Front Springs
 

Just rolled 6" off the car park at work tonight and the front offside spring snapped about half way up and went through the tread of a new tyre. So that's two new front springs and a new tyre to fork out for. Lucky part of the business is a garage and that's where the car's stayed for the night, I took one of the work's vans home.

All the best from a well miffed Les.

Thats terrible. Even more so through a new tyre. It's the one thing that I dread happening, i've read these tyre protectors are pretty useless.
You say rolled 6"....were you parked on a slope? It seems to be totally random when it occurs but always seems to be when setting off from being stationary position.

Where did it snap?

thats all you need at this time of the year, hope you can get it fixed soon mate

[QUOTE=Canonite;873621] i've read these tyre protectors are pretty useless.
I spent a lot of time driving over kerbs and pot holes with cut springs developing those tyre protectors. I agree they do not catch everything but they do stop most. We changed the spring manufacturer in the end to cure this problem.

Spring protectors were fitted as a recall at some stage.They will catch the spring if it breaks at the bottom..Any further up the spring and it misses the cup.


http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/foru...26df8e5194.jpg

Please, don't take offence. I'm sure your work has helped save many tyres. I was merely saying that when I'd asked about them after raising concerns I was told they do not cure the problem, and springs can and still do pierce the tyre, as you explained.

What did you find to be the main factors in causing springs to break? As we know it's not just our cars that suffer with this, many other marques also have springs that snap randomly and seemingly unprovoked.
As I mentioned before, from what i've read on here they seem to break when setting off at slow speed.
Is it the springs that are weak or is there something else that puts strain on them that causes the failure?

As the ZT springs are different to the 75 springs, is it limited to just 75 ones or do ZT springs fail too?
I was thinking of getting lowering springs when mine need doing, as a way of not only avoiding OEM ones, but to make my car a bit more bespoke.

Definitely not Tickertyboo then Les, :getmecoat: :getmecoat:

No offence taken, it's nearly impossible to design and test a product that would catch everything with the package constraints that we had.
I can not remember excatly when but the spring supplier changed mid/late 2002 so later cars should not suffer from the spring break problem as much. You can never eliminate spring breakage completely as it is a high stress component and a small stone chip will cause a stress point which will fail eventually.
As a quick visual look see, if your front springs are a matt black (powder coat) they are early supply and if the are a satin type finish and slightly smoother looking then they are the 2nd supplier.

The spring snapped about half way up. The car was re-called some years ago and had new front springs fitted but when it came back I swear it was lower on the front than before, now that I've got it back it stands about 1" higher than it did. I wonder what springs they fitted on the re-call, would the ones off a petrol car fit and would they be as strong as the diesel springs?
Les.

Bad new and possibly a blessing in disguise if that had happened whilst driving at speed it could have been nasty.:icon_sad: