Front spring rubbing on wheel arch liner when turning hard.

[Axa]

I've just replaced both front springs on our 2008 Espace.

Now the left spring is rubbing on the plastic in front of it when turning hard left.

The ends of the spring is against the stop on rubber at the top and against the stop at the bottom So I can't see what I possibly can have misaligned.

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[ekjdm14]

I'm not familiar with these cars, but is it possible that the strut top was reassembled the wrong way round, placing the strut further forward than it should be? Or perhaps the strut top bearing itself is either loose/damaged?

I would, however, expect the handling of the car to be affected if either of those were true so perhaps it's more likely that the plastic wheel arch liner was disturbed during the work and is sat closer to the strut than it should be?

[Axa]

Afak the top mount is symmetric so it does not make any difference what way around it is mounted.



The bearings was fine except as usual not having more then a thin string of grease on the balls. And rust had been starting to sneak inside.
Probably just according to the calculations by head of production assembly to reduce the life span to as short as possible to guaranteed life [emoji35]

The bearings are now filled 100% with marine grease that will keep moisture out and probably make the bearings last for the rest of this cars life.

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[ekjdm14]

Hmm, yes it does look like it fits either way (probably another design "feature" like the minimal grease, but this time to aid the "trained tech" monkeys at the stealership. They can't fit it backwards if there *is* no backwards!)

Seems you've been pretty thorough then, and that leaves my ideas limited to either the plastic being closer to the spring than it used to be, or a very small possibility of the new springs being slightly bigger in diameter but then it surely would affect both sides... :/

Actually, what are the circumstances of you changing the springs? If it was a simple cracked spring repair then I'm out of more ideas but if there was any additional impact that caused the broken spring perhaps it's possible that a lower arm is distorted or even the damper shaft bent slightly (if that was true, you could test it by loosening the top nut & turning the damper shaft through 90* or 180* and see if the spring still touches.

I suppose it's worth getting the wheel alignment checked/reset anyway seeing as the front suspension has been in pieces & that would tell you a great deal in regards to any other potential wear/damage

[Axa]

I bought the car with a bad spring. And since it's a known weakness and the owner did not know when and anything about why it broke, I did not look for/expect any further damages.
The spring seat on the dampener did look OK to me. And the new springs looked very similar to the old one.
I replaced the other spring to since they dont cost much and I wanted to lube up ther bearing on both sides.
Also it's good to have an old spring as a spare just in case. It turned out the good spring was broken to, but just in the tip of the lower end.

The angles are fine. (3mm toe out)
Checked with the old, trusty and cost/time effective string and spirit-level metod



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