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How many miles before you replaced the original factory struts and shocks?

Bigtrucklover

Full Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2013
Messages
259
I'm @ 85k miles on the ticker (original owner).  Haven't notice an degradation in ride quality or excessive bounce. Usually when it's time to swap on regular cars, it's fairly obvious.  Was planning to change because I figured they probably needed it.  But as I was researching struts/shocks I noticed another truck owner claimed he replaced his @ 133k.  Made me think maybe I was being a bit premature anyways. 

In general I use my Avy daily more as an SUV with only some occasional hauling of wood or other building supplies (but even then just for short distance at a time).  No towing.  As a matter of fact probably 90% of the mileage is from the 50mile daily commute.  Roads are pretty smooth where we are at (all I really have to worry about is a handful of speedbumps in the neighborhood).  Maybe considering they're designed for more heavy duty use, they last for a long time when not spending a lot of time loaded.

So for those that ran the factory shocks until they really needed to be swapped, how many miles did you get from them?  Did you use it more of a working truck, or light duty use to get those miles of them?  What made you realize it was time to change?
 
Still on my 2002 original rears but they ened replaceing as they are the ride height pum pkind on Z66
Fronts were changed about 5000 miles ago when I had roughly 160k.

Truck was in an mechanic who was doing some work on a TRADE we made.
And shock was fine when I brought it to him but sprung a leak while in his shop for a week so he replaced the front 2.

But I say replace them when they go bad.... nothign gained doing it early other then spending money early.
 
I replaced my fronts when I bought my AV 8 yrs ago at 95K miles. They were bad and the front end bounced everywhere when I bought it.
I just replaced the original rears last week at 186,600 miles. Driver's side shock was worn out. Passenger side seemed to still have a little life left in it.

Tires were still wearing very smoothly though.
 
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