So Your Subaru is getting up there in age, maybe as a result you have started getting motion sickness whenever you make a lane change at freeway speeds, or there is a noise going over bumps. All of these symptoms can make your Subaru feel much older than it really is.

This is a very correctable situation that will greatly enhance the driving performance of your Subaru. Doing the job right and complete will make all the difference in the world and will make the project much more worthwhile.

Maybe you like your Subaru, but are not so happy with how it handles any more or the noise it makes is embarrassing when there are passengers, or just plain driving you nuts when there aren’t. Maybe your Subaru needs some other repairs or service but because the car feels old you are not so sure it’s worth it.

The truth is that the car Manufactures don’t really want the car to feel good forever or you would never have any reason to buy a new one, or sell you replacement parts for the one you already have. Struts used to be a common thing to think about replacing after your car hit the 60,000 mile mark, but the cost of replacing all 4 struts can add up and somehow there has been a disconnect between the cost of replacing the struts versus the value of improving the safety of your Subaru.

The problem, as the O.E. hydraulic struts in your Subaru age they start to slowly leak out hydraulic fluid or even in struts that haven’t leaked fluid will have lost their “charge” over time. At the top of the strut is a tower or mount that includes a bearing and over time the mount and bearing will age and develop play. The aged components will slowly over time weaken and also weaken the ability of the struts and mounts to dampen how the road feels to you in the car, and how well the Car handles the road. Replacing the struts in your Subaru with a good quality gas charged set of struts, replacing the mounts and performing an alignment afterwards will drastically improve how your Subaru handles Seattle’s rough roads.

Weak or worn struts can have an effect on how the car handles, how harsh the bumps in the road can feel and how well weight is transferred under braking, especially panic stops. A lot of times the last two or three inches of stopping distance is the difference between having an accident and not having one.

Having a Subaru or any other car for that matter come into a shop especially at higher miles and needing brakes, and some other repairs and service makes it difficult for most shops to want to recommend new struts to you. Most in the industry will shy away from even recommending struts given the potential costs to the customer. Add to that there are the tire stores of the world using young kids as labor and lower quality parts when replacing struts and as a result it has created very hard to match prices, even though the repairs can be as different as apples and oranges. Replacing suspension components is really not a job for an 18 year old at a tire store regardless of their claims of training, and there are really only one or two strut types that should be put in your Subaru.

Strut replacement should start out with an inspection of the rest of the suspension system to make sure it is sound. It is possible that some of the other suspension components have suffered as a result of one leg of the system (the struts) becoming weak. This will ensure your satisfaction with the money spent on enhancing the Subaru’s performance on the road.

Doing Struts right, complete and by a Subaru expert is really the best way to go when making repairs on your Subaru.