Fiat Scudo Van - Broken Front Spring

[Burnerman]

This is pretty common with struts that clamp into the hub with a pinch bolt.....its common place to slacken the driveshaft nut to allow the shaft to retract just a bit - you don't want the driveshaft coming out from the gearbox because the oil will pee out
Of course you'll need the wheel back on to allow you to slacken the nut, which is a bore. I use a pinch bar on the lower wishbone just to lever things down a bit.
John

 

[woodbine]

Sorry John. but I'm slightly confused. Where will I find the driveshaft nut? Will I need to remove a rubber boot? Do I need to put the wheel back on and lower wheel to ground? Not sure how this will work, as there is no strut to hold things up.

If I lever down a little bit on the wishbone without undoing any driveshaft nuts, will this make the driveshaft pop out? I don't need to go down too much. Couple of inches approx.

Hope this is still within my capabilities!

Also, when you say 'This is pretty common with struts that clamp into the hub with a pinch bolt', mine isn't the pinch type, it's just two bolts - nothing clamped - unless you were referring to other cars in general.

 

[Burnerman]

The driveshaft nut is bang in the middle of the hub and disc....hopefully it will be a hexagon but that's not guaranteed! It will be tight and you'll need a long bar and socket to shift it.
However, just lever the wishbone down a bit first and keep an eye on the CV joint boot just to ensure it doesn't pull away from the CV joint itself. I'm sure that's what usual mechanics would do!
The pinch bolt I'm referring to is the 'other' way of securing the strut to the hub - its actually more common than the two bolt variety you have.
Hope it goes well!
John

 

[woodbine]

Thanks John. Will give it a go tomorrow. I will try a small careful levering first. It's almost there.

I can foresee possible problems trying to remove the driveshaft nut. The van is on jacks on the front corner, but I'm presuming I need the wheel back on and it bearing down on the ground to turn the really tight nut - but I can't really put any weight on the wheel because there's no suspension/strut on that corner. So if I just lower the van a bit and have the tyre just touching the ground, the tyre may slip on ground as I apply force. Also, when I apply force, the van will be rocking on the jacks.

It all came apart so easy!

 

[Burnerman]

Just thinking about this, you know.....on your two bolt system, you can lever the hub / wishbone assembly down until the bolt holes line up.
With the pinch bolt system, you have to lever the assembly around 60mm lower than normal for the strut to engage - that's a huge difference and once located the assembly settles back to its normal position again.
I'd just crack on with the levering because it has to be the same as the vehicle dangling in mid air with the jacks under the sills.
John

 

[woodbine]

Will give it a very careful levering, no more than needed. This time tomorrow, it'll either be up and running or I'm going to be mopping up gearbox oil. Watch this space!

 

[woodbine]

Success!.....................But it needed one final trick.

Pushing down on the disc/hub still wasn't buying me enough gap between the hub/driveshaft and turret top to get the strut standing up and at the right angle to locate at the top. Then I remembered something I had read on the internet in the last few days when researching the subject.

It concerns the anti-roll bar. Because the other front wheel was on the ground, the weight was putting torsion on the a/r bar and forcing the suspension on the side I was working on upwards. Jacking up the other front wheel so it was off the ground took the twist out of the a/r bar and lowered the suspension I was working on enough to get the strut in and bolted top and bottom.

Must admit that I was ready to throw the towel in before I tried this last ditch move. To anyone changing struts, it's worth having both front wheels off the ground, or maybe even disconnecting the a/r bar.

I torqued the two big bolts that hold the strut bottom to hub up to 100 lb/ft as this is the torque used by someone on Youtube doing the same job, but on a car. They were very tight when I originally undid them. The top smaller bolts weren't so tight, so I did them by feel.

Thanks for all your help, John. Got their in the end with your help. Much appreciated.

 

[Burnerman]

Good point you've made there.....automatically these days I have both sides of the vehicle jacked up - it seems kinder to the bodyshell somehow!
No matter, so pleased the job is done and you've saved a good few quid too.
Here's an unenviable scenario concerning a Peugeot 407 with a broken spring. The spring has wider coils at the centre and smaller at the bottom, so when it snaps the spring slides down the strut. On the way down it 1) Punctured the tyre 2) Chopped through the hydraulic brake flexy hose 3) Chopped through the ABS wire 4) Punctured the CV joint boot
I guess it wasn't my day!
Regards
John

 

[woodbine]

That's what happened to mine. Snapped near the bottom and a horse shoe shaped piece of spring fell off. This left the rest of the spring to slide down the strut, jamming itself hard against the inner wall of the tyre.

Luckily it wasn't the sharp part of the spring where the break was that pushed against the tyre, so no damage to tyre. Luckily again, the spring didn't touch the flexi brake pipe or the pad wear sensor wires (no ABS fitted). Even the CV boot escaped damage. However, it did slightly graze the steel brake pipe near where the flexi joins it on the inner wing . The pipe wasn't deformed at all, the the protective coating was scraped off, so I put some Hammerite on it to protect from corrosion. Only an area 2" long was grazed.

Sounds like I got off lightly and cheaply compared to the Pug. Paid £58 for the Monroe spring plus compressors for a tenner. Should have got better compressors, but the Ching Chong ones I bought took all the abuse without problems.

Was a real pain though because when I first discovered it, the van was parked at the bottom of a long, narrow driveway. Because the spring was hard up against the tyre, you couldn't steer and it was virtually impossible to move the thing. Don't know how it would have come out of there to be towed, so was really forced to do it myself, in situ. When I first discovered it, I let the tyre down to relieve the pressure on it, but there was still pressure anyway. When I removed the wheel, there was no way I could have got it back on with the strut in place.

The joys of car maintenance.

Ian

 

[Burnerman]

Most people run a mile from suspension repairs so I reckon you've done very well there!
Hope the van serves you well
John

 

[woodbine]

One think I forgot to ask, John or anyone else knowledgeable - one of my efforts to get the suspension lower to get the strut in lead me to undo the track rod end and pop it out at the ball joint (this proved futile, by the way).

In the past, the nuts that hold the t/r ball joint in have a split pin and castellated nut. This didn't have these, just seemed a tight fit all the way whilst undoing.

Can you re-use these nuts? Should I have used thread lock on it? I just reassembled and torqued the nut to the Fiat specified torque - 50 nm. Is this all I had to do?

 

[DaveHerns]

Ideally you'd use a new nut, in practice probably what you did. A bit of threadlock wouldn't go amiss next time you're working in that area

 

[Burnerman]

The original track rod end would have a Nyloc nut.....by all means reuse them a couple of times with no harm.
Thread lock can be used and can't do any harm - I just tighten them fully.
John

 

[woodbine]

OK, thanks gents. Will put some thread lock on, and check torque after a while.

One thing that surprised me was when I was at my local Fiat dealer for something else. I was in the middle of the strut job, and whilst I was there, thought I would ask for the torque settings. They looked it up for the t/r end nut and said it's 5 daNm. So I asked what the 'da' bit meant, and he went away and asked someone in the workshop.

Apparently the 'da' bit means that you times the number quoted by ten. So 5 daNm = 50 Nm. Can't think of a reason to make it more complicated than it has to be. Why not just say 50 Nm? I'm sure there must be a reason for it.

 

[Burnerman]

Da is the dekanewton.....not really sure of the relevance here but I guess it's a way of breaking the newton down to more manageable figures, similar to breaking the cm down to the mm. It gives a more accurate measurement of a torque figure.
John