Actually, I agree with Tester. In addition to losing their damping capabilities, I’ve seen struts leak, seen struts not rebound properly (which sounds like what the OP is experiencing), and even seen struts frozen solid…in summer.
The OP’s car has 167,000 miles on it. Our problems in responding to this are
- we can’t see the vehicle
- it wouldn’t matter…unless one of us was an inspector in PA.
Frankly, considering the mileage and the decription, I see nothing that causes me to question the judgement of the inspector.