In their simplest form, shock absorbers are devices that help to control the impact and rebound movement of your vehicle's springs and suspension. Along with smoothening out bumps and vibrations, the key role of the shock absorber is to ensure that the vehicle’s tires always remain in contact with the road surface, which ensures the safest control and braking response from your car.

What do shock absorbers do?

Essentially, shock absorbers do two things. Apart from controlling the movement of springs and suspension, shock absorbers also always keep your tires in contact with the ground. At rest or in motion, the bottom surface of your tires is the only part of your vehicle in contact with the road. Any time that a tire’s contact with the ground is broken or reduced, your ability to drive, steer and brake is severely compromised.

Types of shock absorbers

Although all shock absorbers do the same job, different types of vehicles and suspension designs require different types of shock absorbers which can appear radically different.

No matter the application, all shock absorbers fit into one of three broadly defined types of conventional telescopic shock absorbers, struts or spring seat shocks.

 Conventional telescopic shock absorbers

This is the simplest type of shock absorber and is generally replaced rather than repaired. This type of shock absorber can be found on both front and rear suspension systems and is relatively inexpensive.

Strut type shock absorbers

Although they do the same basic job, struts replace part of the suspension system and must be more ruggedly built to cope with greater loads and forces. Although most seen on the front and rear of small to medium cars, larger cars are now tending towards strut-based suspension design. The strut category is further divided into sealed and repairable units. As the name suggests, sealed units are designed to be fully replaced, whilst repairable (McPherson) struts can be fitted with replacement strut cartridges.

Spring seat shocks

The spring seat type shows characteristics of both telescopic and strut type shock absorbers. Like struts, a spring seat shock is a suspension unit and damping device in a single unit. Unlike struts however, they are not designed to be subject to high side loads. Built using similar components to conventional shock absorbers, spring seat shocks are also sealed requiring full replacement.