2010 elegance estate - the car is quite uncomfortable on anything but very smooth roads (although it's better at speed, much worse when going slow), and is probably best described as very jiggly.

My wife's mk6 golf is much more comfortable and less jiggly.

 

It feels like it's the rear that is at fault, and when I go over speed bumps the driver side rear particularly feels like it's rock hard (the car seems to dip and rebound when coming off the speed bump on the front and rear left, but not rear right).

 

The car has only done about 28k miles - is it possible for something to have seized up in this time (i.e. bushings)?

I've replaced the right rear shock absorber in case that was stuck/seized/dodgy, but it's not made any difference.

Is this a common problem?

Edited 23 October, 201312 yr by GlenH

Bushes do wear fairly early on Octavias, but not at 28k.  Has a good garage checked to make sure nothing is obviously wrong?  The ride of the Octavia II is always pretty rough and knocky on bad road surfaces (my MX-5 is way smoother on its silly 17" pram wheels, but it has a very sophisticated suspension compared to the Octavia).  

 

An obvious thing to check is tyre pressure and type.  Some tyres have very stiff sidewalls and some don't, so you could look for recommendations.  Unfortunately the only one I know that has a "soft" sidewall is the Toyo T1-R which is a bit of a sports tyre.

have you checked that the coil springs are not broken?

Springs are definitely fine.

The car has Bridgestone ER300s at standard pressure on at the moment, but I don't know if they have a particularly  stiff sidewall or not.

it may be worth changing the anti roll bar rubbers for poly---whist poly may be the boy racer's holy grail it seems that the hole size actually matches the bar diam'(as recommended by manufacturer)    whilst your current ones are unlikely to be worn -from my observations it would seem that the OME ones are approx. 2mm smaller than the bar in their "fitted state" without the bar   hence apply a vise like grip  to the bar when fitted I think this effectively shortens and stiffens the bar making it more jittery      I went up one size and poly bushed and still got a better ride       I'm sure this should get a discussion going    ---there is some stuff in an earlier post  couple years back 

Thanks cheshire cat. I read about the rear ARB which sounds interesting.

Shame it has to be done with the wheels on the ground - no inspection pit / ramps so I can't do it myself.