Suspension woes of an 11 year old Libra
Recently decided to have a good look at the suspension on my Libra, given that it's eleven years old and still on it's original Avos.
1.8VVC no anti roll, used as an everyday car, no track use.
A good few years ago the (red)front springs broke and I got some 2nd hand ones (purple!) from Dudley at the old GTM place. The rear springs are the original red one's I got with the kit.
Current situation is this:
Front shocks in a bit of a rusty state but possibly retrievable with an Avo rebuild job (and a bit of wire brushing/repaint by me).
Front springs have lost their coating and are corroded but intact.
Only looked at the driver's side thus far due to space/time restrictions.
Rear shocks are corroded towards the bottom on the extension arms but are otherwise in pretty good nick, one side has leaked a little oil. I used a set of rubber m/c fork gators to cover from the adjuster knob down to an inch or so bellow the spring bottom. This is probably why they've survived so well.
These have been sent off to Avo for a rebulid and will be tidied up cosmetically when I get em back.
Rear springs, the drivers side has corroded and broken in two places near the bottom, how long its been like that i'm not sure due to the gators covering it up - a while though
Passenger side spring is perfectly fine.
Front springs are 9.5" and rear 10.5" (1.9" ID) no rates marked on the ends. I did a bit of Heath Robinson testing using my drill press and some bathroom scales(!) to measure force and deflection - an idea I got from the net.
Now according to this very primitive test the front(DS) spring is 150lb/in and the rear(PS) spring is 165lb/in. Assuming these figures are correct this gives a number of possibilities, none of which are good.
A fresh start was what I need, so a new set of springs has been ordered from Avo. After trawling this forum and doing some hard sums
I decided to put all the possible combinations into a hat and draw one out, and the winner was:
Front 8" 250lb/in
Rear 10" 300lb/in
Given the laughably imprecise nature of the aforementioned selection process this could all end badly but at least i'll have a full set of proper working shocks and springs that I actually know what they are.
Question: Can anyone tell me what size the front susp arm poly bushes are? I fancy they could do with replacing too.
Will report back once its all back together and driven.
SAS