replace entire strut assembly or just broken spring?

Got a link to what you ordered? Sometimes those cheap ones are fairly high quality...

 

With the looks of that spring I would say get a new strut too so when you say $50 strut you mean just the cartridge no spring no top plate go to an $80 strut or $100 strut like I don't know gas rider from KYB or something along those lines. And then with your spring you sourced and an upper mount and let it rip looks like a lot of miles and a bit of rust

 

See link above... These are the cheap ebay ones that we talked about before. It's a complete assembly so no sketchy spring loading and they only cost about $100 per pair. You might remember that the ones I bought for the rear of my Prius were slightly off on the plate mounting angle and didn't fit. So I got my money back and bought a different pair that I've yet to install.

 

I'd give a set of four of those a world no problem on my '09 should be just fine matter of fact it's time to do the '09 so any minute I'll be ordering because they're getting loud and clunky and pretty noisy 290,000

 

That spring perch doesn't look all that robust, how many miles on that rear OEM strut?

If you're feel frisky, you can swap a new perch/spring onto that crusty OEM, though the rest of that strut looks pretty jacked up as well.

 

Many people do not have the tools needed to safely compress a spring while removing and reinstalling the strut assembly.

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Agreed, nothing safe about about DIY spring loading onto struts...

 

You undo the nut on both sides while the strut is kind of still attached and has the weight of the car on it then when you jack it up but just comes undone that's really easy to do and it doesn't create really any problems that nobody can get killed see the videos online of people who have blasted nut off without any thing on the spring No one's been killed and I don't think seriously hurt it's not like a truck tire blowing up outside of the cage. But anyway enjoy and be safe Big thick panduit straps can work too easily done it many times

 

IMHO; I wouldn't risk injury or damage to my car by trying to save a few bucks. Just replace the entire assembly. The link you posted has a lifetime warranty, so your covered there. Hopefully it'll handle as well as the OEM. I'm partial to KYB or OEM strut assemblies, mainly because I find that aftermarket ones tend to be too soft for my liking.

Good Luck.

 

Hell no!

A strut coil spring has a huge amount of energy when compressed. For every youtube video where someone does a (stupid) shortcut like "jacking" a spring in or out - and it works, there's 2 or 3 showing the fails. And the ones that go really bad don't have videos, they have short news articles - maybe in the obituaries.

Do what you want, but don't suggest that it's even remotely a good idea to anyone else.

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