Anyone ever had this happen?

My car had been feeling "skittery" on corners lately. So I crawled under there and saw oil all over the driver-rear lower shock mount. I think I last replaced them about 5 years ago, and the roads here are azz so they were definitely due. I jacked up the rear, took the top and bottom mounts loose, tried to compress the shock cylinder to drop it out and ... HRRGGHHHHHH!!!. GGGRRAAAWWWWGGHHHFKINGSONOFA!?!

Try as I might, it would only compress about 1.5". That's odd. So I bolted it back up, and compressed the spring with another jack to load up the suspension and (hopefully) compress the shock cylinder. I jacked up the spring so high, that I lifted off the original jack and still it would not compress more than ~1.5" Damn ... well that sure as hell explains the skitteriness.

Soooo out comes the sawzall, and about 60 seconds later, I had 2 halves of a shock cylinder on my garage floor. The cylinder had maybe 1/2" of oil in the bottom. The bore was clean ... no corrosion at all. But that damn plunger was just not going to move through the bore.

The other side collapsed about 4", and dropped right out as did the fronts. Car feels great now. But I have never had a shock do that to me before.

 

Seems like you figured it out. Interesting though, shocks rarely seize IMO. You can get the rear shocks out without compressing them though. Just have to have both sides of the rear up at the same time.

 

Don't recall ever hearing about a shock doing that, but I guess anything is possible.

 

I've seen that happen but not since the early to mid '80's when I was working on cars for a living. Haven't seen or heard of it happening lately though. Good find.