'02 MCS; How can I tell if the struts are bad?

How do I know if my struts are bad? The car has 217K km on it. I was thinking the struts might need a change and located a take off set from a local car owner who's switched to coilovers.

It's not doing anything funky on the handling side. A visual inspection doesn't show any oil leaks. And when I looked at the struts closely, the label stickers on them don't look 10 years old. There doesn't seem to be much weathering.

So if they look good and the car is not exhibiting any other issues, is it safe to say the struts are fine? At this point I don't know if I'm keeping the car or not.

Thoughts?

Jeff wrote: The car has 217K km on it.

Word.

The shocks I took off the Miata looked fine but their only function was to keep the springs from taking off on their own. Similar miles on those shocks (130k miles).

Just did the struts on my moms Impreza. Car has 120k miles on it. The replacements were the same as factory and wow what a difference. One of the rears was dead, like it had large air bubbles in the oil or something. Resist, nothing, resist.. you could tell one of the rears was toast on it.

With that mileage, just do it. Dont wait for it to suck and be weird (like I did).

I've had 3 or 4 Japanese sedans in the last 10 years that didn't give any clues that the struts needed to be changed...and I didn't bother to change them even tho they had high mileage (over 150 K miles).

But about 3 or 4 months ago, I FINALLY got the exhaust system on my Civic repaired as I just couldn't stand the loud noise anymore. After I did, I started to notice another sound. A sound that was similar to the exhaust "roar" but I started to think that at such high miles it might be wheel bearings. It turned out that the sound was my struts forcing my tires to bounce along the road. I ruined a good set of Michelin tires by not having the problem diagnosed (bad struts) earlier. After the struts and tires were changed, I had a "new" car. The steering was no longer occasionally darty and I could actually turn the wheel while trying to park without pulling shoulder muscles (my Civic has MANUAL steering). It was great. Tho I sometimes think that for the price of tires and struts I would have had a decent down payment on a newer car.

The shocks and struts I took out of my E35M3 were so bad I could easily cycle them by hand. The ride was 70s Caddy-like but not in a good way.

I just changed all four shocks on my '03 MCS after finding two rear tires were worn oddly and making lots of road noise. They were hopping all the time but I noticed nothing in every day driving. My car has 73K miles on it. It's much better after the shock change. Just change them, or sell the car.