How can you tell if you need new shock absorbers
Cars years ago , the owner could push down on a corner of the car, and watch what happens. You’d make sure it would return to the pre-push height, with at most one minor bounce. Modern vehicles, that test isn’t as effective for some reason. The owner has to make the judgement based on the ride quality. If the ride feel overly bouncy, if there’s too much body lean on sharp corners, the nose of the car dives steeply when stopping, you hear weird clunks when going over bumps or turning, pretty good chance you need new shocks or struts. Make sure a mechanic verifies what’s causing the problem, b/c it could be something else.
Welcome to the forum…
What issues are you having to make you ask??
Many different reasons to replace struts/shocks on a vehicle… Leaking, tire bouncing going down the road, rattling noise, doing nose dives under normal braking, noise going over bumps (few different reasons), broken or bent strut/shock…
Your wife jumps your car going over a railroad track that you have jumped in your truck many times, but your wife does it in your nice car and blows out a strut and then says BTW your car has a rattle now… ask me how I know that one… lol
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In case yu find this helpful:::: How Much Does It Cost To Replace Your Shocks or Struts - Car Talk
If they are not leaking, they are likely still working. But… If the car floats and wobbles, new shocks and struts will settle things down.
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Tester
How many miles? How long do you plan to keep it? How is it handling?
We had the same Monroe double shock display (at all our shops), the one on the right (brown) represents a 50,000 mile shock take off vs the new (black) shock on the left… Learned a lot at the Monroe/Tenneco seminar years ago… What a lot of people don’t get is the difference in not only the compression (pretty self-explanatory) but also the controlled rebound rates and how it effects braking (rear) and acceleration (front)… meaning general public not the mechanics on here… lol