My E class, that I’m original owner of, spent its first 5.5 years near Chicago, driven through winters (but washed nearly daily via car wash subscription) and the last 2.5 years in another north east state, also driven daily trough the winter and car washed. It’s almost a 100k.
There is a tight freeway bend where with a speed drop from 70 mph to 45 and about in the middle of this bend, one road plate is lower than the other more than usual. So the faster one goes, the harder the catapulting and then landing is + it’s in the middle of the tight bend, so the car is in the process turning. I think it’s a good suspension test.
Usually I don’t slow down, and go through the bend at ~70 mph. Today, keeping the info in this thread, I went at 90 mph through. This produced a hard boom-landing (not bang or crush), without bottoming, and: near full compression on landing, then near full rebound, and a finally a return to an equilibrium; the car was barely thrown of its trajectory, nigh imperceptibly.
This tells me that my struts and especially rear dampers are as close to OEM as they can be — despite 8 years and 100k mi that include annual driving through northerly winters. Unless I have a big blind spot, which is entretela possible, about how the struts and dampers should act on my car, since I’ve gotten used to them over 8 years.