My '95 Tercel's rear struts keep failing

[sifan]

Had the rear struts replaced at a garage. Few thousand miles later the rear end bounced up and down like crazy. Brought it back to the same garage. They admitted that the strut plates were not replaced in the first place; so, they replaced plates and struts without charging me the labor cost but parts. After few thousand miles later the rear end is bouncing up and down again. When the rear end hits rough pavement, I feel my rear tires loosing grip and slide left and right a bit. I called the same garage again, they said to send the car in for further diagnosis because they were puzzled by this, too. Is there something that causes the struts to fail again besides possible defective struts? The car has over 300K miles. I bought it 30K miles ago. Thanks.

 

[Trav]

I have a 95 Tercel here we did rear struts a while ago and have had no issues.We did however had a rash of failed struts at that time on other vehicles all using Monroe struts.They failed within a few months.
Kudos to Monroe they replaced every one of them for free,no questions asked.

It sounds like the stuts went bad,ask about the warranty.

 

[mechtech2]

It's not the road, the tires, or the incidental suspension components. Neither is it the installation.

The shocks/struts are faulty.

 

[bdcardinal]

On a lot of those Toyota's if you dont line the struts up with the plates perfectly they will make a clunking noise. Did they replace the springs when doing the struts?

 

[sifan]

They replaced on spring during the initial installation claiming it was broken. The other spring was replaced during the 2nd installation also due to breakage.

 

[sifan]

I would like to add my observation on how the rear struts gone bad. Both times all started with car running on very rough pavement. Then I started hearing clunking noise in the trunk. The struts began to deteriated right afterwards. Strangely the clunking noise only lasted a few weeks and then disappeared as the rear end bounce up and down more and more. Does this sound like how defective struts gone bad?