While I believe you benefitted from the struts, when I lived in states where these inspections were requirements and operated in the manner that PA does, I made sure that the inspector’s shop did not economically benefit from their determinations. The exception was when I had a long-standing trust relationship with the shop. This was a bit jaundiced, but I is how I handled situations like this.
TesterJ January 5 Report
" When doing a bounce test for worn struts/shocks, you look for how the suspension responds. Normally if the struts/shocks are good, the vehicle bounces down, comes up and stops. If the bounce test shows that the vehicle goes down fine but is slow to rebound back up there’s a problem with the valving within the strut/shock"
If the car goes down fine but is slow to rebound, it is working like it should.
Also, when the strap is removed from a NEW strut, it will slowely extend because of the gas pressure inside. .
Struts can be sorted into 3 categories.
Good struts.
Struts that are totally gone. (The ping-pong effect is usually present.)
Struts that are worn/aged/iffy and most fall into this range. Odds are that yours did too.
The strut is neither good nor is it totally failed. At 10 years of age and 167k miles you can safely bet it needed new struts and it wouldn’t surprise me if the car needs a few other things related to the suspension.
Vehicle inspectors are put between a rock and a hard place. ((I’ve been one in the past.)
Find an iffy component, suggest a repair, and the inspector is accused of profiteering on the problem.
Brush the iffy component aside and the inspector, and possibly the shop, will be accused of doing a shoddy inspection along with running the risk of having their license yanked, getting bad mouthed to everyone in town, and possibly being sued to oblivion if that iffy component they brushed aside fails and kills someone.
I live in NY State and will usually only get my car inspected at a local chain of oil change shops because they don’t do repairs, and if the car fails the safety part of the inspection, they will reinspect that part for free with proof of repair.
“when the guy doing the inspection also does the installation that’s a clear conflict of interest. I would suggest this thread is really summed up by the above quote. It is always a bad idea to allow the inspector to profit from their opinion.”
Just to make my opinion clear, I am not suggesting that every mechanic/inspector, is taking advantage of the situation. I am saying that poor practice to put anyone into that situation.
In fact I would expect that the most honest inspectors would be first to recognize the problem and the position it puts them. We know human nature. while most people are honest, there are always some who are not. It is the honest mechanic who is also an inspector who the most likely to be harmed the most.
I respectfully disagree with the premis that an inspector who finds a problem is a profiteer. While that may be true in a rare circumstance due to the inspector being unethical I don’t see it being a common problem.
Two points I could make.
One is that an inspection station is not likely going to remain open doing inspections only while doing no repair work at all.
Two is the following hypothetical. OK used to have an inspection program which had more to do with vehicle safety rather than emissions. I was an inspector in that program.
So let’s assume a car comes in and on the rack it goes for an inspection. While looking it over I find the front brake pds are near gone and need to be replaced and there’s a small hole in catalytic converter. Both problems are in violation of state law and state law says we are to advise the car owner of these problems and they have the option of fixing it themselves, taking it elsewhere, or having me do it…
So I ask, what should I do or what would YOU do if you were an inspector in my shoes?
Should the vehicle owner be informed as per the above or should the inspector look the other way, pretend the problems do not exist, and slap a new sticker on before sending car and owner on their way?
(Keep in mind that if the faults are brushed aside and it is revealed, say the next day after an accident, that these problems were given a pass then the inspector could face loss of license, fines, or possible jail time along with being named as part of a civil lawsuit.)
I too agree with tester. I bought a handicap van a few years back for my father in law. It would do the bounce test just like Evlina’s, but in my case, the van was not safe to drive so I replaced them.
I don’t like safety inspections done at an independent garage. I lived in Virginia for awhile and it seemed like the inspectors could always find something, but I never let them work on my vehicles. It was always a crap shoot too, I had tinted windows on one car that passed two years in a row, the tinting met the state requirement for minimum light transmission, but one year, the inspector decided that all tinting was illegal and slapped a fail sticker on the car.
I believe my prior post is correct, but that I did not make the reasons for my comments clear.
I do not believe it is ever a good idea to have a situation where the provider of the service is also in the the one that determines that the service is needed. I was a tax auditor before I retied. Ask yourself this, would you want the government tax auditor to be paid on commission?
I worked in Corporate tax and i was paid the same (I might add promoted the same) if I found 10 million increase in taxes or a refund of 10,000. I wish I was paid on a commission basis, even 5% would have made me a very wealth man while being honest.
While the majority of tax auditors, and mechanics are honest, it is just not good practice to pay them on a commission like basis. Most of my auditors would have remained honest, but I believe some would not. This is especially important when it is not black and white. Too many problems are found based on the mechanics opinion and can not be verified without spending more than the cost of the replacement.
I understand the point about a conflict of interest and agree with that but what would be the option; having inspections done by non-car people or by a proprietary inspection only/no repairs station?
There would be serious problems with either one of those scenarios. The former would have people who couldn’t even change a flat tire doing inspections and with the latter what you would see would be an astronomical fee for performing that inspection no matter if it was a private enterprise or a government funded (a.k.a. taxpayers) enterprise.
Keith mentions window tinting and along with that there are other things involved in an inspection that are subjective in nature. Often the way the statute is worded makes it impossible to even have a set answer.
Many years ago I had to attend a recertification school for inspectors and shortly afterwards was in a discussion about how to check a cracked windshield according to the statute as written.
There was about 3 pages of single-spaced, fine print on how to determine if a windshield with a crack would pass or not. I read this garbage several times and at the end of the section I could not even begin to tell you how to decipher that.
I then asked one of the state officials overseeing the insp. program a simple question and that was, “Do you understand even one paragraph of that section on checking cracked windshields because I sure don’t”.
He hesitated for a full 5 or 6 seconds before smiling sheepishly and admitting that he could not understand any of it either. At least it made me feel better about myself… 
“and with the latter what you would see would be an astronomical fee for performing that inspection”
The inspection fee in DC is $35, done at an inspection station that does no repairs.
Thirty five dollars is reasonable enough but I have a question.
Is that inspection station fully funded by those 35 dollar fees or is it funded by 35 dollar fees along with a behind the scenes tax subsidy? If the latter, then the cost to the taxpayers is much greater than 35 dollars.
A secondary question might be this. Do you know if these inspectors actually have any real world mechanical skills or are they simply people who have been through a school and going through the motions?
In Dallas inspections are done at all kinds of shops, I most often use tire shops and quicky lubes (no oil change, however). Mostly an emissions check with minor safey run through.
I would never accept the diagnosis that the OP had without a second opinion. Struts/shock are prime targets for overselling and overexpenditure.
Wow OK4450, funny you should mention cracks in the windshield. I had a small crack in the windshield of another car when I was stationed in Virginia on a previous assignment. The law stated that if the crack was in the bottom 6" of the windshield, and did not have any cracks that came together more than 1.5" away from the center, it would pass. The inspection sticker was 1.5" wide so most inspectors used it as a guide. after passing for several years, one inspector failed it because he used the center of the sticker and the crack came together just outside the sticker, 3/4" away.
In Tennessee, several metropolitan counties have state run inspection stations, mostly to meet federal emission standards. The safety inspections mostly consist of stopping on the line and a check of all the required lights. I don’t think they are losing any money on this.
Sounds probable, as shown here.
When I lived in NC 1996 model and newer gasoline cars/trucks were required to pass emissions/safety testing, but motorcycles, pre 1996 cars/trucks or diesel powered vehicles were exempt from emissions and required only to pass safety. The fee for emissions testing was about $30. and safety was about $9. I always took my cars to an inspection only shop. The man who ran it had been a mechanic for many years previous to opening the inspection station and the only repairs he made as an inspector were simple things such as light bulbs or wiper blades if needed and upon owners approval. He was an honest businessman and if there was a safety concern he’d not only tell you, but show you the problem, if it were emissions related he’d take the time to tell you things that could be causing the problem so you could take it somewhere else or repair it yourself. His income was strictly off the inspection fees and he’d been in an inspection only business for many years. Even taking the time to help the customer I never heard him complain about not making a fair living. Once many years ago when they had the tailpipe test in NC my car failed (maxed out the emissions testing equipment), he looked around under the hood for a couple minutes found a bad vacuum line repaired it and didn’t charge me anything extra. This actually saved him time since he’d have had to do the inspection again for nothing if I had it repaired and brought it back to him within 30 days. Even though some of my cars were older and only had to pass the safety inspection he never complained about doing them even though he could have been doing an emissions test that paid 3 times as much and only consisted of hooking the system to the OBD II port, verifying there were no trouble codes and that all the systems were ready for inspection.
@barkydog - that video has nothing in common with the OP’s problem. The obviously worn out strut there does what’s expected. OP’s car was supposedly not rebounding because of a bad strut. Possible? Sure, but pretty unusual, warrants a second opinion.
I’m sorry but if you watched the video entitled worn out struts Subaru you would see the strut does not perform and lags in recovering from depression, tell me what part of from op (it was very slow to restore to original position) I missed!
A strut without a spring doesn’t have to rebound. The OP’s strut WITH a spring wasn’t rebounding. The new (gas charged) strut will always rebound more strongly than an old one, but the rebound force of the spring is many times the rebound force of the gas in the strut. That’s why it’s not related to the OP’s problem.
That worn strut, with a spring mounted, would rebound much FASTER than the new strut.
Tell me then based on the video, and your experience does strut new and strut old on Subaru replicate a real world situation, and at what point should it be replaced?
As far as not relating to the Original post, you may recall, “Mechanic said he pushed down on front of car and the car did not come back up; thus, he concluded struts were bad and needed to be replaced to pass inspection”
texases6:53PMReport
" A strut without a spring doesn’t have to rebound. The OP’s strut WITH a spring wasn’t rebounding. The new (gas charged) strut will always rebound more strongly than an old one, but the rebound force of the spring is many times the rebound force of the gas in the strut. That’s why it’s not related to the OP’s problem."
“That worn strut, with a spring mounted, would rebound much FASTER than the new strut.”
This just about sums it up!!