I want to take my car into the shop to have my lowering springs and struts installed, but I want to check beforehand to see if I need to replace my strut boots and mounts. The shop would charge an arm and a leg to replace boots/mounts, so I want to know if I should buy ahead of time.
Is there any relatively simple way to check these, like maybe by taking off the wheel and looking up under there?

 

For the boots it's easy, look if they are rip off and all that.

For the struts mounts, i don't know how much milleage your car is but if you have alot of milleage or you hear a kind of "sprung" sound when you turn at low speed, you need some struts mount.

Anyway when you will install the spring, your mechanic will see if the bearing of the strut mount is jammed or not.

 

I have 130,000 miles on my maxima, I dont hear any sounds when turning though. Am I better off just buying the mounts ahead of time from KYB and bringing them in with the springs / struts to the shop?

 

130 000 miles, you better buy some new struts mount because if the broke like 3 weeks after you do all your suspension upgrade, you will beat yourself to not doing it.

 

I also would recommend replacing the front strut mounts (usually the rears are fine, mine were). However, I've heard from several people that the KYBs suck. Most complaints are that they cause too much noise. I just did the entire suspension on my '95 GXE. I got front mounts from O'Reilly and they worked fine. I think they're by Monroe, but they're basically OEM quality. Good Luck.
BTW Strut boots are the long rubber covers that protect the piston on the strut. You should be able to see all 4 corners w/out jacking the car up. If you can't even see them, they may be just shredded. Mine were, and my car only had 92k miles. I ordered KYB SB103 and SB108 and they fit fine. The part numbers were a B#TCH to find and I would have been lost w/out the org. Hope this helps.

 

I heard an irritating squeking noise comming from the wheel strut area when my mounts were torn. I had about 125K miles.

Whatever you do, replace your mounts WITH your struts and springs. You need to align your wheels afterwards. Don't make it a two time job.