So my wife was complaining about a banging noise with the car when going over bumps.

The Continental Op

Problem was she was complaining about the noise coming from the back of the car on the passenger side. Drove it myself and have to say she was right definite broken spring sound coming from the rear passenger side.

When I had a proper look (already had taken a look at the rear) this is what I found at the front....

So the moral of the story is don't believe your partner yourself or anyone else when it comes to working out where noises come from on the car. Just get under it and check everything.

Easy enough job. Tricky deep recess to get the nut off the top of the shock, had to use a pair of mole grips on a socket to get the allen key to hold to stop the shock rotating. First time I've ever found it easier to cut the the spring off with an angle grinder - it was jammed in place all over but no actual pressure on the spring as such. Motor factors should have the spring in the morning. Would do both but other one was only done last year singley so with that in mind for a car that only does 6 miles to the shops and back each week I don't see the point of doing the pair.

The Continental Op

Just a follow up here for anyone doing the same job on a 2004 -2012 fusion and I suspect its the same on that age of fiesta. The new spring doesn't look like it has a hope in hell of fitting. Scratched my head over it for a while but decided to compress it anyway and see if anything changed. My thought was if I took it back to the motor factors compressed with the strut I could show them it couldn't fit. LOL I was wrong once compressed the bottom end of the spring which seems to point in the wrong direction when uncompressed (up instead of down into the recess for the end of the spring) fits perfectly once compressed 😏 At least I have the excuse of not seeing the old spring in (nearly) one piece when I took it off as I cut it into 4 pieces with the angle grinder.

CreadanLady

That was incredibly dangerous to take an angle grinder to the spring. You are lucky you haven't got 20 angle grinder disc fragments embedded in your brain.

The Continental Op

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118894840#Comment_118894840

No its not. Take a look at the spring its not compressed in anyway at all. If it had been compressed I wouldn't have taken an angle grinder to it.