I bought a 97 Z28 2 years ago. The car is stock except for air intake & exhaust. It is very clean & well kept. It had 110,000 on it at purchase time. When I bought the car the previous owner had just replaced the struts & mounts about a month before. I have only put 10,000 miles on the car in 2 years. (10,000 friendly miles on good smooth roads) I have put 2 sets of struts & mounts in those 10,000 miles & it just broke another set. Its busting the middle out of the strut mounts. The 1st set were Autozone, the 2nd were KBY & the 3rd TRW. I can not find any logical reason for this to be happening. Does anybody out there have any answers? Thanks

 

My only thought is maybe they're being installed wrong. Possibly a missing washer. I could imagine that the first set was maybe installed incorrectly and then the subsequent sets were installed to match the first.

 

do you have them swapped right for left? If so the geometry will be off and could very easily result in them breaking.

 

There are upper and lower rubber reinforcement pieces that the upper shock (its not a "strut") shaft passes through, and sandwich the mount in between, and strengthen it. Are both those in place.

Shoebox has an assembly diagram:

http://shbox.com/1/front_suspension.jpg

 

Injuneer, The reinforcement pieces you are talking about are not there. Just the "shock" shaft passing through the mount. This must be the problem. I guess they were left out when the previous owner had them changed. Are these pieces available at an auto parts, dealer, or aftermarket ? Thanks everyone for your help & input.

 

I would assume they were available somewhere. When I did my shocks it was about 12 years ago, and the factory parts were fairly cheap from the online discount parts dealers.