Ford Escort 93 feels every small bump

[cheesyhoward]

I have a Ford Escort Zetec 1.6 93/L car (83000 miles). The overall ride of the car has fallen considerably over the years. Now I feel almost every crack in the road while driving. The rear of the car seems to be worse than the front. Do I need to renew the shock absorbers or could it be the bushes? Roughly how much do the standard parts cost? I regularly check my type pressures and they are maintained at 32psi front and rear as recommended in the car manual.

Thanks

Howard

[rivolette]

You have 2 ways of deeling with this. Either get a new set of shocks/struts on al 4's, or say goodby to the old betty and trade it in for a 2004 Escort.

The second method will dramatically improver your ride comfort. The first method would probably cost you upwards of 500 euros if you do all 4. Get a mechanic to do it as it needs special tools.

Good luck either way.

[larsen_huw]

cheesyhoward,

This might sound a bit odd to you, but there's a very good chance some aftermarket shock absorbers would be cheaper than Ford ones.

Ford aren't too happy if you try and order any parts for cars over 10-15 years old ... tend not to have them in stock, and may have quite a premium on them. You might be lucky, you might not.

Aftermarket dampers cost (in the UK) about £50-100 per corner, depending on the car. Check out the websites of both Koni and Spax to see if they have anything for your car.

[rivolette]

Oh hell yeah, aftermarket parts are way cheaper. I never go to the dealer unless it's absolutely 100% necessary!

[larsen_huw]

I dunno,

Ford can be quite wierd with their pricing policy.

I swear they pick the the prices out of a hat at random! :)

Mostthings are hideously expensive, others seem to be very reasonably priced.

Back in the summer i sheared an engine mount on my '82 Capri clean in half (oops! :D ) and it was £14 for a pair of brand new replacements ... only thing was i needed it that day, so had to go down my local scrappy and pay a fiver to remove one from a scrapped car.

It's always worth checking dealer prices, for the price of a phone call you could find a bargain.

[cheesyhoward]

The Koni and Spax websites seem to only have performance / lowered suspension. Does anywhere apart from ford sell standard escort shocks?

[larsen_huw]

Originally posted by cheesyhoward
The Koni and Spax websites seem to only have performance / lowered suspension. Does anywhere apart from ford sell standard escort shocks?

Yep, that's what they sell. However when you see Ford Main Dealer prices there's a good chance you'll decide that uprating your suspension is the best thing you can do.

Buy a set of adjustable dampers for the car, and run them on their softest setting, they'll pretty much be the same as OE spec ... then when they start to get a little worn and bouncy, just click then harder a notch or 2. And there you have it, shock absorbers which'll last forever.

I know the Koni top adjustable shocks (i.e. you can adjust easily while still on the car) have 25 settings ... so that should keep you in decent suspension until the car rusts around them! :)

Open Yellow Pages (or whatever the business phone book is where you live) to 'Motor Factors' ... ring as many of the businesses as you want, ask if they have front and rear shocks for your car .... you never know until you ask. However i would think it unlikely (although not impossible).

Why do you want standard shocks anyway?

[cheesyhoward]

I thought that non standard uprated performance shocks would count as a modification to the car in insurance terms. This would result in higher premiums for a young driver like myself.

[larsen_huw]

Technically, yes.

Practially ... short of crashing into the Queen's Bentley, i can't see them ever finding out. If you ever have an accident, do you really think the insurance company will take apart your suspension to see if it's standard? If you caused a huge amount of damage (such as the Queen's Bentley!) then they might go over your car with a fine tooth comb, otherwise they won't bother.

Your car will look exactly the same from the inside and the outside, and it won't really drive any differently. How will the insurance company know?

How old are you and how many years No Claims Bonus do you have? If it really means that much to you, you could probably get them declared on your policy for not that much extra.

Failing that, claim ignorance. Say they were on the car when you bought it, and you were unaware they were modified. The insurance company can't expect you to dismantle the car to make sure every single component is standard.

NOTE TO ALL: I'm not advocating breaking the law, or lieing to insurance companies .... merely pointing out the effects of possible decisions.

[cheesyhoward]

I have obtained a few parts quotes. Monroe rears struts I can get for £23 each. Is that a reasonably good price? Which brand of non sport/lowered shocks are generally the best. I have only heard of Monroe and Sachs Boge. Also are the gas or the hydraulic type better?

I will probably get the Ford bushes because they are not all that expensive.

[larsen_huw]

Are the Monroe struts original spec, or uprated?

£23 each sounds roughly the price I'd expect to pay for OE spec dampers.

No idea about brands, sorry.

The gas type are generally better thought of than oil filled ones.

One other thing to bear in mind is labour costs (assuming you're not DIYing).

If you are DIYing, and you go for gas filled dampers, 1 piece of advice: They will come with a cable tie round them holding them compressed. If you cut this the strut will extend and be very unwilling to compress again. Leave the tie in place until you are sure you have fitted the strut correctly, then cut the tie! :)

[rivolette]

Originally posted by larsen_huw
Are the Monroe struts original spec, or uprated?

£23 each sounds roughly the price I'd expect to pay for OE spec dampers.

Wow, that's dirt cheap. The last time I bought monroe struts about 9 months ago, it costed me more like £67. That's about 300% the price of what you mentioned. And they were nothing fancy! That was the lowest price I could find in town :(


Originally posted by larsen_huw
If you are DIYing, and you go for gas filled dampers, 1 piece of advice: They will come with a cable tie round them holding them compressed. If you cut this the strut will extend and be very unwilling to compress again. Leave the tie in place until you are sure you have fitted the strut correctly, then cut the tie! :)

An excellent piece of advice. It would take the pressure of an industrial friggin' press to push that thing back in!

[larsen_huw]

Originally posted by rivolette
Wow, that's dirt cheap. The last time I bought monroe struts about 9 months ago, it costed me more like £67. That's about 300% the price of what you mentioned. And they were nothing fancy! That was the lowest price I could find in town :(

Dunno why, but suspension bits for old Fords has always been very cheap ... got several friends with Japanese cars, and they seem to pay through the nose for theirs! :)



Originally posted by rivolette
An excellent piece of advice. It would take the pressure of an industrial friggin' press to push that thing back in!

hehe ... luckily I'm not talking from personal experience here! :D Got that tip off a friend. Apparently they can be put in with a proper car jack and two things that won't move about the right length apart (say, the two walls on a garden path) ... however you need to be careful not to damage the top end of the strut. Either way, it's just much simpler to make sure you don't cut the retaining strap in the first place! :)

[friz]

Originally posted by larsen_huw
If you are DIYing, and you go for gas filled dampers, 1 piece of advice: They will come with a cable tie round them holding them compressed. If you cut this the strut will extend and be very unwilling to compress again. Leave the tie in place until you are sure you have fitted the strut correctly, then cut the tie! :)

I saw a guy do that at a DIY garage once. He was so excited about his new "High Spec" shocks. Out of the box in a flash...looked at them for about 10 seconds...then grabbed some snips. There were about 4 of us watching him. All of us were on the inhale to say "Stop!". Then *snick* *whoosh*.

Instead of wasting that breath, we just laughed at him.....

[cheesyhoward]

so i guess with gas shocks, once you have put them on and cut the tag, dont try and take them off?

[rivolette]

Not necessarily. You CAN compress them again, it's possible. But why would you want to take them off once they are installed? unless you want to replace them with new ones, at which point, it wouldn't matter whether you can compress them again or not :p

[larsen_huw]

If they were incompressible, they wouldn't do a very good job of damping the car's rocking and rolling! :D

Well, lets say an early 90's Escort weights about 1200kg ... with a rough 60:40 front:rear weight distribution.

That means each rear shock is damping the motion of roughly 240kg. That means if you could exert more than 240kg of force (about 2350N) on the shock, it would compress further than it usually is on the car ... and so should be possible to fit.

No idea how much force you'd need to fully compress it ... but a hydraulic press would come in very handy! :D

It's perfectly easy to take them off again ... but if, after taking them off, you wanted to re-fit them, then you'd be buggered! :)

[friz]

While we are on the subject...

Where would be the best place to locally (Dublin) souce new shocks? Car in question is a '98 Fiat Punto.

[cheesyhoward]

maybe get a nice strong piece of string and tie them up before removing them from the car

[larsen_huw]

Originally posted by cheesyhoward
maybe get a nice strong piece of string and tie them up before removing them from the car

Never taken apart a FWD Escort suspension before (thank god! :) ), but if they're anything like any of the cars i have done the suspension on, then it's impossible.

The damper is housed in the strut, and to access the strut you need to undo the rear suspension top mount, then jack the car up, let the suspension decompress, then undo the housing for the strut and take the strut out.

I've never (thankfully) had to work on any front wheel drive car, other than to be a spare pair of hands on my mate's Mazda 323 turbo conversion. So i can't tell you if the rear suspension on a front wheel drive car would be the same, but my guess is it would.


Originally posted by friz
While we are on the subject...

Where would be the best place to locally (Dublin) souce new shocks? Car in question is a '98 Fiat Punto.

Sorry, can't help directly, but ....

Open your yellow pages (or the Irish equivalent) to 'Motor Factors' and give 4 or 5 places with local addresses a call.