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Monday, December 14, 2009

Monroe Rear Shock Absorber and Strut Assembly

By Justin Lofton

The Monroe Reflex truck shock absorber with the patented Impact Sensor Technology combines specially tuned valving with a Flu on banded piston. The Impact Sensor valve has the ability to sense acceleration to improve the handling, safety, and overall ride characteristics of sport-utility vehicles, mini-vans and light trucks. The Impact Sensor base valve will sense a bump in the road and automatically adjust the shock to absorb the impact, leaving the shock with greater control when it is needed. The features of the Monroe Reflex truck shock absorber make it the superior shock for improved handling, safety, and comfort in all road conditions.

In times like these, folks keep their cars longer (just ask Comrade Fidel's oppressed masses of loyal subjects). Unfortunately, faster-spinning odometers have the nasty side effect of more quickly chewing up your car's normal wear items. Some of these components (like brakes) can get downright demanding as they die. Others, like shock absorbers and their MacPherson strut cousins, just blend into the woodwork and stay there.

Much like the guy in your high school yearbook that you can't remember, your vehicle's shocks and/or struts get Rodney Dangerfield-levels of respect and even less attention. Symptoms of worn shocks or struts include excessive floating after traversing even small bumps in the road, greater-than-normal body roll during cornering, increased braking distance, and extreme front end dive under moderate-to-hard braking.

Quick and easy... remove and replace one piece! No need to take apart entire assembly. No need to compress coil springs. Do the complete job right the first time. Enhances the handling, safety and performance of your vehicle. The revolutionary Monroe Quick-Strut unit is the first complete, ready-to-install replacement strut assembly available! Monroe Quick-Strut units include all the components required for strut replacement in a single, fully-assembled unit.

Having experienced all of the above in larger quantities than is acceptable even for a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis (a GS model, no factory air suspension), I decided my OEM shocks should call it a day after 168,749 miles of absolutely mediocre service. Bilsteins not being my thing, I immediately hopped online and ordered the extremely vanilla Monroe Sensa-Trac front gas shocks (to replace the oil-filled originals) and Monroe Max-Air rear air shocks (to replace the original gas-charged rears). Including shipping, my total came to $92.

Installation varies by vehicle; however, Monroe throws in everything you need, including reasonable facsimiles of all factory bushings, nuts, bolts and mounts. The rear air shocks come with a very concise, tri-lingual instruction sheet along with an installation kit that includes a tee-valve (to be located wherever in your trunk is convenient and safely-drillable), a barely adequate amount of air line, tiny O-rings for the air fittings, and a handful of mounting brackets.

Everything but the shocks and the O-rings are plastic and feel extremely questionable. Also, would it have killed Monroe to spend two cents more per package and provide an additional foot (or three) of air line? Everything went together perfectly, though, and no trips to the parts store were necessary.

I wanted rear air shocks because I frequently pull a 2,000-pound utility trailer and hooking it up always caused the back of my big Merc to go for the limbo-dancing gold. Monroe claimed its Max-Air product was just the trick, with ride height-fixing pressure being easily adjustable from a stock-looking (and feeling) 20 PSI all the way up to a coil spring-bustin, hip-hop-video-starring 140 PSI. (But avoid extended use above 90 PSI, Monroe says, implying, perhaps, that you should only go higher for occasional heavy loads or drive-by shootings.) - 21396

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