Allison wrote:We take our Elans to parts of the world where 4*4 are more suitable - Mauritania and India for example - and roads are seriously rough. We've never had a problem with anything snapping (apart from the drive shaft!). However the Spax (rear) did give up all damping very quickly whilst the Koni just gently deteriorated.
Spax were totally unresponsive when I tried to complain so I'll not use them again. In India we had Spyder supplied springs and Spax all round. I somehow feel that if they didn't snap in those conditions - they aren't going to snap. The fronts (Spyder springs and Spax) are still ok - though the wishbone bushes all collapsed.
Peter
Hi Pete,
Well there's the other side of the story, so to say.
With the punishment you put your Elan through it would be fair to expect damper deterioration or failure; it's not uncommon on those sort of events, I believe.
It would be interesting to get those "snapped" damper rods into a materials laboratory to check the failure mode.
Maybe it was just a batch problem due to a heat treatment problem or even Hydrogen embrittlement.
Or does the groove for the aformentioned Circlip in fact introduce a weak spot?
Bob,
I can't imagine that the Spyder springs could be the cause of the problem. In the fitted position they would have the same pre-loading as any other standard road Elan spring (more or less).
I think that in their spring "design??" they used a longer lower rated spring in an attempt to achieve more comfort perhaps.
In any case the springs that I had from them were very long in the free state & that made them incredibly difficult to compress to fitted length.
Cheers
John