Is it standard practice to replace rear shock mounts when doing shocks?

Joined
Apr 11, 2019
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170
Location
Minnesota
I had my rear shocks replaced about a year ago. This week I have experienced a lot of clunking and learned the shock mounts are shot. This is a labor intensive job for a cheap part to replace. I'm wondering if the shop I went to last year made a mistake in not recommending or mentioning the shock mounts as well. Is this usually replaced at the same time?
 
A local shop installed new rear shocks on my '85 Laser, and the right rear clunked endlessly. I removed the shock to look for play in the end fitting, and found none. I reinstalled it and torqued it down gorilla-style and the clunk disappeared.
 
Depends on year/make/model/condition

Some new aftermarket parts are worse than used/old OE parts

I don't do strut/shock jobs anymore that are not complete. Even though I use aftermarket name brand struts/shocks.... almost all the extras are new OE parts. Either do the job once correctly and charge a little more, or plan on redoing the job again after pissing off the customer

OE springs... always, unless lowrider or lifted 4x4
mounts/bearings... always, unless race/hd aftermarket reputable improvement
struts/shocks... aftermarket almost always

Labor/time intensive or difficult to do.... OE is a no brainer unless automaker part has a high failure rate

And above all, owners choice. They get whatever they want and will understand their budget/brand. Do you charge a customer $2000 to fix a $500 car.... or should you on a collectible or classic that might be worth 20x as much?
 
Either do it right the first time, or anticipate doing it again shortly thereafter.

Kinda like a timing belt/waterpump job. Sure you can get away with simply replacing the belt, but considering the labor to get everything apart, you might as well do it all at once and not have to worry about it again for the life of the car.
 
Either do it right the first time, or anticipate doing it again shortly thereafter.

Kinda like a timing belt/waterpump job. Sure you can get away with simply replacing the belt, but considering the labor to get everything apart, you might as well do it all at once and not have to worry about it again for the life of the car.
I agree, if I had been given the choice by the first shop I would have said to do them together but they didn't even mention it.
 
Might be a matter of vehicles being made cheaper now, and the Kia factor.

I usually replace struts around every 50K mi, and usually replace them at least twice before the mounts are shot, so mounts lasted beyond 100K mi, usually make it to the point of the 150K mi point, 3rd pair of replacement struts installation. "Usually", sometimes they look due for it by 100K mi, but I've never replaced them with the first set of replacement struts and they never wore out before the 2nd pair of struts were due for replacement at my 50K mi interval.

You might want to have struts done elsewhere next time. It shouldn't have been "did they offer it" but rather did they inspect the rubber and check for rotational smoothness, then if there was excessive wear, advise you of that and recommend that at the time. They skipped one of those two steps as they shouldn't wear out in only another year if it passed a competent inspection.

IMO, shop made a mistake, and Kia a design mistake unless this has very high mileage or driven hard or on bad roads or high load. Then again, time flies! A 2012 is now about 9 years old so could be pushing 150K mi. and not be particularly high yearly mileage, if you only go by the nat'l average which I feel is very high, I put on nowhere near that much per vehicle, per year.
 
Front and rear mounts are not comparable. As has been mentioned, there’s also the Kia Factor.

Also, strut clunk has been reported and doesn’t always have deleterious effects.
 
I replaced the "hats" on my Civic with oem as the Tein Basic Coilovers wanted me to reuse the factory ones. They knock when going bad. I got better ones with dedicated tops and adjustable but left the soft setting at my preference
 
The Mazda 5 (and I think the Mazda 3 as well), has each rear shock outside the coil spring, which makes the shocks easy to change. The top mount is a relatively fragile aluminum unit with two holes that slips over two studs that protrude downwards. The dealer sells the shock and top mount as one unit, but does not carry the top mount separately. So, if you buy a genuine Mazda rear shock, you automatically change out the mount too.

The top mount usually fails before the shock itself.

Fortunately, NAPA sells an aftermarket top mount that's quite affordable, and it's a lot cheaper than the entire assembly.
 
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