this may sound dumb, but i am new to struts. my 1980 gl needs front struts really bad. i want to get some out of a junker but, i don't know if they will be any better than what i have. is there anyway way to tell if the struts i am getting out of the junker are any good?

I mean, you can check the milage on the vehicle and look at the conditions of the struts on the vehicle, bounce the car around a bit, but all that is is educated guessing. You really won't know until you have them installed on your vehicle, and personally it's a big enough task to get them out of your car to begin with that I wouldn't mess around with educated guesses.

 

I just put KYB struts in the front of our Loyale and I couldn't be happier with them.

I didn't have a good enough spring compressor to change them out myself safely, so I just took them out of the car, brought them to a shop and they changed them for me for 20 bucks each.

 

I really do recommend you just get new ones. rockauto had the KYB's for around 30 bucks each I think.

cool i will look into that i just don't want to spend a whole lot of money on this rig really. i am trying to save up enough money to buy the parts i need to do my head gasket on my legacy and this car keeps eating up my money:popcorn:

rockauto.com wants $65 a piece for front struts for my gl. i'm not going to spend that much on it i guess i will just have to do some educated guessing.

For what it's worth, I have used more that one junkyard strut and never regretted going that route.

And on another plus side to the junkyard route, I can see it being so much easier to just remove the whole assembly and then swap it right in to your ride. No spring compressing involved. That wouldn't be so bad I suppose, especially if the yard didn't charge too much for the whole thing.

the old ones like that had removeable cartriges that could be changed out if still avallible

i cant find cartridges so i will take some good educated guesses on my struts out of the junker. i kind of doubt they could be worse than mine right now because mine are so bad my wheels tilt out when im parked.