Okay thanks very much for the reply! I figured out what the problem was and ended up fixing it this morning; turns out I'm a bit of a noob haha. Basically I didn't assemble the strut correctly. I screwed on the centre nut as much as it would go but didn't realize that I needed to...

Tkitt, Did you ever figure out the issue? I also did not prime my shock absorbers and I'm having a nearly identical problem so any help would be much appreciated!