**Replacing Struts: A Comprehensive Guide**

When it comes to replacing struts in your car or truck, it's essential to do it right to ensure a safe and smooth ride. In this article, we'll walk you through the step-by-step process of replacing struts, highlighting the importance of preparation, cleaning, and proper installation.

**Preparation is Key**

Before starting the replacement process, it's crucial to prepare the necessary tools and materials. This includes having a metal wire brush, brake clean, and paper towels on hand for cleaning out the strut and knuckle area. Additionally, you'll need new bolts with washers and Loctite for securing the strut in place. Make sure to also have a torque wrench and socket set to tighten down the bolts properly.

**Cleaning Out the Strut and Knuckle Area**

To ensure a smooth installation process, it's essential to clean out the strut and knuckle area thoroughly. Use the metal wire brush to remove any dirt and debris that may be stuck between the strut and the knuckle. You can also use brake clean to add extra cleaning power to the area. After cleaning, use paper towels to wipe away any excess cleaner.

**Installing the New Strut**

Now it's time to install the new strut. Start by aligning the top of the strut with the knuckle, then bring the bottom part into place. Use the bolts provided with the new strut to secure it in position. Before tightening the bolts, apply a small amount of Loctite to the threads of the bolt for added security.

**Tightening Down the Bolts**

With the new strut in place, it's time to tighten down the bolts. Hand-tighten the bolts only a few turns to ensure they're snug but still loose. This will allow you to fine-tune their position before tightening them further. Be careful not to overtighten, as this can damage the surrounding components.

**Aligning the Strut and Knuckle**

Before pushing the strut into place, make sure the back piece that holds the bolt in alignment is properly seated. The metal piece should slide smoothly between the gap in the knuckle. Check that everything is aligned before jacking up the car.

**Jacking Up the Car**

With the struts in place, it's time to jack up the car and push the strut into position. Use your hands to guide the strut as you lower the suspension. Continue to jack up the car until the strut is fully seated and the bolt hole is clear of debris.

**Sliding in the Bolt and Tightening Down**

Once the strut is in place, slide the bolt into position and tighten it down as much as possible with a ratchet. Then, use a torque wrench to secure the bolt at 65 ft-lb. Make sure everything is tightened properly before moving on to the next step.

**Installing the Sway Bar End Link**

With the strut secured, it's time to install the sway bar end link. Pop the link into place and tighten it down until snug. Don't forget to attach the ABS wire bracket and torque the bolt down to 40 ft-lb.

**Connecting the Brake Line**

Finally, connect the brake line and pop it into place. Take the brake line clip and lightly tap it into position. Make sure everything is secure before moving on to the final step.

**Lowering Down and Tightening Up**

With all components in place, lower down the suspension and remove the jack. Use a ratchet or wrench to tighten down any remaining bolts up to 25 ft-lb.

**Before and After Results**

The end result of replacing struts is significantly smoother ride and more controlled handling. Check out the before and after videos to see the dramatic difference for yourself. Remember, it's essential to replace struts in pairs, so make sure to do both sides simultaneously.

**Additional Resources**

If you're interested in learning more about suspension maintenance or want to explore other DIY projects, check out our related videos and articles on the screen or in the description below. We've also linked some essential tools and products used in this video, so be sure to take a look.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Chris fix here and today I'm going to show you how to replace struts in your car or truck in this case we're working on a 2006 Mazda 3 but changing out the struts in most Vehicles is very similar to this so if you follow along on this video you'll be able to change the struts in your car or truck now real quick before we go and change out this old strut with a nice new strut how do you know when your struts are bed and when they need to be changed struts are basically one of these shock absorbers with a spring coiled around them as one unit and the important thing to know is this style strut is called the mcferson strut and it actually acts as your upper control arm so it's super important for your suspension and how it handles and also just the safety of everyday driving now you should inspect your struts at about 50,000 Mi and there are four quick ways to know if your struts are bad and need to be replaced and they are if you're driving and your car feels unsettled and you're bouncing around almost like driving on a trampoline which is the problem with this car if the struts are leaking any oil at all if the struts are physically damaged like if they're bent or if they're rusted to the point that that they're no longer safe and if you drive the car and it's a harsh ride and your car is just sitting too low and bottoming out so those are the four main ways to tell if your struts bed and we know our struts bad here you always replace in pairs so with that information let's change out the struts and here are all the tools you'll need this job is very simple and we're using all common hand tools pry bars hammers screwdrivers ratchets and wrenches torque wrench breaker bar and we also want to make sure that we're using penetrating fluid and that's what I'm going to do right now because we we want to get a lot of penetrating fluid on here so things come off easily we're going to be separating this strut from the knuckle right here so get a ton of penetrating fluid on there there's also a nut up here which we'll be removing which holds the sway bar bar end link to the strut so soak that with penetrating fluid and then there's another bolt back here that we're going to be removing so get some penetrating fluid on that and also if you want you could add the penetrating fluid a day before you do the job so it soaks in there and works even better now that we're done soaking these bolts we'll let it sit for a few minutes and then we'll start removing the strut so the first thing we're going to remove is this brake line right here that connects to the strut and to do that you just use a flaad screwdriver and pop it right off and you always want to make your job as easy as possible so work with the vehicle so let's turn the wheel so we have more access to this side and look how much easier it is now to get to that brake line so we can remove it to remove the brake line use a flathead screwdriver and you're going to pop this clip out just like that and then the brake line should pop right off with our brake line unhooked from the strut since we're on this side let's remove the pinch bolt that's holding the base of the strut into the knuckle in this case the bolt is 17 mm and you want to make sure you use a breaker bar so you can break this bolt free and once that Bolt's broken free we could use our regular ratchet and loosen it the rest of the way and there we go that bolts out all right so with our brake line removed and our bolt down there removed we have one more bolt to remove down here and it's for the sway bar end link right up here so let's turn our steering wheel so we have easy access to it and you can see how much e easier it is to get to that sway bar end link bolt right there now typically with these bolts what you have to do is you have to get a wrench around the actual bolt and this is a 14 mm and then you have to use one of these torqus right in the middle here and awesome typically the stud strips on the inside because it gets all rusted but this nut Broke Free and it's coming loose if it does happen the strip I'll show you a tip in a couple of seconds on how to get it off so now this stud might be at such an angle that you can't easily pop it out instead of hitting a hammer against the stud we're going to jack up the suspension real quick and you can see as the suspension gets jacked up that stud is straightening out and now it'll slide right out just like that now this sway bar end Ling came out a lot easier than it normally does usually the stud gets all rusty and the inside gets stripped and you can't loosen it easily so what you're going to want to do is you want to grab a vice grips and you can see that there's this little metal piece right in the back here it's right before the rubber you don't want to grab the rubber with the vice grips cuz then you'll tear it and you'll need new sway bar links but what you want to do is you want to get your vice grips and clamp them down just like that and then you'll be able to get the nut off just by turning the nut cuz the vice grip is going to be holding this stud in place it's also a lot easier if you have an impact gun use the visce grip impact it right out and you might even consider switching these out right now because you have everything apart and they're cheap enough all right so we have everything removed so now we're going to take our hammer and we're going to hit the knuckle downwards so that we separate the knuckle from the strut but we don't want to break this clip right here this is for your abs so I suggest removing that getting that out of the way and that just prevents you from hitting it with the hammer just in case you miss and you just want to hammer away until you see the strut start separating from the knuckle just like that and keep going until it separates completely perfect now the knuckle and the strut are separated so we're going to go up top and loosen the three bolts at the strut tower now these bolts should come off pretty easily but if not you could use a breaker bar and that's one two and on this last bolt it's kind of hard to get a good angle on here because we have this weather stripping in the way so you might have to use a wrench like this so you can get to this bolt and that's the last bolt so let's remove the strut and with a little wiggle the strut comes right out although we already removed the bolts I want to share a top tip on this strut Tower these bolts are set in place they're not adjustable but on some strut Towers these bolts could actually be moved around to adjust the camber on your strut so if you get new struts you can get close to your old alignment by marking the bolts with one of these markers and just Trace around the bolts so you outline them that way after you remove the bolts you can see exactly where they need to go when you put the new strut back in so a little top tip like this will help you get your alignment pretty close now before we put in the new strut I always like to compare parts so get the old strut and compare it to the new strut you want to make sure that there's the same amount of bolt holes you can see here the sway bar and Link Mount is in the same spot and then the brake clip mount is in the same spot and then when I got this strut I thought it was damaged because it looks like there's a little indentation right here but then if you look at the old one it has the same indentation so that's good and that's why you always compare the old strut to the new strut and now we can go and install our new strut before installing our brand new strut there's one thing I want to do I want to make sure that we clean out where the strut and the knuckle meet all you have to do is get a metal wire brush and we're going to clean right inside here so that any dirt and debris doesn't get stuck between the strut and the knuckle and you could even use a little bit of brake clean to clean that out and then use a paper towel to clean it all up and now we could install it when you're installing the new strut angle the top in first then bring the bottom part of the strut to meet the knuckle and when you have your strut in place like that we're going to come to the top here and instead of using the bolts that we removed the struts come with brand new bolts with the washers and if we take a look at our original bolt you could see that there's Loctite right on the threads here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab some Loctite and put it on the threads of the new bolts that we're installing so now you want to align the strut so you can get the bolts in and you just want to hand tighten all three of them only a couple of turns so all three of these bolts are in place holding the strut in but they're still really loose so now we could go down to our strut and before we push the strut into the knuckle we want to make sure this back piece here is aligned this metal piece right here which the bolt goes through to hold the strut in place has to slide right in between this little Gap in the knuckle so that looks like it's pretty well aligned and now we can jack up the knuckle watch your fingers but push the strut to align it in the knuckle as you jack it up and keep on jacking it up until it's all the way in and you'll know when it's all the way in by looking at the bolt hole in the back and if it's clear to slide your bolt through then it's all the way in so now we're going to go slide our bolt in to hold the knuckle and the strut in place but before we do that clean the bolt with a metal wire brush and you can see there was some Loctite on here so again we're we're going to add some Loctite now we'll just slide the bolt in place and tighten it up now we'll grab our ratchet and we'll tighten it down as much as we can and then we're going to grab our torque wrench and this bolt gets torqued down to 65 ftlb all right with our strut in place tightened down to the knuckle that bolts all torqued up we're going to go put in our sway bar end link just simply pop it into place don't forget your ABS wire bracket and tighten it down until it's snug then torque it down to 40 ftlb and with that in place you don't want to forget to connect your abs now we have one last thing that we have to do here and that's to get this brake line and pop it into place and take the brake line clip and lightly tap that in all right we are almost done everything down here is done so now we just need to lower the suspension and remove the jack and then we'll tighten down our bolts up here and now I'm going to just tighten all these down with the ratchet it's a little tough to get the ratchet into this last one so I'm just going to use a wrench and now that all of them are tightened let's torque them down to 25 ft lb that's one two let's see if I can get the socket in here and that's three beautiful and we are done that's how you replace a strut in your car or truck now check out this before and after here's the before with the old struts and it's easy to bounce around and it feels like you're driving on a trampoline and here's the after with the new struts and the car's a lot harder to bounce and it feels way more controlled and less bouncy while driving what a difference remember you want to replace struts in pairs so make sure you do the other side as well and this job really is that easy as always hopefully the video was helpful and if you're not subscribed consider subscribing for new how-to videos every week up on the screen are going to be a couple of related videos to get to those videos you can click on the screen or find a links in the description below also in the description are links to any tools or products I used in this videohey guys Chris fix here and today I'm going to show you how to replace struts in your car or truck in this case we're working on a 2006 Mazda 3 but changing out the struts in most Vehicles is very similar to this so if you follow along on this video you'll be able to change the struts in your car or truck now real quick before we go and change out this old strut with a nice new strut how do you know when your struts are bed and when they need to be changed struts are basically one of these shock absorbers with a spring coiled around them as one unit and the important thing to know is this style strut is called the mcferson strut and it actually acts as your upper control arm so it's super important for your suspension and how it handles and also just the safety of everyday driving now you should inspect your struts at about 50,000 Mi and there are four quick ways to know if your struts are bad and need to be replaced and they are if you're driving and your car feels unsettled and you're bouncing around almost like driving on a trampoline which is the problem with this car if the struts are leaking any oil at all if the struts are physically damaged like if they're bent or if they're rusted to the point that that they're no longer safe and if you drive the car and it's a harsh ride and your car is just sitting too low and bottoming out so those are the four main ways to tell if your struts bed and we know our struts bad here you always replace in pairs so with that information let's change out the struts and here are all the tools you'll need this job is very simple and we're using all common hand tools pry bars hammers screwdrivers ratchets and wrenches torque wrench breaker bar and we also want to make sure that we're using penetrating fluid and that's what I'm going to do right now because we we want to get a lot of penetrating fluid on here so things come off easily we're going to be separating this strut from the knuckle right here so get a ton of penetrating fluid on there there's also a nut up here which we'll be removing which holds the sway bar bar end link to the strut so soak that with penetrating fluid and then there's another bolt back here that we're going to be removing so get some penetrating fluid on that and also if you want you could add the penetrating fluid a day before you do the job so it soaks in there and works even better now that we're done soaking these bolts we'll let it sit for a few minutes and then we'll start removing the strut so the first thing we're going to remove is this brake line right here that connects to the strut and to do that you just use a flaad screwdriver and pop it right off and you always want to make your job as easy as possible so work with the vehicle so let's turn the wheel so we have more access to this side and look how much easier it is now to get to that brake line so we can remove it to remove the brake line use a flathead screwdriver and you're going to pop this clip out just like that and then the brake line should pop right off with our brake line unhooked from the strut since we're on this side let's remove the pinch bolt that's holding the base of the strut into the knuckle in this case the bolt is 17 mm and you want to make sure you use a breaker bar so you can break this bolt free and once that Bolt's broken free we could use our regular ratchet and loosen it the rest of the way and there we go that bolts out all right so with our brake line removed and our bolt down there removed we have one more bolt to remove down here and it's for the sway bar end link right up here so let's turn our steering wheel so we have easy access to it and you can see how much e easier it is to get to that sway bar end link bolt right there now typically with these bolts what you have to do is you have to get a wrench around the actual bolt and this is a 14 mm and then you have to use one of these torqus right in the middle here and awesome typically the stud strips on the inside because it gets all rusted but this nut Broke Free and it's coming loose if it does happen the strip I'll show you a tip in a couple of seconds on how to get it off so now this stud might be at such an angle that you can't easily pop it out instead of hitting a hammer against the stud we're going to jack up the suspension real quick and you can see as the suspension gets jacked up that stud is straightening out and now it'll slide right out just like that now this sway bar end Ling came out a lot easier than it normally does usually the stud gets all rusty and the inside gets stripped and you can't loosen it easily so what you're going to want to do is you want to grab a vice grips and you can see that there's this little metal piece right in the back here it's right before the rubber you don't want to grab the rubber with the vice grips cuz then you'll tear it and you'll need new sway bar links but what you want to do is you want to get your vice grips and clamp them down just like that and then you'll be able to get the nut off just by turning the nut cuz the vice grip is going to be holding this stud in place it's also a lot easier if you have an impact gun use the visce grip impact it right out and you might even consider switching these out right now because you have everything apart and they're cheap enough all right so we have everything removed so now we're going to take our hammer and we're going to hit the knuckle downwards so that we separate the knuckle from the strut but we don't want to break this clip right here this is for your abs so I suggest removing that getting that out of the way and that just prevents you from hitting it with the hammer just in case you miss and you just want to hammer away until you see the strut start separating from the knuckle just like that and keep going until it separates completely perfect now the knuckle and the strut are separated so we're going to go up top and loosen the three bolts at the strut tower now these bolts should come off pretty easily but if not you could use a breaker bar and that's one two and on this last bolt it's kind of hard to get a good angle on here because we have this weather stripping in the way so you might have to use a wrench like this so you can get to this bolt and that's the last bolt so let's remove the strut and with a little wiggle the strut comes right out although we already removed the bolts I want to share a top tip on this strut Tower these bolts are set in place they're not adjustable but on some strut Towers these bolts could actually be moved around to adjust the camber on your strut so if you get new struts you can get close to your old alignment by marking the bolts with one of these markers and just Trace around the bolts so you outline them that way after you remove the bolts you can see exactly where they need to go when you put the new strut back in so a little top tip like this will help you get your alignment pretty close now before we put in the new strut I always like to compare parts so get the old strut and compare it to the new strut you want to make sure that there's the same amount of bolt holes you can see here the sway bar and Link Mount is in the same spot and then the brake clip mount is in the same spot and then when I got this strut I thought it was damaged because it looks like there's a little indentation right here but then if you look at the old one it has the same indentation so that's good and that's why you always compare the old strut to the new strut and now we can go and install our new strut before installing our brand new strut there's one thing I want to do I want to make sure that we clean out where the strut and the knuckle meet all you have to do is get a metal wire brush and we're going to clean right inside here so that any dirt and debris doesn't get stuck between the strut and the knuckle and you could even use a little bit of brake clean to clean that out and then use a paper towel to clean it all up and now we could install it when you're installing the new strut angle the top in first then bring the bottom part of the strut to meet the knuckle and when you have your strut in place like that we're going to come to the top here and instead of using the bolts that we removed the struts come with brand new bolts with the washers and if we take a look at our original bolt you could see that there's Loctite right on the threads here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab some Loctite and put it on the threads of the new bolts that we're installing so now you want to align the strut so you can get the bolts in and you just want to hand tighten all three of them only a couple of turns so all three of these bolts are in place holding the strut in but they're still really loose so now we could go down to our strut and before we push the strut into the knuckle we want to make sure this back piece here is aligned this metal piece right here which the bolt goes through to hold the strut in place has to slide right in between this little Gap in the knuckle so that looks like it's pretty well aligned and now we can jack up the knuckle watch your fingers but push the strut to align it in the knuckle as you jack it up and keep on jacking it up until it's all the way in and you'll know when it's all the way in by looking at the bolt hole in the back and if it's clear to slide your bolt through then it's all the way in so now we're going to go slide our bolt in to hold the knuckle and the strut in place but before we do that clean the bolt with a metal wire brush and you can see there was some Loctite on here so again we're we're going to add some Loctite now we'll just slide the bolt in place and tighten it up now we'll grab our ratchet and we'll tighten it down as much as we can and then we're going to grab our torque wrench and this bolt gets torqued down to 65 ftlb all right with our strut in place tightened down to the knuckle that bolts all torqued up we're going to go put in our sway bar end link just simply pop it into place don't forget your ABS wire bracket and tighten it down until it's snug then torque it down to 40 ftlb and with that in place you don't want to forget to connect your abs now we have one last thing that we have to do here and that's to get this brake line and pop it into place and take the brake line clip and lightly tap that in all right we are almost done everything down here is done so now we just need to lower the suspension and remove the jack and then we'll tighten down our bolts up here and now I'm going to just tighten all these down with the ratchet it's a little tough to get the ratchet into this last one so I'm just going to use a wrench and now that all of them are tightened let's torque them down to 25 ft lb that's one two let's see if I can get the socket in here and that's three beautiful and we are done that's how you replace a strut in your car or truck now check out this before and after here's the before with the old struts and it's easy to bounce around and it feels like you're driving on a trampoline and here's the after with the new struts and the car's a lot harder to bounce and it feels way more controlled and less bouncy while driving what a difference remember you want to replace struts in pairs so make sure you do the other side as well and this job really is that easy as always hopefully the video was helpful and if you're not subscribed consider subscribing for new how-to videos every week up on the screen are going to be a couple of related videos to get to those videos you can click on the screen or find a links in the description below also in the description are links to any tools or products I used in this video\n"