:mad:Like many others, my ns front spring broke yesterday, with a very loud bang, and taking the top bearing out with it. One of the ball bearings managed to lodge itself between caliper and disc, making lots more noise and further damage. This HAS to be a design spec or manufacturing fault, and simply should not happen on a modern car. I'm going to do some slow time checking with VOSA, as I feel this should be a safety recall.

Anyhoo, hopefully getting the parts tomorrow to do both sides (although I think the offside may have been done before) - I'm getting springs, shocks, bump stops, bellows (one is mangled), and top bearings - am I likely to need any thing else???? car has done 71k.

Do I need to compress the spring to remove the strut, or is there enough play in the suspension arm/driveshaft assemblies to remove it uncompressed?

This is the latest in a steady list of common faults that spoil a good car; although I will be keeping it for a while, I doubt whether I'll continue with Skoda as there are simply too many silly/inexcusable things that go wrong.

Sorry about the rant, any help/advice gratefully received, but it does look fairly straightforward.

:mad:Like many others, my ns front spring broke yesterday, with a very loud bang, and taking the top bearing out with it. One of the ball bearings managed to lodge itself between caliper and disc, making lots more noise and further damage. This HAS to be a design spec or manufacturing fault, and simply should not happen on a modern car. I'm going to do some slow time checking with VOSA, as I feel this should be a safety recall.

Anyhoo, hopefully getting the parts tomorrow to do both sides (although I think the offside may have been done before) - I'm getting springs, shocks, bump stops, bellows (one is mangled), and top bearings - am I likely to need any thing else???? car has done 71k.

Do I need to compress the spring to remove the strut, or is there enough play in the suspension arm/driveshaft assemblies to remove it uncompressed?

This is the latest in a steady list of common faults that spoil a good car; although I will be keeping it for a while, I doubt whether I'll continue with Skoda as there are simply too many silly/inexcusable things that go wrong.

Sorry about the rant, any help/advice gratefully received, but it does look fairly straightforward.

On my VRS with standard springs I needed to compress the spring to get the strut out as I could not clear the hub - either if you dropped it all the way down until it was resting on the sub-frame.

:mad:Like many others, my ns front spring broke yesterday, with a very loud bang, and taking the top bearing out with it. One of the ball bearings managed to lodge itself between caliper and disc, making lots more noise and further damage. This HAS to be a design spec or manufacturing fault, and simply should not happen on a modern car. I'm going to do some slow time checking with VOSA, as I feel this should be a safety recall.

Anyhoo, hopefully getting the parts tomorrow to do both sides (although I think the offside may have been done before) - I'm getting springs, shocks, bump stops, bellows (one is mangled), and top bearings - am I likely to need any thing else???? car has done 71k.

Do I need to compress the spring to remove the strut, or is there enough play in the suspension arm/driveshaft assemblies to remove it uncompressed?

This is the latest in a steady list of common faults that spoil a good car; although I will be keeping it for a while, I doubt whether I'll continue with Skoda as there are simply too many silly/inexcusable things that go wrong.

Sorry about the rant, any help/advice gratefully received, but it does look fairly straightforward.

6 new bolts for the top mounts , 2 shocker shaft nuts and 2 knuckle clamp bolts

it is ideal that the suspension unit is compressed slightly as this will aid removal , also the use of the VAG special tool for spreading the knuckle where the shocker goes in would be useful

why not go the whole hog and fit new shockers as well , you could build up complete units and then just fit them , i did the same when i put the Eibach springs on my VRS

Thanks fellas,

ric I am fitting new shocks, and intend to assemble off the car following the guide at fabia-vrs.com for eibachs, will get 2 new top mounts also. I am wondering now if the springs break because the top mount starts to stick and puts extra strain on the spring?? Guess I'll never know, but it still sucks.

This is the latest in a steady list of common faults that spoil a good car; although I will be keeping it for a while, I doubt whether I'll continue with Skoda as there are simply too many silly/inexcusable things that go wrong.

I know it might sound like I am defending the brand here, but you will get a lot of similar issues with just about every other car you will buy. It's not good when things do break but they do. I must have had everything go on my VRS in the 18 months of ownership but I would have had the same grief with a Astra or Focus doing 30k a year. You will also use this forum thinking that everyone has the same problem, which it would seem like the case except this is a forum where people will come to air issues like this. The majority of "Happy" Skoda owners come nowhere near this site, They have no need too, there is nothing wrong with their car!

It's not just a case of poor quality or process either. If you think if of a run of cars, maybe the manufacturer sells 10000 in a year. Now think of an acceptable failure rate maybe 0.5% which sounds like nothing and really good, thats still 50 cars. In terms of mass production that failure rate is fantastic but it's still 50 pi55ed off punters.

Mobile phones (And electrical goods ingeneral for that matter) have a failure rate of on average 4.5% even this doesn't sound too bad until you think that out of 250 000 handsets (Which is a typical quantity bought of the manufacturer) thats 11250 faulty phones.....

As above, spring failures do happen on other makes. The garage where my brother works had a Peugeot 406 in last week which had both front springs collapse during the night when the car was parked up! Did quite a bit of damage too including driveshafts.

Nicely put my dude...

My Previous Fiesta TDCi (2003) suffered a broken spring, it went off bang while sitting on my drive!

All modern cars have their faults, by changing brands you will just shift the problem (IMHO)

I hear what you are saying chaps, but I had a Fiesta for 14 years from new, cost me 3 exhausts, 2 batteries, 1 alternator, 4 cambelts (£10 each and one hour to change) and a waterpump (only changed as insurance), and it never let me (wife) down once. Are you saying I got a good one, and should expect more trouble????? I think suspension is an essential, and simply should not break in the catastrophic manner that mine (or yours) did.

Well said Decron

Going on the phone example, I've had three phones of the same model in 8 months and they've all failed of the same problem.

I've not heard of anything like what you've described, so hopefully it was an isolated incident.

I think suspension is an essential, and simply should not break in the catastrophic manner that mine (or yours) did.

my friend bought a brand new Clio 197 and her suspension has broken twice, its a known fault with the car and despite being a Renault Sport model, Renault haven't come up with a fix for it yet and dont seem to be bothering about it either.

i'm pretty sure Renault probably spent a lot more money into the design of the Sport models than Skoda have with a non sporty model and still didnt get it right.

my local Renault dealer has stopped selling Renaults due the complaints and warrenty claims

I think suspension is an essential, and simply should not break in the catastrophic manner that mine (or yours) did.

I'd completely agree with that and I think it's one of the problems of modern cars. People want them crammed with the latest features and gizmos, but they also want to pay the price they did for the last car, so somewhere along the line quality has to suffer. Add to that the environmental brigade who want everything to be recyclable/biodegradeable and you find that components just aren't built to last.

I don't think it's specific to Skoda, but I have read of it happening a fair few times on here, although more commonly to the Octavia.

No idea how much replacement springs are, but you could always take the opportunity to buy some upgraded ones....

Chris

my local Renault dealer has stopped selling Renaults due the complaints and warrenty claims

How does it maintain it's Renault dealership status then, just out of interest?

Martin

I hear what you are saying chaps, but I had a Fiesta for 14 years from new, cost me 3 exhausts, 2 batteries, 1 alternator, 4 cambelts (£10 each and one hour to change) and a waterpump (only changed as insurance), and it never let me (wife) down once. Are you saying I got a good one, and should expect more trouble????? I think suspension is an essential, and simply should not break in the catastrophic manner that mine (or yours) did.

I'm afraid that I agree with you, I have had similar experiences wrt the Fiesta and then as you with a Polo 9N breaking its O/F front spring at half height. I think that these cars (Fabia+Polo+Ibiza) are being built with some very substandard materials, that includes road springs. One other thing you might need, as well as the spreader tool (Laser Tools do one) is a new drive shaft nut as the O/S can not drop down low enough before the TCA fouls on the openings on the cross member . I bought new bellows as well but I think that it could be forced back into shape. One other thing, my broken spring is still in "one piece" even though its lying in the garage as the two halves got really forced together! I think in general there are a lot of crap road springs being fitted to European cars, some newer Fords even poke the broken spring through the tyre - now that's not very nice is it! Be carefull not to damage the paintwork on the new springs, if you do whack some Hammerite over the grazes as my spring had surface rust on it at the breakage point. Maybe check over the drive shafts for rust at the same time and remove loose paint and cover with Hammerite as well.

My Previous Fiesta TDCi (2003) suffered a broken spring, it went off bang while sitting on my drive!(IMHO)

As mine broke at half height, I try to remember that when I am working on cars that are sitting on ramps that are only 9"-12" high - don't fancy getting squashed!

The springs' paintwork/plastic coating will degrade and fall off over the years anyway. Though it's not unheard of for materials or parts sourcing to have quality problems.

The springs on my Impreza look horribly grotty but (fingers crossed), they're still OK. Leaving just the shocks to grumble over every un-even surface.

J.

I'm afraid that I agree with you, I have had similar experiences wrt the Fiesta and then as you with a Polo 9N breaking its O/F front spring at half height. I think that these cars (Fabia+Polo+Ibiza) are being built with some very substandard materials, that includes road springs. One other thing you might need, as well as the spreader tool (Laser Tools do one) is a new drive shaft nut as the O/S can not drop down low enough before the TCA fouls on the openings on the cross member . I bought new bellows as well but I think that it could be forced back into shape. One other thing, my broken spring is still in "one piece" even though its lying in the garage as the two halves got really forced together! I think in general there are a lot of crap road springs being fitted to European cars, some newer Fords even poke the broken spring through the tyre - now that's not very nice is it! Be carefull not to damage the paintwork on the new springs, if you do whack some Hammerite over the grazes as my spring had surface rust on it at the breakage point. Maybe check over the drive shafts for rust at the same time and remove loose paint and cover with Hammerite as well.

Thanks for that rum, I've got all tools needed, but will compress the strut to get it out. Should get all parts by tomorrow (£293 !!!!!!!!!!!:eek:) so her indoors should be back on the road by the evening. The only bit I'm worried about is removing the 3 small bolts at the top of the turret - they are into rivnuts which can spin which means drilling bolts out:(. At least we should be good for another 70k miles. Talking to fellas at work today, this is by no means uncommon across all makes (including Mercs & Toyotas) but we all agree that such an important item should be a lot more reliable - how often do brakes fail FFS????

see if you can soak the 6 shocker top mount bolts with WD40 from underneath the wheelarch , should help with removal

cheers ric, I was thinking of giving it a go with de-icer, I know thats a good penetrating fluid

I didn't give this problem a thought until now, its certainly true that a lot of road crap gets thrown up in this area. In fact that is one "good" outcome of this failure - its makes you wake up and waxoil around this area. Now if one of my strut bolts had jammed and started to free up the rivnut - I think that that would have rounded out my series of bad experiences that I had doing this simple job. This is a bit late but by now you will have found that the knuckle bolt is M12 but has an M14 spline head - most spline kits stop at M12 !! I just used a high strength M12 cap-headed bolt and new nut and half nut to lock it until I took delivery of an M14 spline bit - could not find one locally! Then I fitted the proper bolt and self locking nut. On a side issue, I bought a cheap tap and die set from Screwfix to use to clean the threads - the £60 kit has most of the fine metric thread sizes that VAG use. Did it all go reasonably well?

Talking to fellas at work today, this is by no means uncommon across all makes (including Mercs & Toyotas) but we all agree that such an important item should be a lot more reliable - how often do brakes fail FFS????

One other thing to remember is that first my ARB failed - broken plastic stops - at that point I was livid as I thought that in the 21st century this would never happen, then a few days later - New Years Day to be precise - the road spring broke - I knew that this was always a possible failure - but I had only considered half a coil breaking off at the top or bottom - not at half height!!! The car was undrivable as it was grounding out reversing up my driveway - so driving 10 miles to the dealer was never going to happen.

Compressing these tapered road springs is a pain in the neck - I ended up buying a new longer set of three compressors and using them along with any others I had already - now I know why the garage trade use these clever sliding clamps - I think that I removed the broken O/S strut before buying new spring compressors so maybe that is why I needed to go along with considered best advice and remove the strut and hub as a unit.

Even buying a bihex socket to take the drive shaft nut off took a lot of time. The easy bit about removing the strut nut was that a sparkplug deep socket fits it and mine has a hex head on it so I could get a crow's foot "socket" onto the nut while holding the strut rod with a long hex bit.

Well I'm now sorted but £293 poorer:( The job was pretty straightforward, took me just over 4 hours to do both sides. Assembled the new struts complete and did a one for one swap.

Observations:

1. Springs are a bit awkward to compress with conventional screw type compressors, and some care is needed to operate them within the confines of the turret.

2. My lower strut bolts were hexagon head, not 14mm spline.

3. Top bolts came out a doddle, even after being sat there for 8 years.

4. More care needed when compressing new struts to get them on to the car so that you don't dislodge the upper bearing or detach the bellows from the top mount.

5. Nearside turret was slightly damaged by the broken spring - re waxoyled.

6. Offside top bearing was well and truly knackered.

7. Steering feels much better, but car is pulling slightly more to the left than it was:confused:

8. Probably could have reused the old shocks, but we intend to keep the car for a while so felt it was worth it.

I have since spoken to someone 'in the know' who assures me that springs are now produced down to a price for all european manufacturers. One obvious development is the absence of the ground taper to the top and bottom turns so that each end of the spring is flat & parallel. The newer, cheaper design means that the ends of the spring do not sit flat and are therefore subject to more stress, although the bottom one sits in a tapered 'cup'. Less obvious is the lower grade steel in use. I and my colleagues still do not think that this should be happening, I still intend to contact VOSA - I wonder how many accidents have been caused by catastrophic suspension failure??? (SWMBO cacked herself when it went bang, and feels that she may well have crashed if she had been at the wheel:eek:)

Thanks to all for your input, and especially for the technical guide at Fabia vrs .com:thumbup:

Good, 2) curious maybe someone has been there already - parts description is Torx head but original and replacement were spine. 4) I think that is why seperating the O/S drive shaft from the hub is advised - also I found the spring compressors were helping the bellows to come off - but it is relatively easy to leave sorting the bellows until the strut is secured to the turret. 6) I wonder when these bearings start to get rough - couple of years maybe!

Incidently, a few weeks after fixing mine, I was in my VW dealer's parts department and what looked like a mechanic from a non-franchised garage had just been handed a new top mount - he looked confused because it was nothing like the old one he had in his hand - his one had the top of the bearing assembly still stuck to it - he took a lot of convincing that it was okay and that he should now buy a new bearing to go with the top mount. Must say I had been momentarily a bit confused when I compared my new bearing with the old one with its missing top bit!

I fully support your comments on substandard materials being used, back in 1986 Ford used black paint on its OHV engine steel sumps and they lasted okay, in 1994 Ford used grey paint on its OHV engine sumps and they became porous after about 6 years. I had to buy a new sump, wiped it with a degreaser before covering it with Hammerite - the grey paint wiped off! VX also had this problem as I'm sure others - a lot of people fixed their cars by buying older sumps from scrap engines! Thank goodness for aluminium sumps - that problem has been solved!

I have just had the joy of this both front springs broken top and bottom and both top mounts FUBAR. Came to a total of 206 quid for my friendly Skoda indie to sort. MOT soon though so he checked the ARB etc and gave it all a clean bill of health.