Honda Car Forum

I had some new dampers/shocks installed in the front struts on my '98 Honda
Civic a few months ago after fighting with tire wear problems, mostly
cupping. The dealer was no help on this and thought it was just bad tires
(Michelin X-One's). So I had some KYB GR-2s installed at a shop I had
previously used.

Last week, I had the car back at the dealer on another issue and he noted
that the strut assemblies were not installed correctly--the alignment tab
is 180 degrees from where it should be. (This is the tab on the lower end
on the strut where it slips into the split fitting on the fork). I checked
the service manual and he appears to be right. Yet the strut assembly
"appears" to be correctly mounted in the car. Rotating it 180 looks like it
would cause the angle to be wrong.

Several questions:

Am I missing something here?

Do I need to get this fixed?

John Clavin
Austin, TX

"John Clavin" <jc@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:Xns959BDF84472FCabcdefgh@24.93.43.121...
>I had some new dampers/shocks installed in the front struts on my '98 Honda
> Civic a few months ago after fighting with tire wear problems, mostly
> cupping. The dealer was no help on this and thought it was just bad tires
> (Michelin X-One's). So I had some KYB GR-2s installed at a shop I had
> previously used.
>
> Last week, I had the car back at the dealer on another issue and he noted
> that the strut assemblies were not installed correctly--the alignment tab
> is 180 degrees from where it should be. (This is the tab on the lower end
> on the strut where it slips into the split fitting on the fork). I checked
> the service manual and he appears to be right. Yet the strut assembly
> "appears" to be correctly mounted in the car. Rotating it 180 looks like
> it
> would cause the angle to be wrong.
>
> Several questions:
>
> Am I missing something here?
>
> Do I need to get this fixed?

Sounds like they were switched left to right.