Two shops told me that "due to the mileage" (I'm at 181k) my rear struts need to be replaced. One shop told me that the rear tires "looked to be wearing a little unevenly". I don't hear anything coming from the rear and the car rides well. Should I bother replacing these or can they wait until 190k or 200k miles? I'm going to do the work myself, just wondering if they tires are already "a little unevenly worn" if it's worth it to replace the rears now or just wait until 10 or 20 thousand more miles.

 

2 Questions:
1 - Does each corner of the car go right back into position when you bounce on it?
2 - Are they leaking?

An answer of NO to both questions means leave them alone and save your money. I've got 295K miles and still have the original shocks/struts.
Shops are out to sell work!
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well show us what your tires look like so we can make a better determination

 

Not leaking.I went out and pushed down on the back of the car it didn't bounce at all, just went back to position. Phew! Saves me some money lol. One shop told me that the ball joint is bad on one side. Can I test for that while I'm replacing the front struts? (passenger side piston is leaking, so, that one is done)? Is it an up and down wiggle or a side to side wiggle lol?

 

You may just need an alignment.. if the tires are wearing bad and cupping or theres significant negative camber then maybe you do need to replace them sooner rather than later.. or just keep buying new tires.

 

Here's some photos of the tires

 

Here's the pictures of the tires:

 

they don't look too bad, possibly just minor negative camber.. Do an alignment if you haven't yet and i bet you'll see you'll need to zero our the toe and just minor (maybe -1.2 - -1.7 in camber.

 

I'll post whatever the shop does xD what am I not seeing? To me they look like normal tires in good shape

 

My old tl would not go back into spec due to camber. I suspect it was due to the old springs not having as much push as they used to but I may be wrong... Ate my tires pretty quick. Your dont as bad as mine were though.

 

I thought camber was not adjustable on our cars.

 

as long as the ride isn't bouncy and isn't making a clunking noise just get an alignment.
on the other hand spending $260 on new loaded rear struts and not having to deal with them for another 100k miles isnt a bad idea, they are cheap.

 

It's not. By replacing the struts, you're bringing the suspension back to "factory" level which helps alleviate the negative camber.

 

I ended up just doing the front struts. They were no where near as hard as I thought they'd be to do and I'm kicking myself for the literally thousands of dollars I've spend having shops do that sort of piddly shit. The outer tie rods were another story. Couldn't get those off. Paid a back yard guy to come and do it. He only did the one side. Now I shall pay another back yard guy to do the other side and hope the alignment isn't so fucked I can't make it to the shop lmfao.