Vauxhall suspension problems

[Surfer]

I was reading through this thread and was rather taken aback. We have been considering purchasing either a 2.0L diesel auto Vauxhall Insingnia or a Astra Sport tourer, but now have doubts! Has any one experienced this? Imagine it happening with a caravan in tow. The mind boggles!

 

[JonnyG]

Yes, ford mondeo 2006 model last year replaced both fronts. Two years earlier ford galaxy 2001 model, replaced both rears.Although in both cases only one broke.
So you can write off Vauxhall, Saab, ford, VW, seat, Audi, Skoda. based on just vauxhall and my Fords.
But who else could you write off a list of possible vehicle suppliers? based Again on such a minute number of people experiences compared to the 100,000s of that specific vehicle sold? In your case Surfer I didn't see one post concerning the Astra? but even if i did
How many Astras are out there and exactly what is the failure rate? And which car company has never had a failure ?
These topics led to more questions, than actual answers, i am afriad to say.

 

[Hazzar]

Hi i worked at a vauxhall dealer as a machanic for 4 years and never heard of an accident caused by a broken spring .It is common on most cars these days springs breaking a lot of people are blaming the increasing amout of speed humps about.Most of the springs i have replaced were unknown to the driver they usually break either at the top or bottom of the spring where they mount on the car in most cases its just areas that hold water and the springs rust through most are only discovered at mot .Hope this helps.

 

[ProfJohnL]

I have to concur with JonnyG on this one.

I guess that for every report of a spring failure there must be several hundred cars of the same model, age and milage that have had no problem with thier springs.

Most spring failures do not result in an loosing all control so you usually have enough conntrol to safely stop. The number of spring faults that result in an incident are likely to be no more than the number of drivers who experiecne a blow out.

My brother in law who owns and runs an independant garage tells me that sprng failures are definitely up since the indtroduction of speed humps, but whilst it is easy to link the two facts, there could be other factors that maight also explaine the rise in both. There are more cars on the roads than ever before, so even with the same failure rate, there will be more actual numbers of fails, secondly changes in design of suspension, and as was mentioned on the other forum surfer points to, the method of forming springs may have changed, and of course there may be particular batches that may not have been manufactured correctly.

If we assumed that we would expereince every possible failure mode then we would have no confidence in any car at all.