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01 Corsa rear spring questions.

Hi All,

Could someone please confirm the lower spring mounting setup on a 2001 Corsa 1.2 please?

I ask as we bought the car off her b/f's Dad when it was up in Scotland over a year ago and they had a rear spring go on them when they were up there. I think I remember them only getting one spring fitted (although that may not be true, I'll find out later when I replace them both) but one failed a couple of days ago.

The replacement springs I have here are Kilen 71056 which seem the right part from their listings and the Haynes BOL shows (rubber?) mounts top and bottom between the spring and the upper body mount and the rear arm.

My question(s) are:

When these springs break do any mountings normally stay in place? In this instance the bottom section of the lower 2.5 turns has broken off and come out (they recovered it from the road) and now the coil looks like (from what I could see from a quick look and in the rain) it's sitting 'over' what it may have been sitting 'in' previously?

Would you expect a 'new' spring to only last 12 and a bit months these days (I don't think either of them are mad drivers and take speed bumps / ramps with reasonable caution).

The gauge on the new spring is visually heaver that the broken section of spring I have in my hand? Is this a possible sign that the spring may be undersize or could it just be different manufacturing design.

Cheers and thanks for your time etc,

T i m

Reply to
T i m
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Right, had the broken side off (n/s as it happens) so can now answer some of my own questions:

In this case they had but the lower (metal) seat was only about 50% complete. The top (rubber) seems fairly ok. If they aren't expensive and in stock I may replace the top ones as well 'because'.

Scrub that. In fact it was the top section of the spring that was broken (which makes more sense in that the broken part could then escape) and had dropped through the remaining spring.

That Q still stands. ;-)

It seems the original spring wire was tapered in section near the top and had failed around the transition between thick to thin (possibly predictably).

The replacement spring is of uniform section so would presumably have less 'give' at the lighter loads?

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

Two little metal 'shims' (?) for the bottom mounts, 22 quid? ;-(

Turns out the garage in Scotland only replaced the one spring that broke. I think they only charged 50 quid for the job so that's probably about right (the new springs were 25 quid each to me).

I got daughter to do most of the job as it's her car after all. She seemed to get stuck in and was only foiled by not having enough strength to undo the wheel bolts (even with a spider) or the lower damper mounts. She would have been able to do both easily with a longer bar of course. Afterwards she said it was nice to know it had all be sorted properly (both springs now the same spec and new lower mount fittings etc).

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

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