harsh ride

[JoMart]

I have a well maintained 2004 Volvo V70 with almost 170K miles. We are planning a trip cross country, over 2500 miles and recently I've noticed the car taking bumps harder lately. The car does not bounce like when shocks go bad, it just feels like there is less cushion on the rough surfaces.
Anyone have experience with this and good advice for fixing? Is this a sign of bad shock mounts or do ther front top rubber spring seats need replacing?Thanks

[MadeInJapan]

You never say if you've ever had your front struts replaced. Similar miles on our V70- same year as yours (actually 165K miles) and we were feeling the same thing as you are feeling now on your car. We replaced the struts 30K miles ago...with spring seats. A month ago, I replaced the spring seats, strut mounts (left the 30K mile old struts in the front) and full rear shocks and mounts...now it drives like it did when it was new. We used Boge/Sachs (OEM) struts but IPD spring seats...these are a known culprit for crapping out early and killing the joy of this vehicle. Look around- we found good deals on both FCPEuro and Shox.com If cheaper, I might even opt for the Belstien Touring shocks/strut set. But yeah, at your miles, you probably need a full replacements of your shocks and struts if you haven't done that already.

[oragex]

As madeinjapan says, these struts/shocks are for some reason different than on other cars. They bounce perfectly and don't leak, but they get harder. Winter time is even worst (awful), reason I had to replace them. Tip: I bought front Boge, and rear Sachs white sticker. Disaster. Stay away from these. Only blue sticker (also named Super Touring) Sachs both front and rear. Several sellers display the blue stickers but ship white stickers. I'd get the numbers from the blue sticker pictures, and ask specifically the seller about which part number he is shipping. 4corners should run about $300-$400

Also, as above, when replacing the struts you will notice cracks in the spring seat and strut mount bearing turning rough. These are really poor quality in most aftermarket parts to the point of needing replaced withing less than an year. Only safe bet is Lemforder for the bearing and Sachs (I believe) for the spring seat. All parts should be about $250

Finally, when removing the old strut assembly, inspect under the car where the top of the strut assembly goes: I found this place to build a lot of rust as the top of the strut assy is in metal and sits directly on the chassis damaging the paint and causing the rust. Worth cleaning the rust and spraying some rust protection or paint.