Yesterday evening I was helping a freind replace the struts on his W124 300D - he had a used set from his wrecked 300E that we removed first. I checked the compression according to the manual which says to hold the strut compressed 85mm on bathroom scales - which should show about 25 to 28kg weight as good shocks with 15 kg as bottom line.

The bilsteins he had removed showed up at 24 kg on the scales - fast forward. We remove the POS monroe struts the car had (drove like a boat with no damping at all - banged every little bump or dip) - removed monroes had gas charge and showed 17 kg resistance but showed really bad rebound - it was jerky and far too quick,

The replaced struts with new bump stops greatly improved the drive but the car still hits hard on dips but not on bumps, it can smooth out bumps very easily and the more the speed the smoother the ride. At speed similar dips are also smoothed out.

According to the driver his 300E never did that on those struts - what else should we look into? the ball joints need attention as their boots are torn - Would they cause such a problem?

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)