Broken spring

David Pertuz d.pertuz at gmail.com
Tue Jul 30 21:29:15 UTC 2019


I think I have a good idea both why my spring broke, and why I had that
perplexing strong left pull that was irregular.  (For a while earlier this
year, my car was pulling hard to the left but not consistently. E.g. I'd
leave work and it would track fine, then I'd make my first left turn and it
would start pulling.) I think my upper strut bearing was
sticking-to-seizing - this would explain both the irregular pull (there's a
static torque on the steering axis) and the broken spring (irregular spring
loading led to eventual early failure.) This came to me randomly the other
day when I was lying awake early in the morning.

David

On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 3:30 PM David Pertuz <d.pertuz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I drive my cars pretty regularly these days but 8 years sitting in
> the garage weren't the best for my SE-R. All because I thought it needed
> rod bearings, which I was obviously in no hurry for, when all the time it
> didn't. It went back on the road in 2016 and has been driven about 1000
> miles a year since then. I'm back to having good not-driving options for
> getting to work (thank God), but for the year and a half when driving was a
> huge time-saver, I alternated between the SE-R and my Accord for commuting.
>
> For sure I'm replacing both - I'll give Greg a call first.
>
> as much as I love, love, love owning and driving this car, my
> garage-to-car mismatch, number of cars, driving habits and the needs of
> this one are starting to make me wonder whether I'd ultimately be happier
> passing it on. Shocked that I'm even thinking that! If I had a free garage
> space for it I'd just park it there and slowly work on it with no rush.
>
> David
>
> On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 1:55 PM Brent Meints <brent.meints at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Trick is to drive them frequently, any car that sits is a car that self
>> destructs. Tough go on the spring, but you should be able to order from
>> about anywhere. I would replace both though at the same time as the new
>> spring won't have years of settling on it like the original spring.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 1:02 PM David Pertuz <d.pertuz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Went to move my car for street cleaning the other day, let out the
>>> clutch and....BANG!! from the front end. Whatever that was, it sure
>>> released a lot of energy, I thought. Had a pretty good idea, so yesterday I
>>> shone a flashlight under there and, yes - my left front coil spring broke,
>>> just off of the flattened coil at the top.
>>>
>>> Where does one even get stock springs?
>>>
>>> And last week, for the first time in its 27 years, it's hard to start -
>>> cranks for about five or six seconds before slowly catching, and a burst of
>>> smoke from the exhaust. It's obviously a fuel-supply issue. Sigh.
>>>
>>> My poor car needs a long layup in a garage space that I currently don't
>>> have for it, so I can give it a complete suspension/front end rebuild and
>>> take care of the dozen other small things I've never gotten to.
>>>
>>> David
>>> Chicago
>>> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Brent Meints
>>
>>
>>
>
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