What wears out in a shock absorber?

The rubber seals fail. Rubber and viscoelastic parts are usually the first thing to fail on anything.

Why? Car manufacturers would never make any money selling aftermarket parts, if they made the original parts last too long.

But you'll note that Bilstein shocks will last a whole lot longer than the ones you get at Midas.

Because there is nobody riding in them, so the quality of the ride is not considered important.

--scott

Ahh. That makes sense. Still, when I tow my race car, I have some rough roads to travel (pretty much any road in Manitoba) and I swear I can get trailer tire airtime if I try and go close to the speed limit. I guess there's nothing stopping me from adding shocks, it just was one of those things I wonder about late at night. :)

Ray

Let me guess, you bought Boges, didn't you?

nate

(never, ever buy Boge shocks or struts.)

lol, nope. Actually, the last shocks I bought were for my dirt track Camaro. Those were killed. Generally I buy whatever shocks for whatever cars, but for my Trans Am I'm going to buy good ones. Not yet sure what brand that is...

In my experience, Bilstein or Koni.

nate

I just had the front struts replaced on my 944 last week, the old Sachs/Boge units were installed not long before I bought my car maybe

3-4 years ago, and I haven't put anywhere near any significant amount of mileage on the car - maybe 20K at most. They had no gas pressure and the compression damping was almost nonexistent. The new Konis while expensive make the car ride like it should again. I chose Konis simply because the only two mfgrs. making struts for my application are Koni and Sachs/Boge - apparently Bilstein discontinued their 87-up 944 front struts a while back.

nate