Hi and thanks for the quick reply :)

Yes I intend to get rid of the crap tyres at some point, but considering they have a fair bit of life left I thought that they could take a back seat if the suspension problems are more pressing. Ideally I'd like Uniroyal Rainsports all round, but what I'd probably do first is transfer the back two tyres to the front (a Cooper Zeon/Firestone Firehawk mismatched pair with 7mm tread each) and get a pair of Uniroyals on the back. The front two tyres if anything show greater wear on the outside edges but it's not massively more than the inside edges.

The guy who did my alignment is a good mate and I think he would have noticed if something was way out (he works at the same garage as the mechanic who told me the shocks were tired, both are good mates and family friends who I trust). Thanks for the advice. The deafening clunk I get from the NSF strut area is also there when going over speed bumps if I got faster than say 10mph, I think there must be something not quite right there but as I said it could be the spring or the shock (or maybe something else) so I will have to wait and see. as far as I know though, a shock will only fail the MOT if it's seized or leaking? Thanks for all your help.

PS - not related to Teflon Tony, lol :)

Don't forget to check bush etc wear at the back too in case it's getting a bit of rear steer effect.

Not a poster aFaIK, no money in it....it's the former got out just in time leader of a certain misnamed party i'm referring to.;)

Edited by gordonbennet on 20/03/2010 at 11:26

No, someone pretending to be HJ I'm afraid.

Hi again, well, just a few updates:

1) I swapped the tyres front to back, and it's made no real difference to the handling

2) It had its MOT last week and sailed through (I acknowledge that MOT testers are only human and some components need to be on the verge of destruction before a tester makes note)

So I'm happy it passed its MOT incurring zero cost to me (other than the test fee) but almost disappointed that no wear in the suspension was flagged up because it would at least give me something to work on. I think when I get the time I will replace the front shocks and work from there.

As said above, I have also found my Mondeo II 2.0 Zetec estate very sensitive to small amounts of wear in the front suspension. The car had some strange tyre wear, which was caused by soft rear suspnesion and a previous owner having fitted diesel front springs on a petrol! I than fitted new springs and Bilstein B4 shock absorbers.

Having got the springs/shocks right I have progressively replaced the front sub frame bushes, the anti roll bar bushes and the front lower suspension arms and each time the steering has improved and the tram lining diminished. None of these was an MOT failure but there was an advisory on one lower arm bush. After 2.5 years of ownership my 2000 model now feels very close to the 1998 model I had as a company car in 2000. The lower arms came from a well known parts importer who has now branched out into most models and the arms seem all but identical to the Ford ones fitted by the last owner's dealer about 4 years ago.

The bushes are cheap but can be a struggle to fit and unless you can do it yourself won't be that cheap to install. Howver the labour for doing all the bushes together ought to be close to that for doing them one at a time. If you want to just check the subframe alignment the necessary pins can be obtained for around £25.