Ride Quality Deteriorating

Time for new shocks, I'd guess? Maybe the dealer tech's butt was numb from too many test drives that day :_>

It would be tedious and expensive to do much else about the growing squeaks and rattles (tear apart the dash and replace all the fasteners).

 

At your odometer reading it is certainly possible that the front struts and rear shocks need to be replaced. The dealer tech may have looked at the struts and shocks, and if they don't have a tremendous oil leak then s/he might say they are OK. However it is possible for a strut/shock to fail although there is little or no visible oil leak.

Unfortunately the only way to tell for sure is to remove the strut/shock from the car, then remove the coil spring and compress the strut/shock manually; and at that point you'd might as well install a new part since the labor involved in removing/replacing is relatively high compared to the parts cost.

 

If your still running the stock tires be aware they are the worlds worst tire. My 07 since new has been running 44 psi up front and getting great mileage
but really started to rumble on concrete roads enough i couldn't stand it so brought them down to 38 psi. Wandering and poor handling and bad mpg came back but they really got alot more quiet. Next purchase is new tires. These really suck. At 15K I'm also starting to hear little clunks up front which are the stock struts. There probably next. I looked at Tokico and they do not offer struts but KYB has struts for our cars at $75 each. Probably 100% better handling than stock struts.

 

Shocks/struts. At 50k they are most likely shot--at least that has been the case on the vehicles I've owned. I used Tokico on my Nissan and Honda for improved performance, but have not found them available for the Prius.

Shocks and struts are wear items, they aren't meant to last the life of a car.

 

Hi Rick,

I only know of two alternatives: Toyota-branded <made by KYB> and KYB aftermarket. Its unclear whether there's any performance difference between the two.

 

Hi Patrick,
I'm hoping the aftermarkets are better. I'm hearing minor but classic strut clunking up front at 16K. Tiny little struts they be.
And the tiniest/thinnest lower control arm I have ever seen on a car too! Downright scary! This car was not meant to roll into turns at 75 mph for sure!

 

I forgot...have you tried the classic put all your weight on front fender and bounce corner up & down real quick and forcefully. How noisey is that? A bouncer and a sqeeker or a firm come right back up and stay put?

 

That's what I figured. I believe KYB made my factory struts on the other vehicles but don't remember the details of why I believe that to be so. The Tokico's were much better, especially when I went to stiffer progressive rate springs on one. Even so, they wore out after about 50k (blown oil seals.)

 

Best way to do this at a dealer lot vs. a new car when possible. Even so it is dicey with some vehicles. My 240 didn't seem to show much problem on the front struts, but when I pulled them they were completely FUBAR--essentially non-functional, blown so that I could fully extend them or retract them without them ever returning to position. The backs looked awful in this test but were in somewhat better shape when I pulled them. With the ruined struts the front still came back to position with little overshot. (I could definitely detect difference AFTER the swap, but before I would have sworn the problem was in the rear.)

Takeaway is that the test can tell you if a shock/strut is bad, but also lets many bad ones "pass." The test seems less sensitive in the front where much of the normal running weight is.

Oh, and in my defense, the dealer did the same test at my request and told me the rear's were shot (without any comments from me.) We were both wrong about which end was the biggest problem.

P.S. If anyone replaces shocks/struts make sure that the boots are in good shape as well. (Haven't looked up the Prius parts to see how relevant it might be.) It might also be a good time to put in some polyurethane bushings to improve handling response--loved these on the 240 but I did springs and sway bars at the same time with same ride height (looked stock except for some Tokico blue on the struts.)

 

I agree that the "bouncing" test is not likely to be very helpful - that seems to work better with softly-sprung full-size American cars. I had a similar experience with my 2001, where there was no obvious bounce problem and no oil leakage. However after I took the front struts apart I found that one cartridge would collapse when depressed, and took a very long time to return to the extended position. The rear shocks showed oil leakage on the body, so it was easy to make the decision to replace those.

The 2001 boots had totally disintegrated so they definitely needed to be replaced. It is reasonable to replace all rubber parts while the strut/shock is disassembled.