Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Question about the price of new struts for a chevy lumina?

i'm a girl and i don't know much about cars, i have a 1997/98 chevy lumina that needs new struts/shocks, and i was wondering if anybody knows what they cost? i really don't know anything about vehicles except driving them and what not, any help is very appreciated and thank you for answering, i live in chippewa falls wisconsin if that helps any, oh and how hard is it to change them/put new ones on?

thank you so much.Question about the price of new struts for a chevy lumina?
As far as the price of them goes, it would be best to call your local part store to get accurate pricing for parts in your area. Also, the price will vary greatly depending on the quality of the parts. As for the difficulty of the job, the rear shocks are simple to change. There will be one bolt at the bottom end of the shock, and a nut on a stud at the top end of it which you will have to get in the trunk and pull the carpet back to find. The front struts are much more difficult. The front struts have the spring and strut as a complete assembly, and to change the strut you have to remove the spring from the old one and install it on the new one before you put it back in the car.If you don't have the correct tools or the experience, or at least the knowledge of how to do it properly, it can be very dangerous. I do NOT recommend attempting to change the struts yourself you said yourself that you don't know much about cars. Leave the struts to the professionals, because saving a little money isn't worth getting injured over, and it shouldn't cost very much in labor to have them installed. The other alternative is to spend a lot of extra money to buy the struts that come with the spring already installed on them. If you buy those, then changing the complete assembly is quite simple. First jack up the front end and remove the wheel. At the bottom of the strut there are 2 large bolts that go through it, one is right above the other. Those 2 bolts hold the strut to the spindle. Remove those 2 bolts. Then go ahead and open your hood. Under your hood you will find at the top of the strut three studs sticking up in a little triangle pattern with nuts on them. You remove those 3 nuts and that will loosen the strut from the body of the car. Now you should be able to slide the strut out of place. Then you just install the new one the way the old one came out. Once again, I can not express enough how much I recommend allowing a professional to do the struts.



Oh, as a side note, I recently priced struts for my Oldsmobile Cutlass, and they varied in price from $43 each, all the way up to $169 each depending on the brand, quality, and warranty. The complete assemblies with the spring already installed were over $400 each. Luckily I work in a shop with a strut spring compressor, so I don't have to try to use the cheap little do-it-yourself spring compressor tool, which itself can be dangerous if you don't put it on the strut right. As for the shocks, you can usually get pretty decent ones for around $20 each.