suspension components - end of service life
 

Hi Folks,

what symptoms appear when the "common" suspension components start to wear out their service life on the boxster (2001) ?

this is my first porsche ... so would like to know the symptoms.

i have noticed some "feelings" .. but wanted to hear your thoughts before sharing mine ... so as not to skew everyone's comments!

Ball joints creak.
Struts sway and bounce and the top mounts rattle.
Bushings loose their springiness though I've never seen one fail.
Drop links rattle/clunk.
Bearings hum.

If you cruise the highways at steady speeds, the suspension can last a long time, but the same car used in the city commute (power steering and potholes play hell with ball joints) you can half the service life. The front usually wears quicker than the rear.
But generally, rattles, sponginess and loss of steering precision usually sets in around 75,000 miles. Its slowly downhill from there.

My car had no obvious symptoms of worn out struts at 90k miles but when I pulled them to upgrade to PSS9s for competition track use they were toast. Little or no dampening at all on 3 corners. I have never been in a car with such worn struts that didn't bounce all over the place. Fresh struts are much better though with noticeably more road dampening and precision.

thanks guys.

i've noticed that my car, when i ride over uneven roads ..... my rear end has lateral movement. like it does a little shake of its butt (side to side). this is evident when going faster than 60km/hr.

when i did the IMS/RMS ... i checked and doesnt seems to be loose or in odd condition.

I suspected that one of my rear shocks was shot ... when i checked, it was dry. The only way is - if its leaked out all the oil in the cylinder ... and the last owner cleaned off all the leaked oil, so it looks ok, but in fact no oil in the shocks.

For comparison, none of my struts were visibly slobbering oil, but they had little or no dampening left either. My brothers car made a clunking noise on the RF and when pulled, that strut wobbled all over the place. No sign of leaks though.

interesting ... so while you drive ... did u feel any lateral movement in the rear over bumps and uneven roads?

I don't remember that with worn struts. With PSS9s the car is significantly tighter and more precise. If I go over a rise in the road at speed I do need to keep the car very straight. Having the wheels side loaded going over a rise will result in the rear stepping out some which gets pretty exciting. Maybe this is what you are experiencing. When unweighted, a mid-engine car will rotate very easily.

In my experiemce, the lateral movement you feel is the rear end moving around because the struts are worn and can't keep the tires firmly planted on the ground when driving on a bumpy road.

As others have said, if you have close to 100K miles or more on your shocks, they are significantly worn.

As Topless said, what IS amazing is that the completely worn out shocks still seem to somehow work reasonably well - but when you replace them, you'll notice the difference.

Thx guys for ur responses. My impression was also.one or both shocks have gone.

Having said that... Im nowhere near 100k. I'm at 68k kilometers

ill keep an eye on it ...if it gets worse... I'll change them out.