Focus Mk1 front suspension spring

No safe way, but you could probably hire a set, or take the strut into a garage and get them to change it. I stopped using the wind up type compressors and now use a hydraulic floor mounted type, far safer and quicker. Haven't you still got a press, that could be adapted. A car spring suddenly released easily has enough power to kill.

I've heard of ty-wraps being used to compress the spring...

Heavy duty ones clearly, and you won't see me trying that out!

Getting the old spring off (relatively) safely is not too hard, you can get a couple of people to lean on the car while you tie the spring with thick wire or a ratchet strap or just warm the spring up till it sags, but compressing the new one while you fit it is the problem. About the only way that is feasible would be to get a long bit of heavy studding with a couple of hefty plates and use that through the new spring to compress it, then tie the spring in the compressed state and remove the studding. Rather you than me. I once had a spring bend cheapo spring compressors and get away, I saw the bit round the spring starting to slip off and quickly got a big bit of old carpet on the spring and I stood on the carpet, even though the spring was not against anything when it went I got thrown several feet, happily no injuries or damage occurred, but it easily could have been fatal or expensive.

Ebay surprised me. Only £7 for a pair of spring compressors and £14 for the spring. I thought it would be more. I'm looking forward to seeing how the car drives with the spring fixed because it's been sliding about on corners like a mad thing recently. I thought it must be the tyres but I'm now thinking the corner weight distribution must be miles out with a broken spring and that's probably what's causing it.

I doubt the loss of a bit of coil would affect the handling much. My Focus tends to lose concentration as soon as the temps. drop, I then fit the winter tyres and it goes back to normal.

I think the spring is affecting things quite a bit. The brake balance test had a 30% discrepancy at the front which the tester attributed to the spring. It was dead even at the previous MOT having just had all new discs and pads fitted. The car is noticeably lower at the front right, maybe 2 inches, so much that it also couldn't pass the headlight aim test. It's a bit squirly under braking on the road, noticeably affected by gusting cross winds and the front tyres just don't bite like they used to. Having had some experience of corner weight setting up on race cars I know how much a bit of jacking up and down can throw the weight distribution around so I suspect the front left is carrying a lot more weight now than the front right and consequently therefore also the rear right carrying more than the rear left.

Ah, so it has lost more than a little bit off the end (the most common) 2 inch down and a different spring rate would definitely alter things somewhat, although I am surprised that brake rollers show it up.

Not sure how the springs compare, but about 45 years ago I helped someone change the front strut damper on a Mk 1 Cortina by using rope as a tourniquet to compress the spring. Not that I am recommending that method, but possibly safer than using a cheap compressor?

I one had to get an industrial pipe hanger dismantled, this had a big spring made of 1 inch wire and weighing a hundredweight, with a preload of some tens of tons. After some discussion with the workshop guys, one of them simply warmed up one end of it with a gas axe. It lost its temper, but in a good way!

Remove the strut and take it to a friendly garage to fix.

Don't mess with springs without the correct tools - dangerous things.

That techniques the root of most peoples paranoia:-) It's also a lot easier with three cheap spring compressors

No cheap spring compressors in those days! And the thing about a tourniquet alongside a spring is that if you let go, the screwdriver only does half a turn before it catches again. As long as you don't let the tip slip out of course. It's compressing with jacks which is much more risky.