Comments on: Coil Spring Damage

By: Mr Butterscotch

Mr Butterscotch — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:17:53 +0000

Hi Shaun,

When does the clanking noise happen? Is the humming continuous or under certain conditions? There’s quite a few possible causes for both problems. I’d suggest you get to your local garage and have them look over your car as soon as you can, to avoid potential problems in the future.

By: Shaun Stepney

Shaun Stepney — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:22:32 +0000

Hi my name is Shaun. I have a Vauxhall Vectra 2.2 Elite, recently i can hear a clanking sort of noise from the rear driver side of the car, if that the the term to use, and also a humming noise coming from the car when im driving. . Is this brakes, shocks.. Please can anyone help..

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:58:55 +0000

Had my 2000 Plate Vauxhall Corsa in for MOT today and garage just phoned to say that front coil spring needed replacing and that it was best to fit a pair, when I asked how much it was I was told about £30 each have not had the bill yet so will wait to see. Reading through these posts its obviously a common problem, I have had some strange noises coming from underneath the car and had suspected something was wrong with the suspension and I do travel over about 10 speed bumps and a lot of pot holes in 1 journey to work so this will obviously not be helping

By: Ann

Ann — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:52:40 +0000

My garage has phoned this afternoon to say my 05 corsa with only 22,000 miles on the clock has failed its MOT due to a cracked road spring and its going to cost £100 + vat. Reading these comments I suppose I should be grateful it has been picked up, but I agree it is due to the growth of speed bumps, there is a particularly vicious one locally outside a school and the roads were badly affected during the winter.

By: Brian Fenton

Brian Fenton — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:17:57 +0000

So there are still some people interested – good!

I have hunted out the web page where I read the stuff. I have pasted this below. My question is for the professional car guys (who I assume are in the red) – should we be complaining to the Dep for Transport.

I have had a spring go on a 2001 Golf (the only one so far), but you would hardly have known. The car was driveable. The problem with these Vauxhall springs is that they appear to fail catastrophically and contact/burst the tyre. That is not a money issue, it is a serious safety issue and that is what gets me about the lack of interest from Vauxhall. Nigel James lived to tell the tale, but how many Vauxhall drivers have not? One post I read said that one manufacturer (not Vauxhall) had retrofitted a safety cage around their similarly designed springs to prevent the sharp end of the spring going through the tyre. That suggests some manufacturers know they have a problem.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/garage-services/126001-vauxhall-vectra-suspension-failiure-2.html

Box spanner posts:
“Last night I spoke to a spring manufacturer, he was very familier with this problem and reeled off all the makes and models with the same fault. He said that they are quite happy to make a spring for a customer to his drawing but sometimes the spring fails and they say ‘you made it wrong’ to which he would tell them how to improve the design to prevent failure.
A compression spring should be parallel but the one Vauxhall fit has the last couple of turns reduced in diameter which causes a high stress point in the spring and causes it to break. The reduction in diameter is to do away with an extra component that mates with the spring and the suspension. So the buck stops with Adam Opel who designed it in Germany. I imgine a product recall now would probably bankrupt the place. So when buying the next car avoid the one with the reduced diameter coil springs.”

By: Tony G

Tony G — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:58:39 +0000

Took my son’s 2005 Vectra C for an MOT test today and it failed on one broken nearside front and one broken offside rear spring. To be quite honest in 43 years of motoring I’ve never had a broken spring on a car. These beehive shaped units on the Vectra seem quite ridiculous to me as all the weight bears down on the narrow base of each unit.

I realise that road humps and potholes are a menace to cars these days but I cannot see this happening to my own 2002 Nissan Primera with heavy duty conventional spring units. So I’ve priced up the whole set for the Vectra (it seems logical to fit all 4 new now) at around £180 for parts alone. A totally unnecessary expense caused by poor design I would say!

By: jmcnally

jmcnally — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:41:14 +0000

Seems like there could be a common problem with vauxhalls and from previous comments doesn’t sound like vauxhall want to know? My wifes corsa only has 16,000 miles on clock, so it isn’t exactly run down. I’ve had a Toyota for 2 years and a Renault for 8 years before that and never had any problems with suspension coils. We’ll certainly now be looking to get rid of the Corsa and try to warn other people off them!

By: Rog Willison

Rog Willison — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:00:40 +0000

Vauxhall have denied there’s a problem with their coil springs; I’ve now had all 4 springs replaced and not by Vauxhall I hasten to add.
One of the rear springs failed 6 months after the front one took out my tyre. They did suggest they may offer a small discount if I had the car inspected by Vauxhall (at a cost to myself) and then depending on their findings they may discount the repair. Somehow I didn’t trust them, anyhow their repair cost even with discount would still be more than paying for a small indepenant garage charged me!
Like Mr Fenton I have vowed not to purchase another Vauxhall and take every opportunity to inform people of the lousy so called Customer Service (they should be sued under the Trade Description Act for calling it Customer Service!). Pity really since this is my sixth and last vauxhall I’ve owned. The sooner they gettaken over by a ‘real’ company the better.

By: Brian Fenton

Brian Fenton — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:38:11 +0000

I have been wanting to add some comments about Vauxhall Vectra springs to an active discussion. I have seen lots of other comments on other older discussions on the web. I have had five springs going on my 54 Vectra. It has now done ONLY 38,000 miles. The first was a couple of years ago (just outside warranry) the front LHS suspension collapsed going over a slightly rough road (30k on the clock). The end result was a new sping on front LHS and on the back and a tie rod. I also told the dealer I could smell fluid from the shocker. They ignored this. The shocker leaked oil and I got it replaced afterwards. April this year. Reversing out of garage – grinding noise and blue smoke from tyre. Front RHS spring broken rubbing on tyre (tyre was rubbed but OK). AA towed to dealer. Three new springs – two on the front and the final one on the rear. Some web sites say this is because a new sping designed in Germany introduced a tighter turn on the last two (lower) coils of the spring. It allowed a more direct coupling and saved on another component. All the weight now bears down unevenly on this point – so it snaps. Makes sense. I now no longer trust the car, as I can imagine this happening at higher speeds. All the springs have been purchased and fitted by the same Vauxhall dealer. I wrote and asked Vaxhall if they were aware of this problem and had they redesigned springs in newer cars. I told them that I had read about the design of the springs (coil turns). Over the phone they said that they didn’t comment on web sites and they weren’t aware of a general problem with their springs. I asked to talk to one of their engineers about this, and the call centre said they would pass this on, but that engineers didn’t tend to operate at ‘our’ level (wasn’t sure if that meant him, or me a paying customer). It is true that springs in other cars fail – but it could be they copied this design. However, the person that commented on the Vaixhall spring design was an ex Vauxhall mechanic, and it is very obvious looking at the back springs of my vectra that the bottom coils are not uniform in diameter. I also will not be buying a Vauxhall again. I am looking at manufacturers that have seven year warranties.

By: jmcnally

jmcnally — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:55:03 +0000

Regarding previous comment from Nigel, My wife had her 03 vauxhall Corsa MOT’d and serviced this Friday, while driving the next morning the front suspension snapped and blew the tyre (seems to be quite common on Corsa’s judging by comments on this site!!) Should this have been picked up in the MOT or could some damage have been done in the garage during MOT/service. Or is it just a coincidence it happened the morining after it had been in the garage? Any comments appreciated.