3/21/14 8:49 AM

Dan, you're lucky the Peugeot 404 did not have any suspension incidents. Although it was very robust, it had an odd front strut design, with a flat roller bearing pivot in the spring perch. When that bearing rusted, the vehicle would steer by twisting the spring instead of pivoting, intermittently trying to steer into the ditch, and at other times resisting turning at all. You could solve this with a big hammer and a squirt of oil, but it was scary.

I used to love Peugeots, but the cylinder heads warped if you looked crooked at them.

What a drifty thread, but I hope April comes back soon with a picture of her broken shock.

3/21/14 2:04 PM

quote:

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hope April comes back soon with a picture of her broken shock

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3/21/14 2:57 PM

nm.

3/21/14 8:47 PM

That looks to me more like a broken axial instead? ;-)

3/22/14 1:02 PM

My wife had one just before we got married. One of the prettiest cars I ever saw, but also one of the least reliable. I lost count of the number of things that went wrong, but three stand out in my memory. The steering knuckles seized to the point where the car couldn't be driven. A fitting in the Weber carb kept falling out squirting gas onto the exhaust manifold. And confirming Sparky's story, she hit a bump and the driver's seat dropped down through the floor pan. I used to drag race my Karmann Ghia against her 850. No one else knew we were racing.

3/23/14 7:20 AM

Ah, yes, the joy of watching the road surface zipping by six inches below your butt through the rust holes in the bottom of a Fiat 850 Spyder. That brings back memories!

Fiat is back, and I couldn't resist picking up a 500 cabriolet. It is just so cute and, importantly, easy to park in Manhattan!

3/23/14 9:30 AM

Fiat is back, and I couldn't resist picking up a 500 cabriolet. It is just so cute and, importantly, easy to park in Manhattan!


I will stick with last century vesion, my 94 Del Sol ;)

But those 500s are way cool, and I love the colors.

How are you liking the little convert??

3/23/14 9:32 AM

April, what is your car that got damaged? I forget what you got after,.. Camry, was your last car IIRC?

Last edited by Sparky on 3/23/14 10:03 AM; edited 1 time in total

3/23/14 9:47 AM

Continuing the thread drift while awaiting a picture, I will mention that like PLee, I also had a few cars with very porous floors. The worst was probably an old Peugeot 403 station wagon, in which it was necessary to be careful what you put on the seats because if something fell off it would disappear forever. It had a very poor heater, but in the worst of winter it did better because the carpets froze solid, and the water that splashed in from everywhere formed a relatively solid floor. In spring the waters would part and small objects would vanish again with a little clink when they hit the pavement.

3/24/14 8:02 AM

April, perhaps I missed this detail while skimming this long thread, but was the broken shock for the same wheel that you experienced a damaged tire last summer due to a large pot hole?

3/24/14 12:30 PM

JS makes a good point. Perhaps some damage was done and not noticed. A bushing damaged or a part cracked or weakened. Hitting a pothole hard enough to damage a wheel is a pretty hard hit.

3/24/14 12:36 PM

We will have to wait until April is off Piste to see the answers to these question... Bet she is having a ball on packed power as we speak...

3/24/14 8:26 PM

Indeed, there's still tons of snow in Vermont, and it's staying cold. Ski on.

3/24/14 9:39 PM

Sorry for the delay.

Yes, I had a great weekend skiing at Stowe, very enjoyable and very long days! But I'm totally dead tired, and got home really, really late yesterday. So didn't bother looking at the shock until today.

Looks like one end of of the chamber wall was cracked/broken off... It's not as obvious to my eyes whether that's the actual damage. Also, I didn't get ALL the pieces. So it's not certain if the mounting part of the shock was intact or not.

I took picture at the waning daylight hours so image wasn't great. And I'm missing the cable to download the picture. Maybe tomorrow, I'll be able to post picture. Right now, I need to catch up on some sleep.

Quick answers to some of the speculative questions:

- it's a shock, not a strut.

- obviously, the frame side of the mounting hardware must be alright, or the shop guy wouoldn't be able to mount the new shocks.

Till I got around to post the mirky picture (or take a better quality one), will have to leave it at that for now.

Oh yeah, it IS on the same side as the wheel that was damaged by pot hole earlier.

3/30/14 11:59 AM

Not the best image and some trouble pulling it up to the computer...

3/30/14 12:12 PM

I bet that pot hole hit creased the outer body, so that was a hard hit I am betting. Looks like possibly a crease in the outer body got a rust thing going on. That shock was bad a long time before this picture I would wager. ;)


So what got the USB connection remedied?

3/30/14 12:44 PM

Yeah, looking closer to the remain of the shock, it looks like it had seen better days.

3/30/14 4:33 PM

I can tell you that April's car looks a lot better on the outside than that!

Though I'll confess I've never looked at my shocks.

3/30/14 4:45 PM

Quite a good enough picture for the occasion, I think. It looks as if the shock was seriously rusty for some time before the failure.

I wonder if the previous impact that harmed a wheel cracked the body of the shock too, because it looks very much as if water got inside it, where you would otherwise not expect to see anything but oil and inert gas. So not only did the shock lose its fluid, stop absorbing and eventually break apart, but it smashed up the rubber bump stop too.

If I were you I'd check soon underneath to see how everything else looks, because the shock in the picture looks like something that came out of a rusty and heavily used car.


Anyway, I bet your car rides better now than it did for a while.

3/30/14 6:19 PM

Still trying to understand what was going on... (just out of curiosity)

So for some reason, there's rust on the inside, even though the outside of the body didn't show any rust. How come?

Or was it because the outer body made of material that doesn't rust?

3/30/14 6:56 PM

Sounds like the seal between the outer body and the inner shaft failed and allowed water to get inside the shock. Thus rust inside (pooling, and it doesn't drain) and corrosion from within.

How many miles on the shocks ? This is a BMW ?. Not sure of the typical mileage for these vehicles, I've seen 140K in an Outback but that was probably about 40,000 past when you might typically need replacement and is completely dependent on the style of driving, typical road conditions, etc...

Usually you start to notice effects like "pogo'ing", or the vehicle bouncing up and down after a bump, that the shocks are done. Or loud "clunks" after hits. Pogo'ing is a result of the spring working but no rebound control (old shocks). Hits might result from the suspension bottoming out as a result of no rebound at all, itself a result from no/little hydraulic fluid in the shock. Body roll, poor handling, nose dive, are all signs of old shocks, but are hard to diagnose when the shock/struts slowly fail as you don't notice the symptoms.

3/30/14 8:44 PM

> How many miles on the shocks ? This is a BMW ?. <

Yes, it's a beemer. 100k even.

So the shock was probably just about due, and one of those hard hits just did it?

3/30/14 8:55 PM

Yeah, looks like the shock was about done. And with this the condition of one shock, I'd be doing all around, shocks in rear, probably struts in front.

My Outback would have been about a grand, with a BMW, Probably $1200 to $1500 ? and that's at Pep Boys or some hack shop. Probably more at a dealer, sorry to say.

3/30/14 9:01 PM

I can get parts at fairly big discount, and a trusted shop to put them in. (bike club buddies)

3/30/14 11:02 PM

Those rear shocks look very easy to replace, so I'd guess labor is not a big element there, though if they're Bilsteins for a BMW they might be a bit pricey. At 100K I would have your front struts (I'm assuming struts here) looked at but would not automatically assume they're in need of replacing yet. It all depends on circumstances, of course, but these days a lot of struts are good for that and more.