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When i go on a road that it reasonably bumpy or a bump my whole car rattles inside and i really feel the bumps like crazy..its bad enough to even effect my shifting. i have a 92 rs with about 150,000 miles, had no suspension work done yet..<BR>please help me find the prob<BR>thanks in advance

Well, your struts were probably worn out about 100K miles ago. If I were you, I'd start there!

thanks for the reply.<BR>are struts shocks? also should i go with the original mazda ones or after market.? how much should i be looking to spend? when i phoned around the mazda ones were the cheapest, $800 cdn installed at the dealer. also will it make much of a difference? <BR>thanks

buy some tokico blues, and put them on yourself. suspension work is pretty simple and more than that, its fun. you'll spend less than 400 bucks (US, sorry) and you'll know a lot more about your cars setup.<P>dave

i know u r telling him to do it himself but isn't suspension work dasngerous..a huy a a shop said if u don't know how to use a spring compreesor u can decapitate yourself?

thats not true ive had my struts on and off of my RS like 3 or four times and on my GS ive done a couple of times changing springs and struts.....the hardest thing about using a spring compresor is that if you dont have a big enough wrench handy its hard as hell to crank the nut to compress the spring (that only happend once hurt like hell doing it by hand)<p>[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: caveman ]

with dead struts and reasonably old springs, the spring compressor does close to nil work. i've done mine twice without one and i still have my head! hhahaha<P>dave

always use a spring compressor.

thanks for the replies guys.. so r u sure my struts are gone bad.. i have 250,000 km on them and i was told they r good for 300,000km??? also are these bumpy symtoms struts? struts r the same as shocks? also should i get the mazda ones? or what else is good?? also how much sjouls i spend on parts in cdn?<BR>thanks again peeps

struts do *about* the same thing as shocks. techinically, what they do and how they do it are completely different, jesse can explain how, but that's the basics. both of them dampen the tendency of the springs to bounce up and down for ages after they absorb a bump. if your car bounces a lot and gets very unsettled when going over bumps (like mine...grrr) you need new shocks (struts).