General 5-door front end

[Ralf S.]

Suspension.

Since I fitted some 17" alloys onto the beast I noticed that Gerrard seems to be a bit more floaty at the front. The shocks are standard factory fitted ones (2004 vintage with 165,000 miles on them) so they're getting a bit tired maybe (although there's no sign of any fluid leak, even though the rubber bellows are sitting in the spring pan rather than hanging from the bump stop.

But anyway... "new shocks" is probably one of my next few jobs by the looks of it.

Now, rumour has it that the 5-door Stilo has a different suspension setup than the 3-door (as in "softer" springs and presumably correspondingly milder dampers).

At the moment ePer is down, so I can't check part numbers to see if they are different (although a difference wouldn't necessarily mean that one is softer or harder than the other) but does anyone know if this is true?

When I look for replacement dampers, I can't see 3-D and 5-D listed separately... so what's the story?


Ralf S.

 

[Davren]

there's no sign of any fluid leak

They're gas shock absorbers, you'll never see any oil leaking from them.

3 and 5 door versions are the same, but ePER lists different part numbers for shock absorbers depending on engine size, and in some cases depending on whether the car has air conditioning or not. Unfortunately, some of the after market suppliers adopt a 'one size fits all' policy.

On some of the larger engine cars, (JTDM and 2.4 I think) the spacing between the two bolts fixing the shock absorber to the hub carrier are different.
.

 

[Ralf S.]

Ehthenkyo...

But "gas shocks" do still have oil in them. The "gas" is pressurised nitrogen and is used to both cool the oil and prevent it foaming. A characteristic of a gas damper is that if you compress it, it will slowly return to its extended position whereas a regular damper doesn't.



Ralf S.