In July of last year I had fitted an
Eibach spring set brought and fitted directly by Mazda to my Mk2.5
Arctic using the stock shocks. By the time I had driven home both
front shocks had failed and sprayed their entire contents across the
underside of the car – it was very messy and somewhat irritating to
say the least.
So here we are today, six months and
4,000 miles later and the car goes in for its second MOT and passes
with flying colours… but all for shocks are leaking, slightly. The
front ones are still under warranty but I’ll have to pay for the rear
ones. What on earth is going on? Nidd Vale Mazda are telling me that
they have fitted “loads” of lowering spring kits and this had
never happened before… I used to have to negotiate some evil speed
bumps (one of which took off my front bumper (that’s a long
story!!)), surly this can’t be the reason [*-)]
If anyone could shed any light I would
be grateful
I think in addition to your obvious problems you should be questioning their MOT testing . Leaking shock absorbers are an MOT failure.
This a quote from an MOT website "shock absorbers must not leak and must be secure (the vehicle will be ‘bounced’ by the Tester to check that they damp the springs adequately
MOT Testers Manual says “Examine each shock absorber for fluid leaks.” and “Slight seepage causing a thin fliud on a shock absorber is not a reason for rejection.” The reason for rejection is “A fluid leakage serious enough to indicate that the fluid seal of a shock absorber has failed.”
I’d want to see fluid dripping off the bottom of a shock absober before I’d fail it. The OP says they are only leaking slightly.
First off Roadster Rob’s post is quite correct, in short it needs to either fail the bounce test (crude assessment) or damper fluid has to be dripping off of the bottom for it to be a reason for rejection (Failure)
But…
I do find this very co-incidental, for BOTH front shocks to fail at EXACTLY the same time that you replaced the springs and to have sprayed all of the contents out in just one journey is quite honestly amazing, then to realize that all 4 are leaking slightly is also rather puzzling, I would say that modern dampers can fail but all 4 at once? The act of lowering the car the amount Eibach’s do should have no effect on the integrity of the unit as far as i can see…
Just a guess but, an old school technician would commonly spray the spring and damper seats (especially the front ones) with duck oil or similar to stop any slow speed grinding/cracking noises coming from the spring and thier seats, he might also grease the bump stop and damper shaft to ease assembly, this would at first look like a bad leak and over time leave a film on the damper, are you sure this is not what you have got?
It would explain why it passed the MOT, the tester would have bounced it and it would have been OK and there would be no drips because any excess would have dissipated by now?