Bouncy, Clunky, Leaking: Rear Strut Assembly Replacement by Part Number (Lexus RX300 / Highlander 271498, 97-01 Camry / Solara 171681)

Earle S. MacPherson had a suspension idea that his employer did not want. He was at General Motors in the 1940s, working on a small car project that got cancelled, and the clever thing he had drawn up went in the drawer with it. He left for Ford in 1947, patented the design in 1949, and Ford's American side passed on it too — American cars were big and there was no packaging crisis to solve. The idea finally reached production across the Atlantic, on the 1950 Ford Consul built by Ford of Britain.

What MacPherson had figured out was that if you make the shock absorber a structural member — wrap the coil spring around it, pivot the whole column at the top, and let it locate the wheel — you delete an entire upper control arm and free up an enormous amount of room for a transverse engine. Every front-wheel-drive car sold today is living in the space that deletion created. It also created the most common suspension repair on the board: the leaking strut.

How to know yours are done

Struts wear out gradually enough that most people never notice until they drive someone else's car. The tells, roughly in the order they show up:

• The bounce test. Push down hard on one corner and let go. A healthy strut brings the car back up and stops. A worn one keeps oscillating for two or three cycles.
• An oily film down the strut body. That is damping fluid that is no longer inside the strut. Once it is wet, it is finished.
• Clunk over expansion joints. Often the upper mount and its bearing rather than the damper — which is a good argument for replacing the whole column at once.
• Cupped or scalloped tire wear. The tire is bouncing instead of staying planted, and it wears in patches. This one costs you tires as well as ride quality.
• Wallowing on the freeway and a nose-dive under braking. A car with dead struts also takes longer to stop, because weight transfer is uncontrolled.

Loaded assemblies versus bare struts

You can buy a bare strut cartridge for less money. To fit it, you have to compress the old coil spring, take the assembly apart, and reuse your old spring, mount and bearing. A compressed coil spring stores a genuinely dangerous amount of energy, and cheap spring compressors slipping off is a real and ugly category of home-shop injury.

A loaded assembly — what most people call a quick strut — arrives with the spring, upper mount and bearing already assembled and preloaded at a factory. You unbolt the old column and bolt in the new one. No compressor, no spring in your hands, and you get a new mount and bearing, which are usually as tired as the damper anyway. Always do them in pairs across an axle: one new strut against one worn one gives you a car that pulls to one side under braking.

What is on the shelf right now

• ECCPP rear strut and coil spring assembly pair — Lexus RX300 / Toyota Highlander AWD — $129.99. A left-and-right rear pair under OE numbers 271498 and 271499, listed as gas type and including the coil spring, upper mount and strut in each unit. This is the loaded style described above, for both rear corners, for the price of one dealer strut.
• PAROD rear strut and spring assembly pair — 1997-2001 Camry / 1999-2003 Solara 2.2L — $117.95. Also a rear pair, OE numbers 171681 and 171680, gas type, with a 3-year manufacturer warranty per the listing. These cars are now old enough that the original struts are almost certainly still on them.

While you are under there: control arms

Struts control the up-and-down. Control arms and their bushings control where the wheel actually sits, and a torn bushing produces a clunk that is easy to blame on a strut. Two sets in stock:

• Front lower control arms, left and right, for 2010-2017 Jaguar XJ and XJR — $119.99. A pair, listed under OE numbers C2D49933 and C2D6343. Jaguar front lower arms are a known wear item and the dealer price for a pair is not close to this.
• Front upper and lower control arm set with ball joints and bushings — $215.99. Steel, greasable, sold as a full front set under number CL 0 1-062. One honest caveat: this listing does not carry a vehicle application, so match that number to your own parts book before ordering rather than eyeballing it.

Two things that get skipped and should not be. Torque the control arm bushing bolts with the suspension at ride height, not hanging on the lift — tightening a bushing at full droop pre-twists the rubber and shortens its life dramatically. And get an alignment after any control arm work. A $90 alignment is cheaper than the front tires you will otherwise scrub off in six months.