Omega Owners Forum
Omega Help Area => Omega General Help => Topic started by: paul.c on 04 September 2006, 22:11:40
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my car failed its mot on a rear spring that had snapped (you know the bit little pigs tail at the bottom)..anyway i read the h*ynes w/shop manual and just could not be *rsed. so i took it to my local garage and the guy said yeh just take a seat itll probably be a while. imagine my surprise when the guy came back after what seemed like ten minutes. thats it pal call it a tenner he said. how could you possibly have done that so quick i asked. simple he said...jack the car up. wheel off. hacksaw off old spring. compress new spring (with spring compresors) tie it tight with cargo straps. undo the compressors. stick it in the hole jack up the rear suspension undo the straps. and bobs yer uncle.....i had to laugh at the cheek of it.. if i tryd it myself i would probably end up on mars....what do you think.. :o
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Bit slow if you ask me ;D
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Clever...
Just wondering if space was too tight to use spring compressors on the old springs for removal, instead of hacksawing them off? Or would it have taken longer this way...?
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could you use shortened ratchet straps to compress the spring? not sure never done one but seems a logical idea.
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theres definatly not enough room for spring compresors
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i recon you could use shortend ratchet straps
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Clever...
Just wondering if space was too tight to use spring compressors on the old springs for removal, instead of hacksawing them off? Or would it have taken longer this way...?
The old springs were Donald Ducked so why struggle to remove the rest of them whole?
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I used a similar method once on a Renault where there was absolutely no room for spring compressors, cutting the old one out was easy (I used the hot spanner)(oxy) then used ordinary spring compressors to shorten the new spring before wrapping loads of nylon webbing around it and getting it into the gap as quickly as possible. I treated it like a live bomb, Im sure it would have taken my head off if it let go.
The problem with this sort of technique is that if anything does go wrong you have huge amounts of strored energy and no way of controlling it. If you drop an uncompressed spring it will fly off in any direction, now add say, 1 ton of stored energy and think of the damage it could do to bodies, the workshop, the car etc.
Another problem with modern springs is that most of them are rising rate, ie the outer turns need less force to compress them than the inner turns. When you apply spring compressors you cant clip onto the outer coils because of reduced access, you tighten the compressors until the centre coils are closed up completely but the outer coils just expand to fill the gap and the spring still wont come out.
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could be dangerous