Mechanic replaced front struts on '99 (used Gabriels) Now, the left strut moves up and down. He replaced the strut plate because he said the plate bushing was coming apart.

Again, the strut moves up and down through the plate: I can rock the left side of car and see it move up and down.

What the heck is going on please??? Doug

 

A Volvo dealer said you gotta use Genuine V parts, because the bushing takes on lot of wear-tear.

 

He didn't replace the spring seat?

 

Will ask them ! Thx

 

Had a similar issue where mechanic replaced everything except the spring seat and the strut mount bushing. Function was ok, but the squeaking (from shot bushing) was annoying. I was able to use some grease to get rid of the squeaking in the bearing, but it needs to be replaced.

Sounds like maybe not every component was replaced.

 

not sure what you mean by strut plate... the way the front struts are designed is that there is a spring seat - a hard rubber cap that sits on the strut's rod, and a strut bushing. The spring seat fits into the bushing and then there are washers/nuts etc to fix the bushing to the rod. The bushing is the part that has the 3 bolts to the chassis and has a bearing that allows the strut rod to pivot. Normally its the spring seat that fails as the hard rubber can crack and that leads to play between the spring and the bushing (leading to squeaks or thumps over speed bumps etc). So when you suggest there is play and the parts are new, I suspect the mechanic didn't seat the spring correctly and now the bolts on the rod are not properly tightened. Either that or they used the wrong shock part# and the rod is too long for the spring...