Johnc2912

Great detailed write up, wish I had seen this before I started. Just finishing up doing the same job with the same I'm here might as well replace it now outlook, more so once I got into it because I wanted to make sure I didnt have to get back into these areas again. I was shocked how wore out the suspension parts and bushings are, thought it was bad for 105k miles. Had most of the same ordeals as listed here right down to breaking the torx on sway bar links, new ones came with little better design. Overall seems parts sourced were fairly reasonable, but the labor costs feel like it would have been pretty high for being such a pain in the butt. Hardest part I had was getting bushings out of knuckle even with a hydraulic press available it was a pain, had to take it to a buddies shop and have couple extra hands to keep it aligned to press out. Got one knuckle left working on tonight. Rear strut disassembly of interior to access top nuts seemed very labor intensive for something they could have maybe designed an access hole for. But almost finished. Knuckles seem to get lot of corrosion in bearing seat area, cleaned and put a film of break caliper grease before reinstall. Probably ended up with DIY price of about $250 per wheel for parts. I went with complete struts, after all the labor to get to these parts wasnt worth the money difference to try to replace the cartridges only.

I went with the complete strut unit, the savings for swapping out the cartridge didnt seem worth the work, plus the springs have lot of mileage on them, sure they prob work ok, but new was quicker and easy install, I say easy after having to remove entire rear interior to access bolts, on the front having to remove the plastic cover under windshield wipers. After removing everything it takes to access the struts I was glad not to have to do the work it would have taken to replace cartridge itself. I was able to find complete set of 4 for less than $300, not sure how much garage would charge to remove what it takes to access rear struts but probably cost more than what entire strut set cost, plus there is a certain amount of danger separating the springs from cartridge, but wasnt worth the time for me

Job was little time consuming. Bought from family with 4 kids so lot of food and sticky substances in way. Several youtube vids out there to give you an idea of basic dismantling of rear interior, some show having to remove upper plastic around window, but didnt need to do it on mine. I took out all seats except front(mostly to clean ) but it made more room to work. Do both struts while everything removed. I thought about cutting access hole at first but it wasnt too bad of job to be worth cutting stuff up. Probably good idea to check all your toe links and knuckle bushings while doing this as well. All bushings seem to be worn out quite a bit for only 105k miles on mine. Seems like bad design to access 2 bolts, but then again you have to remove front to remove battery, go figure