dutcher

Hi guys,

My car's suspension is due for a rebuild so I got a quote from my local shop. The rebuild will be pretty expensive and almost exceeds the entire value of the car. I'm not trying to cut corners, but I do want to attempt to bring down the price a bit. It seems like the prices for the shocks (front and rear) I got quoted are almost double the regular prices ($600 for front and back). The quote doesn't list the exact parts, but from what I could tell they were talking about bilstein sport shocks (part# 2093260300 for rears and 2033206530 for front shocks).

I would be satisfied with regular shocks, as my car is almost exclusively just for highway commuting. I talked to my shop and they would be ok with me supplying my own parts. I'm trying to decide what way to go so I came up with the following alternatives from the b4 series:

front: Bilstein 22-141705 https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/mer...ouring-vne5334

Rear: Bilstein 24-114714 https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/mer...clk320-be3b471

These would be $330 and offer OE quality. I spent a few hours trying to find out if they will actually fit my car, but can't find a conclusive answer. Would anybody be able to verify these parts will fit my '03 clk 320?

Rudeney

Why do you think the shocks need replacing? They are usually the last suspension components to fail. The first are the front anti-sway bar bushing, followed by the front control arm frame bushings, then the rear control arm bushings. The OEM Sachs shocks they use are very durable.

dutcher

Hi Rudeney, thanks for the response!

I honestly don't know. The garage told me that my suspension is soft and that my tires are wearing unevenly. I notice the car making noises over bumps, some slack in the steering and sluggish handling. But I have a very limited frame of reference, and not much of an idea what to look for. I'd rely on my mechanic for diagnosis.

Anyways; they came up with a $3000 quote basically replacing the entire suspension. The car has close to 150k miles on it, and I have no service history from before I bought it 3 years and 40k miles ago. I'm very reluctant to do this repair because it basically costs as much as the car is worth, so I was trying to save some money on getting the parts myself and foregoing the 2 year part warranty that I would get from buying the parts of off the garage. This would save me a solid 750$ on the total bill (parts quoted at $1780, found all of them for online for a grand total of $1004). Attached is part of the quote, if you could check to see if it makes sense I would be very, very grateful!

Rudeney

Since you are relying on a shop to do the work for you, whatever you have done, will be expensive. I would recommend replacing the anti-sway bar bushings, both front control arms, and get an alignment and see how that improves things. The rear suspension rarely causes handling problems - mostly just noise or sagging.

degeja

Prices for shocks at FCP about same as Rockauto.
My local private guy charged me about $600 for both installations-front and rear-

had to make 2 trips because he didnt have the special socket for the fronts- bought on ebay for $10.

If I ever do any again I think I'll do rears myself and save $250.

I only have 60,000 miles on mine- but the ride is definitely improved.