Story is:
About 3 years ago I had the LF strut replaced after hitting a BIG pothole (along with 2 rims and 2 tires) Yes that was a big bill. Everything has been working great since then.
Fast forward to about 4 weeks ago and I hit a transition from ground-out pavement to regular pavement. About a 2-3 inch vertical height difference with no transition. It was a hard hit to the suspension. It was dark and the construction crew had not put the usual temporary bit of asphalt for a transition nor had they painted it. I saw it at the last moment and got a small amount of brake applied. In hindsight, this probably hurt more as it caused a weight transfer to the front just as I hit the transition between pavement surfaces.
The next day I took a mini vacation and came back 4 days later and the car is laid out on the ground like the best low rider I have ever seen.
Turn it on and the suspension pumps up however when I shut it off the car will lower the rear suspension to the ground in 5 min or so. Turn the car on and it raises it back up. A side note is that the comfort and sport modes does not work now nor does the rais and lower button for the suspension work. It did this when I blew out the right front strut a couple of years ago. But the back lowering made me think it is a bad rear airbag. So we decided to test things and found that the car was actually letting the air out of the rear. We could hear it venting the air about 5 minutes after you shut the car off. So we let the car pump things back up and then disconnected the valve block everything then staued up (or so I thought) 36 hours later (this morning) I come out and the front is very low with the left front (the one I did not replace 4 years ago) being a bout 3/4 of an inch lower than the right front. The rears are still fully inflated/up. I plug the valve body back in and start the car and everything comes back to level.
I am now suspecting that the left front strut finally gave up from the hit it took. Does this seem reasonable?
Forchinitly the price of these has come down to "only" $800 each. When I replaced the right front the company that rebuilds them had been wiped out by a hurricane in Florida. I had to get OE from Mercedes at a cost of over $1,600 for a single strut. At that price, I only replaced the broken one. Yes I know you should replace them in pairs but the car has performed fine with just the one new one. The actual replacement process is like any other strut. It is just the cost of the part that has me hesitating at just tossing a part at it.
