OT - Struts

And that is the part that is beside the point.

The failure mode is that the strut can't control tire bounce anymore, just as the failure point of a shock is that it can't control tire bounce. The fact that the suspension is the strut is beside the point, Captain.

Ben proclaimed:

If you have an alignment problem, it can harm the tires. The resulting tread wear patterns are very distinctive. Crapped out shocks tend to cup the tire treads. You should be able to see this yourself. Or ask a tire shop that does *not* sell struts.

Jeff Strickland proclaimed:

Except of course where it is a strut and is therefore also the front suspension point, and can cause feathering in exactly the same manner as any other worn front non-shock style suspension wear.

It would be interesting to know if the shop also sells strut jobs...

No, when the shock assembly inside the strut fails it's identical. A strut failure

Amazingly, these too are beside the point.

That is the only failure of a strut that I have ever seen, except for a bent strut that got that way from Curb Hunting.

How many times do I have to point out the actual question that asks how TIRE WEAR can be related to struts. The single most likely cause of tire wear and struts is that the strut looses it's shock absorber quality.

I've seen McPherson strut suspensions go through an awful lot, including *spring perch collapse*, but no failure of the strut itself has ever caused a steering loss that I've seen. The top bearing can fail (although they usually just bind up and make steering very hard or break up and clunk a lot) and a bottom ball joint can fail (which *can* be serious), but the failure of the shock absorber or insert just doesn't have the effect you imagine it does. You probably see dozens of cars every day with 'shot struts'.

-- C=2ER. Krieger (Been there; done that)

Of course.

And the specific failure of the strut is the same failure that a shock might experience. So, in this way the shock and the strut are the same, which is all I said in the first place. I wasn't concerned with the idea that the strut is a suspension component, I was only concerned with the idea that the strut preforms shock absorber duties. Indeed, may struts these days have cartridges that get replaced because the shock is what wears out, the suspension components last forever unless the driver goes around using his tires to look for curbs at high speed. I assume that people don't go around using the tires to feel for curbs at high rates of speed, and the suspension components are pretty straight. The shocks, on the other hand ...