Leaderboard

First Guess: Once you have it all apart far enough to lube them...you'll discover that the roller elements and the races are scarred from lack of lube, and they just plain need to be replaced. And that's fine...but then you figure you might as well replace the struts while you have it apart. And if you're gonna slap struts on it, you might as well upgrade the springs. And the control arm bushings, and sway-bar bushings. Which is a perfect time to check and replace the ball joints if needed. By that time, the brakes are apart, so replace the calipers, check the rotors and pads for wear, and deal with whatever you find including the brake hoses and maybe the ABS wheel-speed sensors and front hubs. Well, you have it that far apart, so a quick-ratio rack 'n' pinion with fresh tie rod ends isn't so much more work, and that means flushing the PS fluid, too. Some folks think a real PS cooler is a good idea--better than a bunch of tubing looped back-and-forth like the OEM "cooler"...

The bearings were never intended to go unattended for periods this long. they are located in the centre of the lower spring seat, in a steel encased raceway, I can't remember precisely but there is approx 60 maybe 70 small ball bearings in the race. One has to disassemble the strut off the car to get at them. I've done them twice now in the time I've owned the car. Even tho you can hear the groaning you may still be able to salvage them, one has to remove the race from the spring seat, remove the upper cap, drop them all out into a pan & clean them all, clean out the raceway, reapply a healthy amount of EP grease and set them back into the race, press the cap back down on & reinsert the race back into the spring seat. It is time consuming....and one needs a spring compressor.