Prius front strut boot assembly

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Under the strut boot there's usually a damper which is a round piece of foam or something similar that slides over the polished shaft that is the main part of your shock assembly or strut and then the boot is dropped over that and then the top plate goes on. Generally when all that deteriorates and starts to fall away the strut is usually well past its useful life 150 200,000 mi possibly more so you generally wouldn't replace all that you'd get a new strut assembly or back in the day you would take the insert out of the strut tube and replace it and get new boot damper and all that but now struts are sealed units and you don't do all that.

 

And a pair of struts preloaded with springs is just a little over $100, so the dangerous days of loading your own springs on to struts/shocks are finally behind us.

 

Back in the old days before the wall mounted McPherson strut compressor with the big boat steering wheel on it My fat butt friend would sit on a tire wheel assembly hold on to the shop table and then stick the snap-on air gun in between the center hole of the wheel and undo the strut top nut that spring wouldn't even move his big rear end and then he would slide off the tire throw it on the ground retrieve the nut the top plate drop the spring on the floor vice the bottom of the strut and then commence to undoing the nut to get the cartridge out nowadays we don't do this because there's no cartridge and generally the assemblies come together even the billet coilovers thing you pick your springs and they come all together with top plates pillow ball mounts ready to go.