Broken coil spring??

[oldmako]

While my car was on the lift for tires the guy called my attention to what he said was a broken coil spring...both of them in fact. Since i don't know what the things look like other than the FSM diagram I thought that I'd ask the gurus for some help. I think that he may have been hallucinating, or smoking crack or some combination of the two. Of course, he may have been dead nuts on.

On each coils inboard side, at the very top, the spring appears to be broken and separate from another section of the spring. The "break" is at the same spot on each side. I wonder if this is intentional and shows where the spring terminates and butts up against a small section of spring which appears to be part of the mount to give the the spring a flush surface. The main spring is curled inward slightly at the break.

The pax side strut mount / bearing is broken, clunks and can be made to wobble by pushing on the car. The drivers side is tight and makes no noise whatsoever. I would think that a broken spring would manifest itself in numerous nasty and noisy ways, but the car is silent until you make the broken strut bearing move.

I am getting ready to repair the front end, and I'd like to attack the entire thing at once as it's got 120K. The car runs like a sewing machine and I'd like to get it right.
Modified by oldmako at 5:56 PM 12/28/2007

[bullittandy]

I can't remember what the coil springs look like off the top of my head but I can't believe that you have two broken coil springs. I mean, when was the last time anybody broke a coil spring-maybe on a 30 year old salt car-maybe.

It has to be an optical illusion, replace the strut mounts and other associated bits and it will be as good as new.

[oldmako]

That's what I think. I called the local infiniti shop and spoke with one of their techs. He said that he has never seen a broken spring let alone two of them. He maintained that if there was that much damage then it would be evident in many other areas. He also inspected the car but did not look at the springs (this was before the tire guy pointed it out).

I'm just trying to get a "for sure" answer so I can go ahead and order parts. There is a local shop which specializes in high end asian autos and will do my front end work for 4 hours labor. I don't have a garage and I don't want to do the work outside this time of year without one.

Tokico's??

[96Qowner]

Tokico's??

Yep, Tokico Blues, with bushings and boots (and mounts if you want to do it right). Joe usually has the best price on the complete package.

[oldmako]

I just spoke with someone from the shop (not Joe) and he did not think that blues are available for the 99....only the OEM strut. The blues were for the earlier versions of the car. He suggested that I call back on monday and speak directly with Joe.

OEM struts are crazy expensive.

[96Qowner]

My mistake - saw the 1996 after the Q45 in your sig and got it wrong. It's a completely different suspension setup in the Y33. Yeah, they're spendy.