I just did front struts and think the whole thing cost me less than $250.
I bought the struts from Rock Auto dealer closeout for nothing (something like $15 each), also bought the strut mount and the dust shield and all that. I would have loved to have bought quick struts, but I couldn't find them.
As other posters said, taking them off the car (and putting them back on) was easy, even though it's the first time I'd done that.
I couldn't get the springs to compress enough with my spring compressor (turns out size and width of coils were too big for my toy compressor), so I paid a guy $60 to essentially rebuild both sides with the new parts (struts, mount, etc) inside the springs. Note: If you do this, be sure to mark which side each spring comes from, since they are not interchangeable.
Then $85 for alignment at Sears.
The bad news was that the car had ridden so rough before the new struts, I hadn't realized the tires were out of round. With the new struts, that became unbearable, so ended up having to get new tires, too.
I bought the struts from Rock Auto dealer closeout for nothing (something like $15 each), also bought the strut mount and the dust shield and all that. I would have loved to have bought quick struts, but I couldn't find them.
As other posters said, taking them off the car (and putting them back on) was easy, even though it's the first time I'd done that.
I couldn't get the springs to compress enough with my spring compressor (turns out size and width of coils were too big for my toy compressor), so I paid a guy $60 to essentially rebuild both sides with the new parts (struts, mount, etc) inside the springs. Note: If you do this, be sure to mark which side each spring comes from, since they are not interchangeable.
Then $85 for alignment at Sears.
The bad news was that the car had ridden so rough before the new struts, I hadn't realized the tires were out of round. With the new struts, that became unbearable, so ended up having to get new tires, too.
