99 Gen 1 Solara rear shock blew..? Big bang sound...help

[Rookie Solara]

01-27-2009 UPDATE

Spend $250 to have someone replace and install new Tokico blue and Eibach lowering springs. Found out, the rear big banging noise is just simply from a blew rear passenger side strut. All other 3 (driver front and rear and passenger front) are still in good condition. All the strut mounts are in ok condition, so does all the sway bar links.

However, I am not really interested to redo this installation in a year or 2 so I decided to bit the bullets and replace everything above to brand new items. Out the door, around $1000 including installation. And hopefully it will last another 8-10 years.

But the conclusion is...when a strut blew, it does not necessary just BOUNCE alot (it does alot of time and in my case, bouce very bad) it also make banging noise, but when the noise is that big, most of the time, it is the STRUT that need to be replace. Not necessary the strut mount, bushing or sway bar links...in fact, the mechanic said, if the mount, sway bar links or bushing are bad, usually, they are very little noise....big noise are all came from the strut after they are blew.

When I check the blew strut, I can pull the shaft all the way up but the shaft will drop back down to the bottom without any resistant...that is so obvioulsy is a blew strut. I have checked all other 3, they required some force to compress them. To be honest, if I really want to go cheap, all I need to do is buy the rear pair of strut and re-install them with the old ground control coilover. Apparently, the GC coilover kits does pretty good to the Tokico for good old 9 years (100,000 miles)....but I did not lowered the GC all the way down. My Eibach right now is very much the same drop as I was with the GC coilover except it is a bit smoother right now.

I hope those who has the similar case can use this as a reference. If you have money and don't want to worry, replace the whole thing, otherwise, check the strut 1 by 1 and save money. 90% of the time are the strut.

[youngblood]

I've had struts go bad in the way you describe-- that corner of the car will have NO suspension travel and will hit HARD on any pavement irregularity. It's usually due to an internal valving problem in the strut and most struts aren't rebuildable (although some coil-overs are).

The strut mount may very well be fine, but I would be prepared to replace it when you do the job. I usually buy new mounts any time I replace a strut and then return them if the original looks good when I get it all torn apart.

Good luck!

I called it!

Glad you have it fixed and thanks for the update.