Steering heavy

Hi Guy's..

A bit of a long shot, but about 6 months ago I changed the steering rack on my mothers C3 and it's started to play up again (gone really heavy). I have taken the motor off and the motor seems to be working OK.

Now for the interesting bit, she phoned me the other night and told me that she'd heard a loud bang (It turned out to be the bottom of the front N/S spring had broke through the holder on the shocker (just like the spring it's self has turned)..

My question is, could the top of the shocker (where it fastens into the inner wing) be that tight that it would affect the steering like that? which in turn, would cause the spring to turn (when the steering wheel is turned)?

Any help or advice please...

Many thanks

Ash

Hi ASH

There is a 'thrust' bearing that the top of the spring acts on to allow the spring and strut to rotate as the steering angle changes. I would imagine the steering would feel stiffer/power steering work harder if the bearing has collapsed. As for winding the spring off the strut mounting, I have no idea, but sounds good. The early cars had a modification to fit a large cup to the lower spring mounting on the strut to stop the spring coming off if it broke.

There is a picture of the bottom of the cup in the picture on this post.


There are lots of Citroen C3 suspension top bearings (on eBay) and a common MOT failure point, apparently.