Rear suspension overhaul - How far do you go?

R

Rovertron

Member
I've trawled through the mine of information on here which is full of very useful nuggets.

However, my P6 needs perhaps it's most radical work to date yet (for me). The rear suspension needs an overhaul. The rear springs are getting very soft, almost nauseous when I hit a dip. Looking at the rear hub caps and measuring them against the rear wheel arch, the car is starting to list to one side at the rear, only by a couple of inches but that's not good. I'm getting worried about handling and also next March's MOT when a fail is a possibility.

I should say, I'm not doing this myself, I had a torrid time with an old classic Mini once and I swore to myself never again. So it'll fall to a local specialist, probably Cox and Buckles in Wimbledon. They replaced the front shocks for me and did a great job.

I would like my local garage to do it but I don't think they've quite forgiven me for asking them to fit replacement engine mounts. Is a rear spring replacement fairly straightforward?

Now I've figured while they have the suspension out, there's a number of things that I should get done at the same time.

These are:

Rear springs of course.
Rear shocks (although I think these are fine)
Rear suspension bushes (these are polyflex but I'm thinking to return to rubber to soften the ride)

Suspension is not my forte at all, is it possible to get that lot done as part of fitting new springs?

I would also like to add changing the UJ bushes as I'm not convinced that a tightening of the UJ mount bolts sorted a jolting gearchange problem entirely. Can I add this to the list too?

The rest of the rear suspension is fine, the DeDion tube was replaced only 3,000 miles ago.

I've gleaned from the other threads here, that we are spoilt for choice. I am after stock parts as close to the originals as possible. Can anyone recommend suppliers to me? I usually use Weekly or Wadhams but I've learnt that springs are something of a specialist item. I have no idea on how much this will cost, I have a budget of about £500. Would this be enough?

Can anyone help?

Many thanks
 
The springs are easy enough to replace, there are two main types available normal and progressive. If you are after a firmer ride, carry heavy passengers or tow - go for the progressive. I would estimate about 4 hours work for an experienced garage and thats being generous.

Not sure I agree with your diagnosis, if the back end is floating (nauseous when I hit a dip) this could well be worn shocks - they resist virtical movement and worn shock ussually result in a floating sensation.

I would also keep the poly bushes, these are expensive and provide a much better ride and handling. The garage would also need a suitable hydrolic press to fit new ones.
 
As rubber bushes wear out, I'm considering a full polybush kit as front & rear suspension on our V8 need attention & I think I may as well go the whole hog including the crossmember, springs, shocks (load-levellers on the rear), though I'm not sure how firm the ride will be with all this. We do tow so I suppose progressive springs are called for. Our 2000 has a polybushed rear end with prog' V8 springs & shocks (gas filled up front) & runs with low-profile Yokohamas on Revolutions. She holds the road like s**t to a blanket & is a VERY hard ride but I don't think I want the V8 feeling that firm, though the wheels probably make a big difference. I didn't fit the bushes so I don't know what grade they are. What do you bods think?
Hydraulic press? How hard are the bushes to fit. I want to do as much of the work myself as possible as the whole fleet needs attention & parts are going to be needed so I can't afford to get garages involved too much, though I know I will need help with the front springs. ???
 
I fitted ploybushes to my 2000 rear last summer.
remove completely the suspension part from the car and go out side with a good blow torch and burn the rubber from the old bush
Return to the garage and with a sharp chisel and hammer or if your clever you can use a hack saw ( take the blade out of the frame, pass it through the middle of the bush and fix it back to the frame) and cut the old outer metal sleeve away. Clean the bush housing and remove any burrs and damage.
Now you need a big vice and/or a long bit threaded road, nuts, washers and you can use eithet the vice or the rod to pull the bush into place - pretty sure there was instructions to do this with.

Watch out for weak de-dion elbows where the bottom link attaches mine looked great until I removed the link - had to get new ones. :)
 
A Hydraulic press makes the whole job a lot quicker, if you remove the parts pop down to your local garage they usually have one (mine does) it will take them minutes to replace the bushes rather than a couple of hours with the burning/hacksaw method - I have tried both, and whilst the blowtorch method was cheaper, it was also smellier (I didnt take mine ouside, filled the garage with acrid rubber smoke!) and a lot more hassle!
Cheers
AL
 
Thanks guys, much appreciated.

The De-dion elbows were my first concern when I went to look at the car and on hearing the rear suspension had items replaced on it; I had a very thorough look at it . The new items then were a complete overhaul of the De-dion tube, new oil, seals and he had poly-flexed all the bushes, only he had forgotten to tighten up the rear diff mount bolts as I found out some time later, the springs were not replaced as well.

So my confidence in the current set-up is a little shaken.

With all this helpful advice, I'm leaning towards having new shocks and springs. I'll stick with the polyflex bushes then seeing as they are difficult to replace.

From what I have picked up so far, probably Munroe Original shocks and normal rear springs.
 
How hard is it to fit polybushes to the lower radius arm where it joins the De Dion elbows? I fitted them to the upper radius arms and they kept popping out as I wound up the vice
I was thinking of cheating and cutting them in half !
Dave
 
Dave
You need to either draw the bush all the way in using a long bit of threaded rod and packing piecies or make sure you use the same in the vice - on the exit side you need a tube big enough to allow the bush to exit while pushing in from the entry side, on which you need to support as much of the bush as you can with the vice. or press - I used sockets as the tubes! I do recall the odd slippery bush -ooh err--- poping out but it was not to difficult a job. And i'm to tight to pay a garage to do it!
Take the arm off the car of course!
I left my socks ans springs alone on the 2000, its only done 70K (gen) and the ride/handling is ok
 
If that's the case I need a bigger vice. Mine doesn't open far enough. You don't like my idea of cutting the bushes in half then. They can't fall out and it must be better than the fossilised rubber bushes currently fitted.
Think that's a job for next year
 
I have an old record No4 vice - probably opens to 5 inches > but you should be able to do the job using long threaded rod and spacers/washers etc. I would not personally cut the bushes in half - probably good technical reasons for not doing so.
 
Just to tidy this one up. In the end I got some progressives from Ray Weekly after a recommendation from Colin at Kingsbury Garage.

I think they came in just under £100. I got my local garage to put them in as they said it was an easy enough job (relatively speaking!).

All I can add is wow, what a difference! The car is sitting up properly (I had to adjust the back of the drivers seat!) and the handling is much improved. The shocks were fine so I left those as is, more a financial consideration than anything else.

To make things even better, the car sailed through the MOT with no observations. Back of the net!
 
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