406oc.co.uk

Got back to the car from walking the dog, loaded up and started for home. Car pulled heavily to the left, no puncture so drove the 3 miles to home, it grounded lighthly on a speed hump. Once there I looked at N/S wheel, not much room to the arch, popped the wheel off to reveal a broken spring.
Ho hum, out with the spring compressors and spanners.
My own fault really, i replaced the top bearings and put old springs back on 2 years back or so, springs have done 156K.

At least you got it home OK, many owners have been stranded after a spring breaking.
I changed the strut top bearings on my first 406 without replacing the springs and never personally suffered a spring fail on a 406 in over 10 years and getting on for 200k miles.
Then I got a C5 with 'sensible' conventional suspension which promptly failed its MOT with a broken rear spring.

Strut came out very easily but i can't undo the nut on top of the damper. Very very tight. Wasnt this tight when i changed the top bearing. Might have to go to garage and let them have a go with a hammer gun.
No need for the compressors just took out pinch bolt and 3 torqz bolts on top, drop link off and out it came. Other side will need the compressors though. Broken spring had jumped over both top and bottom seats.
Andy

A lot of this type of fixing use plated steel nuts/bolts which don't corrode except where the plating on the threads gets damaged as they're torqued up. They'll undo once, but often won't play next time. Soak it in WD40.

All back together, it takes me a while now due to my disability getting worse.
Took struts to local garage who removed springs from shockers then put the new ones on for me along with new nuts and washers in exchange for a couple of bags of doughnuts.
Offered up the rebuilt struts and they both went in without needing the springs compressed or hubs removed. Put new pinch bolts on and new drop links.
At some point in the removal of the struts one of the front ABS sensors broke free of its mounting bolt, new one ordered.
Drove round the village and i must say its a big improvement, couple of warning lights on dash and the multi function display tells me that there is an ABS fault but other than that all good.
For a 23 year old girl shes not doing bad, love my 406, god knows what im going to do when or if she becomes unfixable.
Andy

Well done. Hope you get the remaining snags ironed out painlessly.

I think we've all struggled to find a worthy replacement for our 406's, keep it as long as you sensibly can.