[Vwdiesel] strut inserts

[Roger Brown]

Val Christian wrote:
> Here in pothole country, my experience is similar to Roger's, except that
> they seem "fresh" for a month or two, and then "worn" after about 30K miles.
> Need to be replaced after 60K.  Bilsteins didn't give me much longer service
> life.  
> 
> Digging through stuff in the garage this weekend, I found one front A1
> KYB and two rear A1 struts, new in the box.  I forget what A1 they were
> for.  Go figure.
> 
> Since I tend to keep vehicles for 300 to 600 kmiles, I tend to sucker for 
> replacement parts with lifetime warranties.  The way I look at it, is the 
> nut at the top of the strut housing never gets too rusty that way.

I had two failures on my Bilsteins, I suspect both had been sitting on the dealers shelf too long (maybe the reason they were 
sold so inexpensively).  One went flat within a month of installing it and the other about a year later.  I was really 
impressed with Bilstein's warantee service compared to KYB's.  With KYB I had to pull the parts and bring them to their nearest 
distributor (the place of purchase had gone out of business) and if they deemed them to have failed, I would get new ones. 
With Bilstein, they shipped me replacements at no charge and I returned the failed insert and a copy of the receipt and they 
even reimbursed me for the return shipping.  The only hassle is getting through the gauntlet of telephone transfers to get to 
the guy who can process the return order.  But since getting replacement units, mine have worked great for the last years.

Not sure if they make them for the A1, but I heard the KYB GR2 shocks are supposedly pretty good.
-- 
    Roger