Broken Spring

[Faheem]

Went over to help my uncle had atoday who broken spring on his BMW E46.

When the spring broke it came apart with so much force that it completely shred the front offside tyre on the sidewall as well as severely bending the anti roll bar link.

Even with the spacesaver spare on the car was not drivable as the O.S had collapsed to the floor, so no way for him to have got it to a garage.

Luckily a second strut assembly with spring was only £20 and I was able to swap it out in just over an hour.

Didn't realise the anti roll bar link was bent originally and being a Sunday all the shops were closed so had to temporarily bend it back with a hammer to as close to straight as I could get it.

 

[Stevo7682]

Poor design on a lot of the newer models ( now rectified on latest) where the lower spring mount only large enough to fit the smaller pigtail end of the spring as the most common breaking point on a front spring is the point where it lifts from the strut it means ( as has happened here ) the larger central part of the spring shoots down over the strut into the tyre below also can cause damage to abs and brake sensor wiring as well as anti roll bars drop link.

 

[t-tony]

Peugeots were bad for this but even worse the spring went right down to the c/v boot and ripped that.

Tony.

 

[petecossie]

When I owned a E46 M3 a few years back I suffered broken rear springs twice in 3 years. The first time was just as I bought it and the previous owner got it changed before I picked the car up. The second time was 3 years into my ownership and I got a new pair of OEM rear springs fitted. The Indy I used said it was a common fault on E46 models particularly M3s. His thoughts being it was down to poor design, plus material/manufacturing issues.

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Not strictly relevant, but I was looking on realoem the other day for part numbers for my e46 and BMW don't seem to do springs for them any more. Maybe they realised their springs are cr4p.