Hey everybody, I just bought a pair of coilovers off of a TRD. They are the Bilsteins with the progressive rate spring, and I am going to put them on my 2.7. I bought them off of Ebay and when I got them I noticed a black smudge on the side of one of the struts that looks as though it was smeared there by the boot. Is this an oil leak? It isn't a huge spot of oil, but it makes me nervous nonetheless. I don't want to have a leaning problem when i put these on. If it is an oil leak, is there anything I can do about it, like have it re-sealed and recharged. I guess this goes to show, don't buy things off of ebay that somebody else could have beat the crap out of and then advertised "LIKE NEW".

just make sure to leave neg. feedback

A leaking shock will not cause your truck to lean. It will affect the spring damping if it has leaked enough oil to affect the shock damping. In other words when driving over a bump the spring will continue to let the vehicle bounce becase the shock isn't controlling the bounce. The oil may have come from something off the vehicle the strut was removed from. If you can pull the boot away from the area where the rod goes into the damper cylinder you should be able to tell if there is a leak, look for oil around the rod where it enters the damper body. Most shocks/dampers for road vehicles cannot be serviced, you have to replace them. A bad damper will leak lots of oil before it actually fails.

Clifton

When I did my first post I started to comment on the feedback issuse, and erased my comments. I do some buying and selling on eBay. I think Matt really needs to determine if the shock is actually leaking as I suggested in my first post. If it is not leaking it should work as well as new, but I guess it wouldn't be as clean as new. If that were the case I wouldn't give negative feedback. If it does in fact leak I would contact the seller and try working out the problem with him/her prior to giving negative feedback. I you randomly give negative feedback without trying to resolve the problem by communication you will get some negatives in your file even though you may not deserve them. Off the soap box.

Clifton (100 % positive rating)

Sorry for calling you Matt.
Clifton