We heard from them on Friday.
I want to stress at no point am I bagging a product or supplier with the following topic. That is why no brand names are mentioned.
We had some trouble with our front struts on a recent trip to the outback.
With this topic I am not saying the strut was at fault on its own, there may be other influences to take into consideration.
Also I want to stress that the supplier, Wholesale Suspension from Penrith did an outstanding job in “backing” the product.
I will definitely continue to use them as my suspension specialist, they are fantastic.
The struts were 2 years old, we sent them back with a photo and description of what happened. They returned them to the Australian importer/manufacturer who has offered a full refund.
This has to be the best outcome we could have expected, and we want to thank them for the effort and time they put in on our behalf.
The strut collapsed on the road from Tibooburra to Wanaaring in western NSW.
Looking at our photo’s the car was not sitting at it’s correct ride height at Tibooburra, the bottom bush would have snapped off and the “post” would have been sitting behind it on the lower wishbone,
(if you look at the base of the strut you can see it doesnt line up with the bolt)
then the next day the “post’s” upper weld broke and the bottom of the strut itself was now wedged into the wishbone.
As you can see this is a bit of a problem, we had to drive 650km on this to get another strut to replace it, quite a drive!!
The weight of the truck kept it in place, in fact it didn’t move at all.
From our experience, we want to give a heads up on a couple of issues we believe might have contributed to this situation.
1st, The strut takes the full load of the wheel/hub/brake assembly when the suspension is at full droop. In simple terms, it acts as the bottom bump stop. When going over continuous moguls in the desert the suspension was often fully extended and the strut would have been working hard to keep the wheels from detaching from the chassis. Then add some of the rough roads, and washouts they take a hiding.
We were travelling slowly, maybe not slow enough. On graded dirt roads at a maximum 80kph, the potholes or washouts can catch you out. We did hit a few.
You still need to do 65 - 70kph plus to get on top of the corrugations; you will hit rough patches at that speed.
The worst part of the Simpson, for 2 days, we maxxed out at 20kph - we needed some momentum to get through the worst spots.
I suspect the bottom bushes may have failed (possibly before this trip) as the other one had a bit of rubber sticking out of it, like in the photo. That would certainly fatigue the welds like they did. That one also broke going over a level crossing on the black while travelling home.
2nd, We had 25mm strut spacers fitted, a strut spacer lowers the whole assembly, therefore lowering the top of the strut. If the upper bump stop is not also lowered the strut can be over compressed and cause it to fail, we are not sure if this is the case here. BUT if the strut is now acting as the limit of top travel it will not do it any good at all. Our bump stops showed a shiny surface and were being used, even so the strut would have been compressed further than it was designed to do.
If you want to raise the front using spacers that fit on top of the strut top hat assembly, adjust the bump stops to suit, or fit a spacer on the spring itself to increase the preload and leave the strut sitting in its correct position.
We don’t know exactly what caused our problems; these are just some thoughts of mine about raising IFS 4x4’s.
Macca
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