Leon/Golf Mk4 - front springs

biobot

A few months back, both my front springs broke at the same time (car had been laid up for months beforehand). Car is a 02 Seat Leon, 1.4 petrol, essentially the same as the Mk4 Golf in a lot of respects, and the suspension appears to be identical.

Anyway, I went to Micks Garage, inputted my reg number, and a few options popped up. I went with the Nordic branded one, price was ok, specs seemed the same as the others, dimensions were the same as my own original ones. When they came, I used a vice grip to hold a broken spring together, and found that except for maybe 5mm difference in the height, they seemed to be the same.

Watched a few videos, and went through a few guides, there are plenty about, everything went well, it would be pretty hard to not put the assembly back together correctly. However, I thought that the front of the car was riding a bit high.

I had another look about, and found one source that says that the ride height for the Leon should be about 67cm at the front, and 67.5-68cm at the back, almost the same, dipping at the front slightly. I'm getting about 68cm at the back, but about 72-73cm at the front. So about 5cm or 2 inches too high, both sides.

This past weekend I took the left strut off again to see if I could see what went wrong, but I can't see anything wrong with the way it was put back together. Looked at a few more guides, but I'm pretty certain that it's put back together correctly.

The spring is about 33cm uncompressed, and assembled into the strut is about 27.5cm end to end. The shocks seem to be ok, the piston fully extends to about 18.5cm, 22cm including the threads.

The car went through the NCT an hour ago, and failed because the lights are pointing too high. Passed no bother on everything else.

Has anyone come across this before? Any idea what might be going wrong here?

Interslice

The 1.4 would be the lightest engine in those. Could be wrong but it might even be an aluminium block.. Anyway maybe you got 1.6 or a diesel model springs. Micks garage lump stuff together so you need to look carefully at dimensions and part numbers when ordering. Either that or they just aren't sitting right, haven't settled or are just crap after market parts.

Vagcat is was a useful wesite for getting the part numbers. I'm sure there is something similar on the go now.

biobot

The engine in mine isn't aluminium, but yeah, I guess it would be the lightest.

Are the engines so different that the springs would need to be different too? I could understand that the springs would be different between a 1.4 petrol and a 2.0L diesel, but are the 1.4 and 1.6 petrols so different that they need different front springs too?

The thing is that the springs I bought were supposedly for my engine size, and they are the same size (all dimensions), same weight, and have the same coil geometry as the original springs, so I would have thought the spring would have the springy characteristics.

Interslice

Never heard of nordic, maybe they take ages to settle... could be hard as fook. If it were me i'd take the hit in the pocket and go buy another decent set from your local motor factor. Spurious parts bought locally will at least be tried and tested by local mechanics. It will cover the chance that these are either crap springs and/or the the wrong springs. As long as you don't have the wrong spring in the back it should be job done