Repair-It

Looks straight forward.

Also ordered this: https://www.vevor.com/strut-spring-comp ... 0293396829

I simply logged in with my Google account and it gave me an 18% discount. This is very similar to the OEM style and I never really liked the conventional cheap ones that work in pairs. Hopefully this fits and works well.

$857.43 spent in strut parts to replace everything that isn't the coil spring. It's too bad this is so expensive but I'm obviously committed now.

And it's done. Pretty straight forward and as usual, dissembling the strut and reassembling it adds like twice the time to the job. The struts were out of the car so fast. We also had to recompress and adjust the upper spring to perch location, on both. My strut assembly is also more simple than Adam's CLK. The upper mount and bearing is still a 2 part affair.

As far as what we found, by far the biggest issue was the struts themselves. Both were leaking, one worse than the other. And they didn't have much gas pressure left and were easy to compress. In other words, failed. Not totally failed I guess but not performing as designed at all.

The strut mount bearings were also gritty and loose so that will fix one issue. The strut mounts themselves didn't seem loose or bad though. This would be foreshadowing.
Road test results:
Damping is considerably improved and the front end feels more like a match to the rear. And the grinding noise while turning seems to be done as well. But there is still a clunk over washboard that I was hoping was the mounts but it must be something else. I will gather more data during my commute as I am very familiar with the road surface.

So at this point the car has:
- New struts and all associated strut components
- A while back I did replace the stabilizer links thinking that was my washboard road clunk. The old ones were fine and, yeah, it didn't fix it then, either.

Things to consider:
- Main lower control arm
- The front or perhaps strut lower control arm
- I guess the anti-roll bar bushings? I kinda checked them when we had the car disconnected and I didn't feel anything clunking around.

Overall I guess I'd rate this as 80% improved. Given what I spent I was hoping for 100%, obviously. I should make a video of how bad the old struts were, particularly one of them.

The Pelican parts strut has a manufacture date in 2023 which is a little lame compared to the 2024 date of the strut I got from my local dealer.

Just for completeness, here are some shots of the old struts.
This was the worst one (fron the right) and was even missing some plastic thing that somehow got shattered. Probably from bottoming out. I replaced this one with the alternate part number from MB Warwick. I think we replaced this one first. I think it was a bit easier to press than the older Pelican parts one I used on the left. Maybe.

Left one. Less destroyed but still not much gas left.