front struts - how to know when to replace them?

I have a 2wd 99 extra cab regular car height 5 lugger with 120k miles and im wondering how to tell if the front struts are past their life.

its not like anything is telling me they are bad or causing problems but the reason I ask is when I look under the truck there is only about 1" of clearance between the bump stop and I am thinking it should have a bigger gap then that so are my struts sagging?

let me add the truck sits level and rides great and it doesn't feel like it ever bottoms out but I see clean spots where the bump stops touch on the arms so im sure there are times it does bottom out on large road dips.

so far I have flushed the ranny fluid, replaced oil and filter, fuel filter relocation and replacement, MAF sensor cleaning and air filter, belts and new idler pulleys, replaced the upper and lower ball joints and outer tie rods and did a front brake job and rotors, rear shocks, and replaced all three dry and cracked rubber brake lines, so im pretty close to covering all the maint issues and worn out parts on this old truck.

at $100 each for stock replacement struts, i don't want to change these "just for the heck of it" so am I worrying about nothing here with what "looks like" very limited travel space, or does it sound like I need new front struts to "renew" my suspension travel?

also I need to add that im sure these are still the original factory struts because they have Toyota stamped into the shock

I have never worked on struts so (I assume) you buy the whole thing as an assembly and don't try reusing the old springs?

 

As far as there being hardly any upward travel that's the way they are...dumb hu? I thought the same as you when I got my first taco, replaced suspension...still no upward travel.

I've never bought stock struts/springs so I can't comment on that, someone will chim in here shortly and get ya straightened out.

PS I've never owned a 2wd so....but I'm sure they are very similar to the 4x4's as far as the bump stop clearance.

 

so could this be true? is there only 1" of travel in the front end?

 

Ride in someone elses that has changed out the suspension with new/fresh items.

 

ride height is controlled by the coils, not the shocks

to check if the shocks are dead, just push on the front end- shocks are just that- "shock absorbers", so if the truck bounces around a lot they're not dampening the movement of the coils, and need to be replaced.

seems like you need new coils, and it can't hurt to replace the shocks as well

 

I was leaning towards 15 years old and 120k miles ought to justify replacing them just based on that but I just don't know about how to judge the condition of struts.

the truck doesn't bounce when pushed on but it comes up then settles down a hair so I wouldn't say it has a stiff suspension either. I would have to assume the shocks are worn out even though they still seam to be functioning ok if not dampening that much