Spax struggles

[starbiscuit]

For my first post I thought I'd relate my recent Spax woes.

I've had my Yukon Grey 2 door since 1986. It was my first car.
Whilst at Uni, I fitted Spax conversions front and rear (from SYMM - remember them?), Owen Burton Marina discs, anitroll bar, 1293 Ital engine etc.

And had much fun over many years.

This year, the annual MOT failure was due to oil leaking from the nearside rear shock.
Apparently gas shocks have oil inside them, and it should stay inside.

Spax have changed ownership since my kit was made, but they still offer lever-arm conversion kits for pretty much everything that had lever-arm dampers. But not in stock; it's a two week special order. They weren't keen to sell just dampers either, in case my fitment was different somehow, even though I replaced my fronts from them like this (albeit 10-15 years ago)

Being pathologically tight these days, and faced with only 10 working days to qualify for the free MOT re-test, there was no way I was going to pay £250 to buy the kit again to replace a pair of dampers (I recall the kit was about £80 originally) and chance it not arriving in time, so I started looking for replacements elsewhere.

It turns out that everyone who sells dampers, other than bespoke racing parts places, need a car make and model.
They will not sell you a shock absorber to given dimensions because of some assumed legal liability in the event of an accident.
And Spax will not reveal if those kit dampers were standard fit on anything else, so not so helpful.

For what it's worth, the Spax dampers are G736 in all of their CKx kits. CK9 and CK10 for Minor.
Pin-to pin the Spax kit mounting points on my standard-ride-height Minor are 310mm front and 335mm rear.

The Spax dampers are about 255mm compressed, 380mm extended, in a 40mm tube body with a 40mm wide rubber bushing for a 16mm pin fitment.

The main problem is that all modern dampers (and many older ones) have a bonded metal sleeve in the rubber eye bushing. Or a different end fitment completely. And shock absorber catalogs are not so specific about end-fitments; most don't have tube diameter.

For example, Landrover series one fronts are good for compressed and extended length, as are Bedford CF rears. But they are in massive 50mm+ bodies and probably rock-hard on a Minor. Spitfire/Herald/GT6 rears are really good in all but extended length; they are only 331mm extended.

The most efficient way I found to search was to use KYB USA (http://www.kyb.com/knowledge-center/sho ... imensions/) that has compressed and extended lengths, and good detail on end fitment. I cut-and-pasted their website fitment table into an excel spreadsheet so I could search automatically by length-with-tolerance; much easier than searhing by eye.
Pretty much the only correctly-ended damper in the current KYB catalog with suitable compressed and extended length was KG4524.

Rock Auto http://rockauto.co.uk/ is a great source of cross-reference, and that revealed that KG4524 was for the front of a Saab 99 (or 90,96) up to about 1987.
And that there are several equivalents: Boge 270219, Sachs 170 542, KYB Europe 443035, 553014, 343008, Monroe R2572 and others.
Ebay.com is also good for yielding car models for given damper part numbers, if you trust it.

Anyway, a quick call to ZF Services Tech Dept (they make Sachs and Boge) confirmed that Boge 270219 has a 40mm body and rubber bush for a 16mm pin in a 36x36 eye loop. Compressed 254mm, extended 384. Perfect.

So I bought a pair, for around £40.

Fitted, the ride is firmer than Spax, which I had set fully soft on the rears, but not overly so. I am quite happy, all-in-all.

I hope this helps someone else choking on a large Spax-replacement bill.

[panky]

That's excellent research, I'm sure it will be helpful to others

[bmcecosse]

Any new damper is going to be better than 10 year old leaking Spax! Well done with the search....

[starbiscuit]

The fronts are 10-15 years old and still working fine.
The rears, that just failed the MOT, are at least 25 years old, and were still working fine, but for the oil leak.
(The car doesn't do many miles these days)

So I don't really have anything bad to say about Spax, but I don't know if it's the same product since their change of ownership.

It's just that the difficulty in finding interchangeable parts, and the time to wait for special order, and the cost, and my spending priorities having changed somewhat since I was young and single, compelled me to look elsewhere.

[bmcecosse]

Oh Spax are ok- had them on one of my track Minis, and are on the rear of my TR7. For long life - Konis are hard to beat.. I had a set on another (fast road) Mini for many years, the outer covers rusted away - the inner steel shafts remained perfect even without covers, never leaked a drop of oil and damping remained excellent - but mainly on the rebound stroke which Koni maintained gave a softer /better damped ride.

[Chipper]

I was under the impression that the Spax dampers were gas- and not oil-filled.

I fitted a cheap set of Mr Grumpy's telescopics to my Traveller in the early 1990s, which used Gabriel (US-made) units. The rears are still on there and doing fine, though I had to replace the fronts after one got damaged in an accident. I replaced them with a set of NOS Boge Mini units that I had lying about the garage - they were identical length.

[starbiscuit]

Gas filled, yes.
That was exactly my question to the MOT man.
(I recall a friend's Austin 1100 being failed somewhere else for leaking shocks when that car didn't have any...)
Apparently there is oil in there to lubricate the moving parts and it leaking out means that the innards will wear very rapidly.
And it is an MOT fail.

I have no quibble with the MOT guy; he's always been thorough and fair, and he knows that failing my car won't necessarily generate more work for them.

I looked at some Mini units, but they were too short, too narrow end-fitting and far too small body tube to replace the Spax on mine. It really depends what parts the telescopic kit used originally; I am quite sure that they were not all the same.

[bmcecosse]

Mini dampers ARE too short - and too pathetic - to be used on a Minor ! They are designed for - a Mini !! Which is much lighter - has v short travel suspension movement - and has 'self damping' rubber suspension... Kits using Mini dampers are just not fit for purpose... Gas dampers are filled with oil - it does the damping by squirting through tiny holes as the damper moves...exactly the same as the original lever dampers - which are simply 'folded up' tele dampers - with the advantage the oil can be refreshed/uprated with higher viscosity.. The valving can also be adjusted - but with little effect, certainly compared to higher viscosity oil!! The GAS in a gas damper is simply an overcharge supposedly there to discourage the oil from 'frothing'....

[Chipper]

I'm not so sure that the Mini is that much lighter than a Minor at the front; after all, in the Mini, the heavy gearbox & diff is attached to the underside of the engine, whereas in the Minor, it is of course in the middle of the car.

It would be interesting to get both cars' front ends on a weighbridge to find out the actual difference...

[bmcecosse]

'At the front' - you could well be right!! But very much shorter suspension travel.

[starbiscuit]

The photos I have seen of the Spax units for Classic Mini rear shocks look considerably beefier than standard.
They look like 40mm tube body, so there's a good chance that the compressed and extended lengths are non-standard as well.

I noted from a Mini forum that there is a "lowered" Spax option that is recommended even for standard height Minis because, it suggests, the "standard" Spax Mini unit is a too long in full compression (especially if you lower the car at all).

It would be good to see/measure one, because it might be more suitable than the standard parts-shop Mini units I have seen/measured.

However, Spax are not very forthcoming on sizes, and the Mini units are £70 each, which is still more than I wanted to spend.

[bmcecosse]

But Mini rear dampers only have a very light weight to cope with...they really are not up to the job on a heavy Minor. Short dampers must not be fitted to standard height Minis , and equally lowered Minis must not use standard length dampers - the cones can fall out on full droop ! There is little room to increase the diameter of the rear dampers on a Mini -before they rub the tyres. Spacers can be used of course......

[philthehill]

Not quite sure what they came off originally (may be Mini?) but these tele dampers & mountings were supplied by Leadbetter's of Lancashire in the early 1980s and they have proved to work very well.
The top shroud has been shortened and has had to be chamfered on one side to allow fitment against the chassis leg.[frame][/frame]

[bmcecosse]

Too long to be Mini fronts I think.. But interesting lower mount there...I'll make a note of that!

[welshrat]

Sorry, nothing to add but have spax on all four corners and they have been there since God was a boy. Predicting some trouble any time soon and thinking this thread will be much easier to find if I have added a comment. Sorry once again.

[bmcecosse]

No reason to think you will have any problems 'welsh' - as long as they aren't leaking.

[welshrat]

Well keeping my fingers crossed but been bumping about for a while. Keep up the good work Roy, had a conversation with the people I work with this week, none of them new what a Morris minor was, very sad!

[bmcecosse]

I'm surprised at that! I feel most folk have at least 'heard of the Minor' - and I think could 'name that car' if it drove round the corner towards them .

[welshrat]

All under thirty, conversation was about owning a Green Car, thinking its time for me to retire and move into the big cave in the Welsh hills!

[bmcecosse]

No! Just paint your car green then - you'll be fine.