This last weekend I had the pleasure of replacing the shock/struts on the front of my 4runner. The car has 160000+ miles on it and I have never done the struts before. I am not convinced they NEEDED to be replaced, but there has been quite a bit of squeaking type noise coming from the front end at every bump for a little while now and I thought it was probably a good idea to finally do the job.
The reason I did it rather than someone else, well that is another story that I will tell first. Now that we are in Idaho it is colder, and the other week I needed to turn the heater on in the morning when driving it. I noticed that the passenger side of the car wasn’t heating up like it should, and sure enough that side wasn’t blowing nearly as hot as the driver side. This has been a recurring issue for many years on the car. The heater core has a blockage on the passenger side. I have taken it in to a shop once to get fixed, and they did a terrible job trying to fix other things and not the heater core. I have tried cleaning out the heater core a number of times and that tend to get the heat working for a 4-6 weeks, but that is in AZ and even when we head up north it wasn’t for very long. So, the time was now to get it replaced. I called around to a couple shops and I was surprised that the Toyota dealership was the cheapest place to get it done (by quite a bit). I think the other shops may have over-quoted hoping I would decide not to use them. The reason I am not doing it myself is simple, you have to tear the entire dashboard apart and out of the car to get to the heater core. It is a major job and I don’t have the time or experience to tackle it at this point in my life.
So how does this play into the struts, well I asked about getting that done at the same time, and that price quote surprised me. The cheapest quote I got was $1500 for replacement and alignment (and that was again from the dealership). After looking online, and asking my neighbor who does a lot of car work, I realized that I could tackle this on my own and for a lot less than $1500. I ordered the parts online and they arrived over the course of a couple days.
Friday I jacked the car up and started tearing things apart. I got the car jacked up and everything apart in less than 2 hours .I felt really good about that. Here are some pictures along the way:
But then the “add job” was found. While taking the strut off the drive side I found that the CV axle boot on that side has split completely open at the wheel hub and at the engine case it was starting to split. So, I had to do that as well. The truth is I was grateful to find it now having the strut out of the way and the sway bar off made the job a lot easier than last time. I went and bought that part at the parts store down the street, and I was able to get the axle out and back in in less than a hour. Hurray!
While I was out the first strut showed up and I was able to get it installed in about 15 minutes. Then another 10-15 minutes to reattach all the stuff on the drivers side that I could.
Saturday, the second strut arrived in the morning while I was out with “G” at a girl scout meeting. When we got home I started lunch in the oven, and then in 15 minutes got the strut unboxed and installed. It was great. After lunch with “G” I headed back out and reattached the sway bar, skid plate, and tires onto the car. The skid plate bolts gave me a little bit of a hard time, but not too much. Then the car was lowered and I drove it up and down the street a few times. It seemed to be good. There is still a little squeak going on somewhere up front, but it is a lot better than before.
Somehow I took no pictures of the completed job. I am not sure how I managed that.
And, I did a height measurement before and after to a spot on the bumper” 19 inches to the ground before the job and 22.25 inches afterwards. I know there will be some settling that will occur, but the height is certainly back up. It looks better and not leaning forward and down like it has been.
I am taking the car in for the heater core on Monday and I have having them do the alignment as well (since you know, I replaced the struts). I will update on that later in the week. They will have the car for a few days to get the heater core done. Overall I am happy with how it all went. I like doing this kind of work with my hands. I consider myself very blessed that I am able to.
I couldn’t have done this job without the use of the following 2 videos. They were super helpful and so I wanted to put them here in case they can help anyone else out there. The first group as A LOT of car repair videos for a lot of different things.