Mountainbike is correct in stating that the simple act of raising the wheels off the ground can cause a strut or shock issue once it’s back on the ground.
I’ve seen this a number of times and yes, it is difficult to explain to someone why it was fine one minute and faulty the next.
A few years ago I raised my Lincoln up at home one weekend to change the oil and look things over underneath. I lowered the car, finished up under the hood, and called it good.
A few hours later I had to go somewhere and the Lincoln was bouncing like a ping-pong ball. I turned around, came home, and discovered the left front strut had totally given up. And those struts only had about 40k miles on them.
The sway bar links connect to the struts so they get involved in strut work, but from what I can tell it is possible to just replace the strut. Appears to be done just like most strut-designed fwd cars. 2 hours labor plus parts for one strut I think. Wheel alignment extra.
It may be that Honda (or that particular dealership) has determined based on experience that when a Fit strut requires replacement, the other strut should also be replaced, and the sway link should get replaced too when doing that job. I expect tho that if you go to the dealership parts department, you’ll find you can purchase just the strut by itself.
This was a pretty common problem w/certain cars in the 60’s & 70’s as I recall. Seemed like it was more the performance cars, not the econoboxes so much. If you had one of those types of cars, there was a gadget the shop was supposed to install when lifting the car to prevent the suspension from hyper-extending.
It’d be super easy to hang the strut, just as you would hang a caliper when doing brakes to prevent damage to the flex line. But I’ve never seen anybody do so. I suppose most people feel that if the strut hangs up when extended it was on the way out anyway. I subscribe to this theory, even though I’ve never seen any analytical data to support it.
The vehicle’s ten years old. The struts froze. No point in overthinking the problem.
