One fascinating aspect of life at the garage is the variety of different things that go wrong with particular cars. We seem to have little phases where we’ll have a run of similar cars with the same defects. Obviously some are worse than others and can range from a minor inconvenience to a catastrophic breakdown.

With spring well and truly here, I shall share a ’spring tale’ with you, but not of the seasonal variety.  First, it’s time for a little history lesson…

Back in the early days of motoring, before road rage, texting at the wheel and speed cameras were ever heard of, cars were pretty crude affairs. The suspension was based on the kind that a horse drawn carriage might have, with leaf springs all round and little in the way of shock absorbers. A ride over a bumpy road in your 1929 Morris Cowley would’ve been a less than comfortable experience thanks to the front semi-elliptic leaf springs and friction damper suspension. By 1949, a very clever chap called Earle S MacPherson patented a new design for an independent car suspension that was nothing short of a revelation in terms of increased ride comfort and handling. The 1949 Ford  (of France) Vedette (see below) was the first car to use the new system, and the following year, the British Mark One Ford Consul also featured the system that’s now known as the MacPherson  Strut.

Nowadays, almost every popular mass produced car uses a variation of the same system at the front, and some at the rear too. It has proved to be a wonderfully simple means of making sure you don’t bounce around when you drive over a little bump!  It works great for front or rear wheel drive cars and is easy to maintain, cheap to replace and very durable. Like many suspension systems however, it features a great big coiled metal spring that does the ’suspending’ with a hydraulic shock absorber in the middle that damps out the bounciness. The whole spring is located above the wheel by a big metal cup, and on the whole it does a very good job. As a car gets older, things get worn and rusty, until eventually they break.

Now, these springs are pretty springy indeed, and harness a lot of power when compressed. When you have to change one on a car, you have to carefully compress it and delicately remove it, taking care not to let it go as there are tales of mechanics being launched across the workshop, or losing eyes, limbs or worse from an angrily compressed spring suddenly breaking-free of its harness in a bid for freedom!

Sometimes though, they just break right where they are on the car. It usually happens when driving, perhaps over a nasty ’sleeping policeman’ or pothole. Occasionally, they break when you get in the car or when its just parked. One thing’s for sure, and that at some point, one spring will probably snap on your car, and when it does, the results can be either barely noticale, or pretty serious.

In the worst cases we’ve seen, the spring breaks when driving and the jagged broken end is propelled downwards and punctures the tyre causing a blowout and potential crash. More often though, it settles just above the tyre and the jagged end gouges a nice groove in the tyre and the owner will complain of a ‘rubbing noise’ from the front.

As you can see from this Ford, the spring had gouged a lovely groove in the tyre and was making a pretty strange noise, even though the young lady that owned it had been driving it around for a day or two like this!

Fortunately, changing the broken spring only takes around an hour and the part usually costs £40, so it’s rarely too much of a financial catastrophe, even though it also needed a new tyre.  It’s recommended to change them in pairs as when one goes, the other usually follows a few weeks or maybe months later. We probably change around  5 or 6 a week nowadays, as the speed bumps and poor roads don’t help the situation. I always make a point of showing the owner the broken piece, and they’re often pretty surprised that it happens at all.

All we need to do is to find a use for all the broken bits we have in the workshop. The smaller pieces make great paperweights, whilst the almost complete springs can be attached to the bottom of your shoes and enable you to leap over things!

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