My 96 GL has about 136K miles now and the ride is starting to feel more and more harsh. To my knowledge, it's riding on the original struts. They still have the Motorcraft stickers on them and also look old, but I don't see any leaks. The ride quality is getting really bad. Most noticeable is the pounding feeling transmitting through the suspension into the cabin (plastic bits inside rattle more now as well). The car also has a tendency to dive hard under breaking and lift/dive during acceleration/shifting.
Both lower control arms have been replaced not longer than 10,000 miles ago. Only "mod" to the original setup is the addition of 15" SE 7 spoke alloy wheels, in place of the stock 14" steelies with hubcaps. Ride quality declined slightly with this change, Im sure due to the lower profile sidewall, but this is still not an aggressively low profile tire, so I don't think this is causing the harshness.
The car has also developed some steering play as well, not a great deal, but definitely noticeable.
My question is, when struts have gone on your cars, did the ride quality suffer... did bumps and stuff in the road equal lots of harshness in the ride quality? Or, did the ride just become very bouncy, but still cushy and not harsh?
I am extremely cash strapped right now and cannot afford to replace struts and find out the new ones offer no improvement. I've read plenty about people having struts go bad and the ride is bouncy as hell, but not really anything about people saying that the ride becomes harsh.
Not only has the ride quality changed, but I've also noticed that the handling is degrading as well. I don't have the confidence in the turns now, that I once had in this car even with it's previous 14" economy tires!
I'd greatly appreciate any knowledge/experience that you have with this. Thanks!
P.S. one more thing, I don't know if this is just my imagination, but when driving slow over bumps, I can hear what sounds like a front strut is empty, like it sounds like it would be easy to compress, like there's no resistance to it being compressed. Maybe Im just
