I arrived home last night from a weekend away to find our faithful 406 (1 owner, 116,000 miles, MOT'd late November) sitting on the driveway collapsed on the front right with a broken coil spring. The car is undrivable and I shudder to think what would have happened if it had failed on the motorway.
Does anyone this be due to speed bumps as my missus goes over a few of them in the course of her day as a physio doing home visits?
I can see my next few evenings will be taken up replacing both front springs. Any hints or suggestions from those who have gone before would be very welcome.
Canuck
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Yep, good these speed bumbs at busting spings, some people fly across them with no regards for the suspension or infect the reason they are put there. Regards Peter
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I've just had a front coil spring replaced on my 2000 Mondeo. There has been a spate of coil springs breaking in recent years on a variety of cars, try doing a "Forum Search" to see what people have written on here in the past about this problem. Speed bumps could well be part of the problem, as could poor quality (Russian?) steel.
My car was also undriveable; I had to pay privately to have the car transported on a flat-bed truck to the garage. My failed spring was also on the OSF, much to the ammusement of some of my friends, this being the side where I sit!
"I can see my next few evenings will be taken up replacing both front springs. Any hints or suggestions from those who have gone before would be very welcome"
Er, take it to the garage?!
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Well, I'll have a go at replacing the springs and dampers because it's wierdly fun. I don't need the car for a week or so and it's a nice, hands on problem that offers some satisfaction to fix. I just wish it was a little warmer outside!
I do a reasonable job (better than some garages for sure) and, if I make a mess of it, there is no one to get angry at but me.
Canuck
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weirdly of course, until I posted I did not realise just how dependent I had become on spell checkers!
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It is apparently not uncommon on the 406 2.1td. It happened to mine at about three and a half years old and 42,000 miles. Unfortunately, the cup on the strut which locates the spring is smaller than the diameter of the spring coil a turn or so up, allowing the spring to drop down to the driveshaft.
In my case SWMBO was driving, and still tried to back it out of the drive despite the twanging sound as the spring broke and the car adopting a different attitude, ruining the driveshaft gaiter in the process.
I contacted Peugeot customer services and got told "speed humps" and of course this part has now been strengthened by Peugeot............... He catagorically denied any common fault with the springs, and his dismissive attitude made me eventually quite angry. He had obviously learnt the official "fob off" technique very well.
I then wrote to the vehicle inspectorate who replied "Peugeot have previously stated that they are aware of this phenomenon, and have attributed the failure of the road spring to the electrolytic process...............................................................
.........They
are only aware of this type of failureon vehicles that have been parked, usually for some time, and are not aware of any instances of this type of failure whilst the vehicle is in motion. Peugeot did carry out a production change on later vehicles to overcome this problem.
Anyway, it seems like Customer Services did not know about this!
The job though is quite straightforward. There were no unusual problems. The biggest problem was getting the driveshaft gaiter clips to seal the grease in ( my wife destroyed it if you remember). In the end I had top refit the original Peugeot clip, which was not easy.
Good luck.
Reggie
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Make sure you have decent spring compressors, I used three per spring.
Reggie
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Reggie, you can predict the future as far as I can tell.
The missus had moved the car 20 feet or so before the noise convinced her that something was wrong. I've just been out to the garage and, guess what, the spring had broken as you predicted so that most of it fell down and the broken end has torn the driveshaft gaiter exactly as you said. Wonderful.
Any idea on the lottery numbers for Wednesday?
Canuck
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Both the rear coil springs broke on our 1998 Renault Clio when it was 4 yrs old. In fact it had been MOT?d in our village garage the day before (passed) and it went to the dealer for its annual stamp in the service book. They called and said both springs were broken. I hadn?t noticed anything different when I?d driven it there, and I went to look and they had it up on a wheel free lift with the rear axle dangling and both springs cleanly (as in shiny) broken in the same place (near the top).
What made me suspicious that it was a frequent fault was the dealer (who never seemed to have stock of anything) had 10 springs in stock. The dealer pretended to contact Renault by computer (in reality I think they just finger tapped on the work-surface beneath the counter) and apparently Renault wouldn?t pay. The car had only done 20K in 4 yrs but this was in the days of 1 year w?tees.
I called Renault myself and gently suggested that it might be quite expensive to recall every Clio and fit new springs (I remember Rover doing this on the 75) and within 15 mins the dealer had rung back and told me the job would be FOC.
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Canuck, if you are doing it yourself, I can't remember if it was a new clip that I fitted or if it was the old clip re-bent and re-fitted, but I used genuine Pug parts, so it was probably the new clip which in reality needs a special tool.
The point is, it took me about 4 hours ish for each side nad a bit more on the gaiter side (I replaced the "good" spring also), but despite my best efforts using thick cable ties, then two thin ties, metal ties pulled as tight as I could get them, the grease kept coming out after a "good run". This problem nearly drove me to distraction, and on all my previous gaiter replacements over the decades, none were as troublesome as this one!
So what am I saying? Maybe take it to a garage and get them to fit the clip, unless you are very handy! That was the worst part of the job for me.....wheel off wheel on, wheel off, wheel on etc etc.
Reggie
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The above clip is a gaiter clip for the drive shaft gaiter, I hope that was fairly obvious.
Reggie
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might be worth checking the strut top swivel bearing for roughness and rubber/metal bonded mounting as they can separate and cause knocking noises.
I believe all peugeot partners of that vintage are being recalled to have a clamp fitted to the strut to prevent coil spring dropping so don't know why 406's aren't included.
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