New Struts on the Elantra

Our Elantra needed it's tires rotated. Those tires had about 25K miles on them. We got them at Big-O tires and so the rotation is free. Of course, I could rotate tires myself any time, but why when I can just drop it off there and pick it up in a bit.

Not so simple though. We've been having this problem with a sort of grindy sound in the front wheels. I'd been thinking that maybe I needed some new wheel bearings in there. I did some digging around and found that it was practically impossible to find information about the front wheel bearings in the Hyundai Elantra. I guess it's black magic. I did find out that they usually last a rediculously long time though.

Well, whatever the noise was, I wanted Big-O to check it out when they rotated the tires. In this post, I mentioned how we weren't able to get back to Big-O in time to pick up the car. I called them Monday and they said they already threw away the work order and that we could just bring it back in and they'd check again. (Uugh).

Well, the sound was worse after the tires had been rotated so I thought I better go ahead and have them look at it. It turns out that the struts were really worn out. Because the struts were worn out, it was causing the tires to wear unusually fast and the alignment wasn't good. The only good thing about the whole deal is that I only needed three struts instead of four. One had already been replaced.

Cost of two front struts: $269
Cost of one rear strut: $130

Well, you can't just put new struts on without aligning it can you? Cost of Alignment: $59.

Now, you can't just align it and put new struts on without getting a couple new tires because the old ones are so worn. (I opted out of getting 4). Cost of two new tires for the front: $100.

Well, after the whole deal is put together, it cost about $620. The good news is that it wasn't quite as much as filling up on the way home.