My 2007 Honda Accord VP has 150K miles of which 80% are highway miles. I drive 120 miles/day and its a very smooth and quiet drive. I have been told by the Honda Dealership that my car needs new struts.
I replace a 1992 Honda Civic with 325K miles with the Accord VP in 2008. On the Honda Civic I never replaced the factory struts and went through 4 sets of new tires. I never had a need to do an alignment job or replaced any suspension component.
My question is " should I replace the struts on my 2007 Honda Accord VP" or keep them? I just bought a new set of tires at 150K miles. The last two sets lasted on average 75K miles.
Ride is Smooth. However, there is a section of the road where there is a cattle guard. Recent road repairs have raised the road on both sides of the cattle guard and now the cattle guard seats in a depression which forces me to slow down since I worry of braking something at 70 MPH.
Unless there’s abnormal wear on the tires, loose handling with no other cause, shaking on the highway with no other cause, fluid leakage, or serious (obvious) repeated bouncing, it’s almost impossible to say a car needs new struts. Lots of shops say so based on mileage alone, but I don’t agree that mileage alone means new struts are needed.
You should get another opinion but it’s entirely possible the original struts are at least weak based upon the age of the car and mileage. Determining this can be subjective in opinion.
Many people become acclimated to struts weakening over time and never notice any symptoms.
A few years ago a Nissan Altima with 2 young ladies passed me and that car was bouncing like a ping pong ball on the right front. They pulled into a parking lot in front of me and as I was entering the store I made the polite suggestion (again, should never do as it’s generally not taken well) that the car appeared to need struts at least on the front.
The driver thanked me for pointing it out but said “the car rides fine”. In this case, it was a strut completely gone instead of being weakened and was dangerously unsafe IMO. Oh well.
Around my house, I hate the thought of putting new shocks or struts on anything because my wife always complains that whatever she rides in is “too harsh now”. This brings up the acclimated issue.
I got in trouble back in high school when I worked at a garage. I talked my parents into putting the ‘heavy duty’ Atlas shocks on our '69 Cutlass. Any time after that my dad was happy to remind me how I ‘ruined the ride on our Cutlass’. Which I probably did, those ‘heavy duty’ shocks were probably more suited for towing.
And a dealer’s service department can miss them, too - a co-worker had a '99 LeSabre, she asked me about her rear shocks after the dealer said they were ‘fine’. I did the bounce test, it could have had NO rear shocks, for how long it took to stop. Maybe it was a warranty issue, she eventually got them replaced.
@ok4550, @texases, a different technology, but similar mentality:
Back in the mid '70s I worked in a TV repair shop.
Lady had a 21" B&W TV, very dim, fuzzy picture.
Had been “rejuvenated” a couple times before, time for a new picture tube.
Put in a new tube and the lady complained about the raster lines!
Big screen (for those days) plus a fresh tube = pretty crawling lines if you put your nose to the screen.
B&W sets of that era didn’t have a focus control. I don’t remember how my boss placated her.