Bonk!
I had a nice reminder when opening my boot at work that day. I was looking at a different issue entirely, and went to open the boot lid of my Audi A3 and had the boot fall on my head.
Quite annoying. I expected it was a failing strut so went out about some quick diagnostics, rather than just fire the parts cannon at the car and spending money that I don’t need to waste it.
I disconnected the boot struts, and it was clear one of them had failed. One of them was hard to compress, the right hand side of the Audi A3 boot strut however was easy to squash. This confirmed my theory with the car that my Audi A3 boot struts had failed and required replacement.
Pretty obvious when you see the condition of the old struts. They were cracked and leaking
I ordered the new struts from eBay, part number 8P4827552B and waited for them to arrive. You can also order the struts from Amazon if that’s your preference
Took some time off work and went about fitting them, this in itself is a quick job so one of those ones for amateur DIY mechanics who want to try their hands at things too.
What is needed for replacing Audi A3 boot struts?
How do you replace the Audi A3 boot lift struts?
First remove the old struts, this is done by disconnecting them from the boot lid. As a warning you need something to prop up the boot lid. If you’re tall you can hold the boot lid up with your head like me. In order to remove the struts, you need to pull outwards on the spring with a small screwdriver whilst pulling away from the ball holding it on the boot. All that is does is expand springs on the inside which releases pressure from the connector ball
This will disconnect them from the connectors, and expose the bare ball connector
After removing the old connectors, you can insert the new struts
Replacing the struts is just a case of repeating the same procedure in reverse. As they’re new connectors and the springs are wrapping around them, you can probably fit them just by pushing them onto the housing or giving them a quick hit.
One important thing to note, is make sure the strut orientation is correct, the bulk of the body faces the boot lid and the small thin metal rod goes towards the floor of the boot
After that the boot struts are replaced and should lift by itself again. My struts were replaced at 162,766 miles
