Coil springs

It's the tyres and wheel sizes that you should be more concerned with.

Switching away from the awful low profile tyres to a 'less sporty' size makes for a more comfortable ride. Also more resilient to potholes.

Thank you for a totally irrelevant reply. Why did you bother?

I must be lucky, I think I have only had one spring failure in 40 years of motoring. If it is an older vehicle I would be inclined to replace them as a pair, since the one on the other side may have "sunk" a little. And that would probably drive me to use cheap springs (within reason).

BMW and Ford OEM fail so may as well buy anything that comes off E-Bay cheap, it can't be any worse. Guy I used to work with got a brand new, made in USA BMW Z3. He had a spring fail within a week of collecting from Germany. Mates Fester MK6 has broke both sides on front at under

70K miles. On a 6 mile cycle ride to gym I find coil spring "tails" in the gutters and verges, I try to collect them and bin them.

I've not heard a bad report for GM springs but a quick google for "zafira broken coil spring" gets enough cases on first page to show they are quite possibly just the same shit as Ford and BMW fit.

While a search for "200sx broken coil spring" gets no actual instances, not even any for all the ones that are riding on driftworks, HSR, BC etc after market coil overs (lots made in China). Just platitudes like "A spring can break at any time and it's quite a common fault" and a Nissan Note (UK made?). So coil springs made in Japan (China?) are good. Over

200K miles personally testing them for 19 years with 3x 200SX. 10 speed humps each way daily and 2 miles of "road" that used to have white lines down the sides but now has a patchwork of pot holes and no lines. Current car has 193K on it bought with 130K, last car bought at 90K now on 135K, first bought with 80K and stripped for parts at 180K. Shocks fail before springs, first car floor rotted out (Came from Sheffield dealer = UK rust belt), springs still good. I wouldn't give a rats fart for springs made in Eastern Europe or USA.

When I was young I was puzzled why springs "sag" over a period of time. After all, they shouldn't normally be stressed to anywhere near the yield point. With air cooled British bikes I was familiar with having to replace exhaust valve springs which start the same length as the inlets and end up half an inch shorter, but they run relatively hot and I'd assumed this reduced their yield stress. When I got a chance to ask a very good industrial metallurgist he explained to me that real springs have lots of small cracks and other defects, where the stress levels are close to yield stress, so over time these regions deform plastically, resulting in shortening. And in fact motorbike exhaust valve springs shouldn't get near the creep regime (although valves are, hence the use of nimonic exhaust valves).

Thanks for the comments (well, most of them). The spring isn't broken but corroded, according to the MOT tester. I'll try to have a look tomorrow when the tyres are replace.

As for the steel's country of origin, that's difficult to tell.

Why are you bothering to apply the adjective 'sport' to a bloody zafira ?. If you can't afford a real sporty car, just stick to reading the glossy mags.

Think that tells us all we need to know about you.

Tim

Never come across even an advisory for a corroded spring. For pitting corrosion it is hard to see this being a threat to the structural integrity, and MOT testers don't do the sort of non-destructive testing that might pick up stress corrosion cracking.

Because that's what it's called.

I got one on me Fiesta last year. I haven't replaced them yet, so I'll see what they say on Friday (next test). I got the impression that it was a recent addition to the test.

You have to be aware that this car comes from a maker that has applied decals with the word "Design" to the bottom of the range Vauxhall Corsa.

And as you can see defines "sport" as being the addition of "Get that sporty look with 16-inch alloy wheels, dark-tinted windows, sports style front seats and aluminium-effect pedals. Sport is great value and great fun." So actually no more sporting than the "Design" and thus NO MORE FUN (unless its pretensions fool you into trying to to go round bends faster than the Design, then you are off on a roller coaster ride though the scenery).

And for SRI NAV they state it has "16 inch BLACK alloy wheels" but the blue car pictured on the panel has SILVER wheels. It's becoming quite clear that this car maker's design work is done by the undiscerning and blind.

You also have to remember that this car comes from a maker that called a

3 door hatchback a "sport hatch" as they had fitted rear quarter glass that didn't reach the roofline at the rear but sloped down as though it was made for a fastback and they had acquired the glass from the parts bin to fit it on to the wrong car. I call them faux fastbacks. Best not seen in the rear 3/4 view. We had a Zafira as a pool car. Worst thing I've ever driven. What was truly frighting about it was that at night on every right hand bend the white line disappeared behind the A pillar. On a road that had no kerbs with verge and hedge covered in the same grey/brown filth as the road the only indication that I was still on course was that the white line was behind the A pillar. Like all GM European products it wanted to run wide on bends and couldn't "hold a line". So the white line was unlikely to appear in the view though the windscreen which would have indicated I had turned in too hard and was driving into the oncoming lane. I can only assume that if the white line had appeared in the view though the side glass on a right hand bend it would have indicated I was going up the verge and was crashing.

I have a 1.9 SRi with the 150 bhp turbo engine. The Sport feature is performance related, not cosmetic. The SRi package is to do with the trim level.

To quite the user manual: "Sport mode SPORT mode is used to change damping, steering, throttle application and the shifting point for automatic transmission and Easytronic whilst driving. Damping and steering become more direct and provide better contact with the road surface. The engine reacts more quickly to accelerator movements."

ESP is intended to help with cornering if you drive hard. While hardly a Porsche in acceleration terms, it does pull quite rapidly in 3rd and 4th when the turbo kicks in. Overtaking is quick. I have to agree about the A pillar, which is a nuisance on right-hand bends, even in daylight.

It's a good load carrier, with bags of space inside. We've twice taken it on trips to Europe with 4 adults and 3 children aboard, and a roof box for buggies, etc. Fuel consumption is in the high forties with quick driving, but drops to

38 or so if you accelerate hard or cruise at 80 mph (legal in some countries). The engine is quiet and it's all too easy to stray over the speed limit without noticing.

One problem I have is that at 6'6" I have the seat right back, and a low sun is often in the gap between the sun visor when over the driver's door and the B pillar.

That?s an awful lot of effort to waste on a troll. (See sig).

Tim

But it elicited a lot of info from the OP.

Confirmed my personal experience re Zafria B pillar on right right hand bends. Also that's not just me being 1ft shorter as it affects tall people as well. I now think that anyone between those heights with normal trunk/leg ratio will find the same B pillar vision issue on right hand bends.

Also we have a lesson learnt. Test drive a vehicle at night and not just in daylight.

I have been forced to drive them, and they are s**te

We had a Vauxhall Moka as a loan car once when mine was in for repair. It had the ?basic? headlights and they were the worst headlights I?ve seen since the 1970s. We pulled over to check to see whether a bulb had blown as they were so unbelievably poor. It was actually dangerous to drive at night.

Tim