will my stock 02 struts be able to handle aftermarket springs?

 

Rule of thumb: Any time you lower the car's ride height and increase the spring rate, you are going to put extra stress and wear on your factory struts. This will subsequently decrease the amount of life you get out of them.

However, there are several aftermarket springs that are designed to work with stock struts. It largely depends on your driving style. If you're an autocrosser or a tracker, you likely won't be happy with your factory strut's performance, unless the spring is perfectly tuned to work with the factory damper for that style of driving... it simply won't be able to handle the increased spring rates and lower ride height. If you are just interested in appearance, and just use your car as a daily driver with the occasional weekend jaunt, you should be fine.

Also, since your car is an 02, the struts probably have a significant amount of miles on them... so you might fare better upgrading the struts at the same time.

 

Yeah.

You might as well replace the strut instead of doing the two separately. The shop will end up taking out the whole assembly for the springs. You can save a little bit and a second trip by just doing both of them at the same time.

 

yeah its got a little under 70k on them. i work at a cadillac dealership so the labor is all me.