406 Suspension 'collapse'

I had the same on a previous 306 and it happened at 60mph - quite a fright (even more so for the tailgaiter!). Thankfully it happened whilst travelling in a stright line and also covered by warranty.

Jim

Sounds quite nasty! Sounds like thspring has broken, but as you say it could be something else, May be the bottom link to the subframe lower wishbone arm, this happened to me with my escort; the bottom ball stud had actually broken, and so the whole strut was able to move pretty much any direection it wanted, which could have cost me a new drive shaft as it could have pulled it out of the constant velocity joint head at the either end of the shaft!! i wouldnt really like to think what would have happened if it had failed at speed, it certainly wouldnt be a very positive thing anyways. I'm glad it didnt, and that you are okay!

"> Is this a common fault with 406s? This one is a 99 V6 S-reg with 158k. Also

Mine went in the dark and shredded two tyres before I realised. Incidentally if it is the springs they are NOT standard for the V6 and could be a long wait, unless you local has contacts. From memory the parts, ie springs were about £80 plus all the extras.

Incidentally

Often wondered if this might be a problem. On the 406, the spring appears to be tapered towards the spring cup which is smaller than the spring diameter. Thus if the spring breaks it could slip over the spring cup and drop further than it needs to. Previous MacPherson Strut systems I have owned have straight springs limiting the likely potential collapse to one or two spring turns (and probably a lot of distressing noises).

Chris K

First report from garage suggests it's the spring but they won't know until later today. Also Peugeot have put in new computer system so can't provide parts until friday :-).

I suppose it's a result of the state of our wonderful roads - half of them full of potholes - the other half fixed at great expense and then the puddung brains come along and spend loads more taxpayers money building lumps in them.

I think the 405 has those springs that get smaller at the top as well. Weird, I'd not seen them like that until a few days ago. I'm not in the mood for thinking too hard about it at the moment, but could it be possible that such a spring might be more prone to failure?

Chris.

There was a recall in Sweden for all 605:s regardless of age and 406:s up to -99 (parallel to 605 production yrs) some year ago, due to safety issues with springs breaking due to metal fatigue in combination with corrosion.

Apparently the Nordic climate together with salt on the roads at winter time made the springs corrode and some alarming incidents cased the recall.

I got brand new springs in front of my 605 -95 for free, so I was very happy about this recall... The interesting thing was that *all* 605:s were recalled, including those old from 1990 and onwards, due to this problem...

That's kind of exceptional, isn't it? So I guess there is some kind of general material fault in the 605 & 406 up to -99 since they share the "same" components in the front suspension...

/Juhan