Front spring seats.........

Post by **schigara** » 20 Nov 2009, 22:36

First off, I just have to say..............holy fu@%!! These spring seats were designed to FAIL. There is no way they could not fail. I am surprised the originals made it over 100k miles. I purchased the heavy duty versions and will be surprised if they make it over 20k miles.

I have had a lot of experience with a lot of cars from every part of the world and this Volvo has the weakest and most retarded/ignorant upper strut/spring seat design I have ever witnessed! This is actually the first design I have seen where the spring seat was independent of the strut mount. Those who have replaced it know what I am talking about.

The entire stress of the strut is on the spring seat which consists of a 1 and 3/4 in. steal collar surrounded by rubber and not supported by anything. The spring seat resides in the recess in the strut mount with almost a 1/4in of play up and down. By design, if the car was to become airborn, the spring seat would drop 1/4in. away from the strut mount.

Was there an engineer at work on this or was he out that day smoking crack? I am not joking about this.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 20 Nov 2009, 22:57

They are a tad different in design and they will all fail eventually. I hope you bought OEM XC90 spring seats to replace your failed ones. The XC90 seats fit fine and there is a lot more "meat" around the steel collar. As mine have failed - I do them in pairs - that is what I have used for replacements and no failures yet but I think the most miles we have racked up post repair is around 55 or 60 k. The XC90 seats only cost a few dollars more than the prescribed 850 seats.

...Lee

Post by **schigara** » 20 Nov 2009, 23:18

Ozark.. they are way more than a "tad" different, in design. They are big time different. It makes no difference if a newer version is "meatier" or not, it's a bad design overall. In more than 20 years experience with euro and japanese, this is the first car I have seen that is this weak and can fail in this way.

Other than this particular engineering failure, this car is above par.

Ozark Lee wrote:They are a tad different in design and they will all fail eventually. I hope you bought OEM XC90 spring seats to replace your failed ones. The XC90 seats fit fine and there is a lot more "meat" around the steel collar. As mine have failed - I do them in pairs - that is what I have used for replacements and no failures yet but I think the most miles we have racked up post repair is around 55 or 60 k. The XC90 seats only cost a few dollars more than the prescribed 850 seats.

...Lee