Quote:
Originally Posted by thin_client
I have a 2011 128i with 153000km and live in the Toronto area. I think the roads in Syria are probably in better shape than here. The ride is so harsh now that I am almost physically sick to my stomach each time I drive around here. It seems to me that something must be wrong because even with 18" tires I don't recall the ride ever being this bad. It sounds and feels like the suspension is slamming and bottoming out each time I go over any rough road. Do you know if there's an easy way to determine if the struts have leaked or otherwise are in need of replacement??
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Yea - what you're experiencing sound very familiar indeed. When I first started noticing the problem (last spring after I swapped out my winters), it had slowly crept up on me and I thought I was just used to it...but some bumps were really shaking me around/jarring. With one damper replaced (while the other one was on back order), the ride difference from bumps it on one side to the other was night and day, so that 100% confirmed it for me. Riding on the remaining bad damper progressively got worse over the next 6 months as I waited for the replacement, by the end it had almost no cushion on bumps and was making slight knocking sounds whenever it hit a bump. It felt like it was slamming straight into the bumpstops.
Take the car to a mechanic and have them hoist it up, with the suspension on full droop. You should be able to lift up the blue dust boot on the strut and look at the shaft of the strut as it goes into the shock body, mine were covered with think goop everywhere so it was pretty obvious. I think there was a picture in this thread further up somewhere of someone else's damper (I think it was
Suhb ).
EDIT Found it in another thread here:
https://www.1addicts.com/forums/show...2&postcount=15