warranty. To top it off there was a test they could have run but didn't, Noise Vibration and Harshness test, its supposed to be able to tell you which strut is bad. . .

 

[EasyRhino]

Underbody rattles are not normally caused by tired shocks/structs, but other stuff, like the aforementioned sway bar bushings, are.

Additionally, struts and shocks do not carry load, springs do. Shocks and struts only dampen the oscillations of the load-carrying springs to keep your car from bouncing up and down forever.

That said, modern shocks if not abused will last a long time before their function becomes compromised enough to really be noticeable, typically by the bouncy buckboard ride.

However, since they lose their function slowly, any high mileage shock replacement will typically result in improved ride. My old '02 (bought new, and in near perfect condition) has all original shocks/struts at 114K miles. I'll probably replace them this summer.

 

[jakedrew]

my 04' front struts started leaking at 60k miles.