Project Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi
PART THREE: Our Mondeo needs a new nearside front strut, so Rob Hawkins visits AES near York to see what the job entails.
CLUTCH & DMF
The MacPherson strut is in many ways a brilliant design, enabling a complete suspension assembly to be removed from the vehicle to work on it to replace components ranging from a dust cover to a leaking damper or a broken coil spring. In some cases, the damper can be removed from the body of the strut to replace it, whereas in the case of our Mondeo and its leaking nearside front damper, a new strut body with a damper already fitted can be supplied, saving time on having to strip down the old strut.
As we discovered, the work involved in removing the strut isn’t as straightforward as expected. The main problem concerns the pinch bolt that holds the bottom of the strut to the hub’s clamp. This can seize and potentially shear, and even if you successfully manage to undo it, as we did, it’s not so easy to separate the hub and strut in situ, so we had to remove the two parts together to separate them on the workshop floor.
We survived the threat of a sheared pinch bolt and also the common problem of the strut’s top mounting bolts spinning in their captive threads. And while we were completing this job, we also replaced the front discs and pads.
THANKS TO Autovaux 01924 376003 autovaux.co.uk AES York Limited 01904 780149 autoelectricsyork.co.uk
FRONT DAMPER & BRAKES
