A little back story which can be ignored if needs be.
Recently i bought a tonne of wood pellets for my granule stove, i have two cars, a xsara picaaso and my Marea weekend, both cars have a maximum load weight of just under 600Kg, plenty to split the load 500/500 each. The problem i soon noticed is that while the Xsara was visibly well laden, the Weekend, was mere centimetres from losing it's fuel tank to the first little bump in the road, i had to do some very careful driving with the Mrs guiding me to get into the garden past the gate stops.
This lead to some closer investigation of the state of the springs, and they are very rusty, the protection has peeled of most of the bottom, im guessing they are the original springs, so i went and removed the springs from my old dead Weekend which i have on blocks for spares, gave them a quick wash, and to me, they don't look as bad, but it's hard to tell, where there was a rubber sleeve around the top of the spring where they are badly rusted, but after a scrape to the bare metal, i measure only a 0.5mm reduction in circumference compared to the protected and painted parts.
So i put it to you, should i risk it being worse, and swap the springs from my old car (the ones on the grass) and possibly gain nothing other than the bump stops being attached instead of floating around, or should i put some pennies away to get some new springs, should i just get some towing spacers to put inbetween the coils, or should i just ignore it and never load the car so heavy again?
if it matters, the top of the wheel arch is 65.0cm from the ground with 195/55 R15 tyres, half a tank of fuel and very little clutter in the boot..
all opinions valued.
ta muchly
Recently i bought a tonne of wood pellets for my granule stove, i have two cars, a xsara picaaso and my Marea weekend, both cars have a maximum load weight of just under 600Kg, plenty to split the load 500/500 each. The problem i soon noticed is that while the Xsara was visibly well laden, the Weekend, was mere centimetres from losing it's fuel tank to the first little bump in the road, i had to do some very careful driving with the Mrs guiding me to get into the garden past the gate stops.
This lead to some closer investigation of the state of the springs, and they are very rusty, the protection has peeled of most of the bottom, im guessing they are the original springs, so i went and removed the springs from my old dead Weekend which i have on blocks for spares, gave them a quick wash, and to me, they don't look as bad, but it's hard to tell, where there was a rubber sleeve around the top of the spring where they are badly rusted, but after a scrape to the bare metal, i measure only a 0.5mm reduction in circumference compared to the protected and painted parts.
So i put it to you, should i risk it being worse, and swap the springs from my old car (the ones on the grass) and possibly gain nothing other than the bump stops being attached instead of floating around, or should i put some pennies away to get some new springs, should i just get some towing spacers to put inbetween the coils, or should i just ignore it and never load the car so heavy again?
if it matters, the top of the wheel arch is 65.0cm from the ground with 195/55 R15 tyres, half a tank of fuel and very little clutter in the boot..
all opinions valued.
ta muchly