Coil spring not fitting!

Hi all.

My mechanic is trying to fit a new coil spring to my C3. I had one break, so bought 2 new ones, but neither of these would fit properly, being about 2-3 inches too tall, 'bowing out' and rubbing on the body.

Double checked with a parts dealer, checked numberplate, etc, and tried buying a different make. But once again, this spring once in place is bowing out.

Comparing the new ones to the one already in place you can see it is taller. What is going on?

mazmak wrote:Hi all.

My mechanic is trying to fit a new coil spring to my C3. I had one break, so bought 2 new ones, but neither of these would fit properly, being about 2-3 inches too tall, 'bowing out' and rubbing on the body.

Double checked with a parts dealer, checked numberplate, etc, and tried buying a different make. But once again, this spring once in place is bowing out.

Comparing the new ones to the one already in place you can see it is taller. What is going on?

Hi mazmak,

Have a read of all of this topic about springs. It could describe the same problem you are having and has plenty of photos to help. It turned out to be the wrong spring supplied


Difference in springs in the C3 - wrong and correct shown.

Thanks for that Arfur. I'd seen that thread and that's what seems to be happening. I've tried 2 different suppliers now, 2 different makes and the result is the same. All I can now think of is that the previous owner changed the struts, but for why I don't know as she was an old lady. Looking online it seems the springs for a 1.1 are the right height. I've got a local breakers yard who's got a couple of complete 1.4 struts so I might get them and just swap the whole lot over.

mazmak wrote:Thanks for that Arfur. I'd seen that thread and that's what seems to be happening. I've tried 2 different suppliers now, 2 different makes and the result is the same. All I can now think of is that the previous owner changed the struts, but for why I don't know as she was an old lady. Looking online it seems the springs for a 1.1 are the right height. I've got a local breakers yard who's got a couple of complete 1.4 struts so I might get them and just swap the whole lot over.

If you have a decent number of miles, it can pay to do the struts while you do the springs. Its only a bit more labour because the springs and struts need to come out for either job anyway,

You can get the springs and matching dampers from this link to euro car parts and then find springs on the site too. I am not sure second hand dampers, protection kits, or top mountings would be a good choice considering the work to replace them when they do wear out.

But please let us know how you get on and which option worked for you, your car, the donor car and those things that could help others the face a similar strange problem

It's only done just over 30k - the old lady didn't use it much, which is why I can't understand why the struts would've been changed. No history of accidents.

What I was thinking was getting the struts from the breakers, taking the bearings etc off them and replacing them with all the bits from the struts already in place. I had to get new o/s bearings and mount anyway as the spring breaking had caused some damage.

mazmak wrote:It's only done just over 30k - the old lady didn't use it much, which is why I can't understand why the struts would've been changed. No history of accidents.

That's a shame it happened on such a low mileage.