Suspension, Shocks & Struts Repair

Suspension is what keeps your tires in contact with the road, and in Spokane it takes a beating. Freeze-thaw cycles open up potholes every spring, a lot of the outlying roads toward Deer Park and Nine Mile Falls are chip-sealed or gravel, and winter brine corrodes bushings, links and fasteners. Worn suspension does not usually fail dramatically — it degrades quietly, and most people do not realise how much grip and stability they have lost until it is put right.

Our ASE-certified technicians at All Motors Center diagnose and repair steering and suspension on cars, SUVs, light trucks and heavy-duty pickups.

Symptoms worth booking for

• The vehicle keeps bouncing after a bump instead of settling in one motion. Classic worn shock or strut behaviour.
• The nose dives hard under braking, or the body rolls a lot in corners. Same cause, and it lengthens your stopping distance measurably.
• A clunk or knock over bumps and speed humps. Usually sway bar links, ball joints, or worn control arm bushings.
• The steering wanders, or you find yourself making constant small corrections on the freeway. Often tie rod ends or a steering rack issue.
• Uneven or feathered tire wear. Alignment, or a worn component letting alignment drift.
• A vibration that changes with speed rather than with braking. Different from a brake pulsation, and usually points at balance, a bent wheel, or a worn component.
• Fluid on the body of a shock or strut. That is the damping oil, and it means the unit has failed.

How we diagnose it

Suspension is one of the areas where guessing gets expensive fast, because the parts are not cheap and several of them produce similar symptoms. We road test, then put the vehicle on the lift and check components under load with a pry bar — that is how you find play in a ball joint or a bushing that looks fine sitting still.

We check shock and strut condition, ball joints and control arm bushings, tie rod ends and the inner rack ends, sway bar links and bushings, wheel bearings, coil springs for cracks and sag, and the strut mounts and bearings that often cause a creak or a notchy steering feel that people mistake for something worse.

Shocks and struts

A strut is a structural part of the suspension and carries the spring; a shock only damps motion. Which one your vehicle has determines the job. Both wear gradually — there is no hard replacement interval, but somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 miles is where most vehicles start to show it, sooner if they have spent their life on rough roads or carrying loads.

Because they wear gradually, most drivers do not notice the loss. The clearest evidence is what a vehicle feels like afterwards: it stops shorter, tracks straighter in crosswinds, and stops crashing over expansion joints.

One practical point: replacing struts changes ride height, and ride height changes alignment. A four-wheel alignment after strut replacement is not an upsell, it is part of doing the job correctly.

Wheel alignment

Alignment is three angles. Toe is whether the wheels point straight ahead relative to each other, and it is the one that destroys tires fastest. Camber is how far the top of the wheel leans in or out, and it wears one shoulder of the tire. Caster affects straight-line stability and how the steering self-centres.

We recommend an alignment check after any suspension or steering component is replaced, after a significant pothole impact, and any time you see uneven tire wear. Getting it right saves tires, which is usually where alignment pays for itself.

Trucks and heavier vehicles

Heavy-duty pickups and commercial vehicles carry load, and load exposes worn suspension faster. We work on leaf spring packs and shackles, track bars, steering stabilisers, and the front-end components on three-quarter and one-ton trucks. If you have added a lift or run oversized tires, tell us — it changes what wears and what the correct alignment specification is.

Call (509) 655-7715 to book a suspension inspection.