96 Geo Prizm strut replacement

Question

Hi, my 96 Geo Prizm has leaking/weakened strut towers, but all of them feel relatively fine over bumps except for the rear right-hand side one. When I hit a bump hard enough (usually at highway speeds), I feel the entire car sway slightly, and occasionally a loud banging noise is heard. It is worsened when there is weight/people in the backseat/trunk.

The car is NYS inspected safe to drive and recently had a wheel bearing replaced, but is nervewracking and inconvenient (as when it was my dad's car he almost lost control of the car with someone in the backseat on a highway after hitting a bump), and I must often decline giving rides home and not carry much of anything in my trunk or rear seat.

I was wondering what it would cost to have that one rear strut replaced and installed, for both parts and labor. Also, would fixing only that strut negatively offset the rest of the car's suspension in some other way for being marginally better than the other 3?

Answer 1

One place you can use to do price checking on car repairs is on Driverside.com – you can drill down to specific cars cause I think the price will change based on the car like a 96 geo prizm. They are still in beta but they have a ton of data on what car parts and repairs should cost. I used them for my last repair.

Answer 2

If you've never done so they should all be replaced. not sure if you have struts on all 4 wheels or not. many cars have struts in front and shocks in rear.  Shocks are much less expensive to buy and replace.  NY..don't know. here in the south I can pay $100 labor to replace both front struts and probably $65 a strut for parts.  IF you have rear shocks, probably $60 labor for the shocks and $35/shock for parts.

So TOTAL = $360.