Rover 75 front suspension strut

I have been working my way gradually through some of the minor faults and annoyances which came with this car and I have just got to a noise from the steering as you turn the wheel at low speed.

It is a twang from the suspension spring as you turn it one way, then another as you turn it back, close to the straight ahead position of the wheel. This I understand is because of the bearing or bush on top of the strut being slightly tight, then suddenly releasing. It works smoothly the rest of the way either side of that.

Question - Can this bush or bearing be lubricated? Alternatively, if I were to jack it up and undo the three nuts holding the strut top into the turret under the bonnet, would it do any good to turn that through 120 degrees to the next position along?

I cannot see much detail of how it works from the exploded diagrams.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield
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It's more likely to be the spring moving slightly on its support. I dunno if there is some form of 'gasket' between spring and housing which could have failed. My SD1 Rover has done this from new after a cold start but then never again that day. And the same after a suspension re-build. Which included new ball bearings to the top mount - even although the originals were ok.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

It is difficult to actually see what is happening, because it is not easy to reproduce the noise and it only does it with weight on it. There is not much room to see up there or get hands in with the road wheel fitted.

A large swing left to right of the steering wheel tends not to cause it, but a small amount of gentle rocking between 11 and 1 o'clock do. The gentle you are turning the wheel, the more likely the noise.

All I know for sure is that if you touch the spring as the noise occurs, you can actually feel it twang.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Dave Plowman (News) used his keyboard to write :

After a little more investigation...

The spring ends are sleeved in a rubber cover and no sign of any movement between springs a their 'dishes' at either end. The plate (and I assume bush or bearing) which bolts under the turret can be turned but will not relocate 120 degrees due to the plate being angled to suite the angle of the turret. I am also now of the opinion that the bearing is NOT the cause.

Difficult to be certain, but - The noise seems to be entirely generated by the spring as it comes under slightly different pressure as the strut rotates and spring rotates. A tie wrap pulled tight from the top coil to the bottom one seems to help reduce the noise quite a lot.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

It's a fairly soft spring so it'll wind up quite a lot if there's any stiction in the top bearing/bush, a little rubber lube won't hurt, or if it's irritating you after that then undersealing the spring may well shut it up enough.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

Harry. I don't know if you are still following this thread. The Pipex news server has had authentication problems for just over a week and I have been unable to log in to it, so I missed this post when you first put it up.

I had a similar problem to this with a front spring 'twanging'. Turned out to be a small road chipping that had been flung up and into the 'cup' that the bottom end of the spring sits in. The spring would 'slip off' this stone and make the noise.

The only difference was that my 'twang' occurred when taking a LH bend and the offside spring (where the stone was sitting) became compressed. It may be that this is not your problem - but it would be worth checking (if you haven't already resolved the issue!).

Reply to
Ret.

Same here - although could I get Pipex to admit it was their problem? But I set up another account with AIEO - free. Others around too.

When the Giganews feed came on again today and I switched back to it (it carries some groups I want that AIEO doesn't) and downloaded all the week's stuff then deleted duplicates, the majority of what was left was spam...

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

When I contacted Pipex tech support, the first bloke I spoke to (a hard-to-understand Asian), he couldn't understand what I was talking about. I had to phoneticise NNTP so that he could go and ask someone else what a News Server was! When he came back he said that they no longer supplied support for the New Server because less than 1 in 1000 customers used it!

Eventually,via a bit of Googling, I discovered that it was an authentication problem that their technicians were 'working on'. It came back on yesterday.

I can't really complain. When I first switched to Pipex some 5 years ago, if you wanted to access Newsgroups via their News Server you were supposed to pay extra for the service. I didn't do that - but I did find that using their set-up information I could access the server anyway - and I have been doing so ever since.

When I first had the problem of not being able to access the server I wondered if I'd finally been rumbled - but I don't think they bother any more. I did send them an e-mail about the problem (pointing out the abysmal standard of service from their tech support), they replied saying that they problem should be resolved soon - and it was the following day. There was no mention of the fact that I wasn't paying for access to the news server.

I strongly suspect that Pipex users will be migrated to TalkTalk before long. If that happens I will probably switch to Sky Broadband.

Kev

Reply to
Ret.

I was never told that. Of course it may have depended on the package.

They did try and stop the news service a while back - started by restricting access to certain times of the day. And blocked the ports to the other news servers at the same time. I faxed the MD and said I'd change ISP if this continued. Got a reply saying so few used it they were trying to economise. But perhaps there were more than they thought, and vocal too as it went back to normal. They get their feed from GigaNews, so I'd guess have to pay for that.

Pipex is part of the Tiscali group which was taken over by Talktalk. The Tiscali group get news, Talktalk not. News can't cost much to run being very low bandwidth as text only, so I'd guess it would still make sense for some to offer it in a package.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I did e-mail Pipex a couple of months ago to ask about the future of Pipex. They replied stating that there were no plans to change the existing set-up. How much reliance you can place on that I don't know!

Pipex have always had a bad press but overall I've been pleased with the service. A couple of years ago I decided to switch to Sky BB but when I contacted Pipex to ask for a MAC code they offered me an improved package for less money (with the first 3 months free). I've got unlimited download BB and free 'Anytime' telephone calls for £12.98 a month which seems to compare well with anything else I've looked at.

Reply to
Ret.

Dave Plowman (News) brought next idea :

Seems not to be a very logical argument for blocking it - very few using it, hence very little bandwidth occupied, so throttle it. Similar happened on Tiscali. They throttled it and eventually closed their server down. I subscribed to September.org (free) and bypassed Tiscali's throttling using a none standard port. All works fine now and fast.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

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