Suspension and Steering in Cairns

You will not notice this one going

Suspension wear is gradual, and human beings adapt to gradual. A car that has slowly become vague in the steering and floaty over bumps feels normal, because it got there over four years and you recalibrated as it went.

That is why so much suspension work gets found at safety certificate time rather than because someone complained. It is also why it is worth having looked at deliberately every couple of years, rather than waiting for it to announce itself.

The things that go, roughly in order of how often we find them:

Bushes. Rubber components that locate suspension arms and the anti-roll bar. Heat and age perish them, and this climate is unkind to rubber generally. Worn bushes give you clunks over bumps, vague steering, and uneven tyre wear.

Shock absorbers. They rarely fail suddenly. They fade, and then one starts leaking. A leaking shock is a safety certificate failure and a genuine handling problem, particularly on a car that is loaded or towing.

Ball joints and tie rod ends. These are the ones that matter most, because they are what physically holds the wheel and steering together. They are checked for play on the hoist, and any play is a finding.

Wheel bearings. A hum that changes with cornering, and worse on cars that see water and salt.

Springs. Coil springs do break, more often than people expect, and corrosion is usually involved.

Salt does the damage from underneath

If your car lives near the water at Trinity Beach, or spends time around the boat ramps and the inlet at Portsmith, the underside is ageing faster than the rest of it.

Salt air is relentless on suspension components and, more to the point, on the fasteners holding them on. What that means practically is that a job which is straightforward on an inland car becomes a longer one on a coastal car, because bolts that have been in salt for years shear rather than undo, and a sheared bolt in a subframe is a significant amount of extra work.

We would rather tell you that before we start than surprise you with it afterwards, so on coastal vehicles we look at the fasteners as part of the quote and factor it in. Sometimes the honest advice is to do two related jobs together while the area is apart, because the second one will cost much more on its own later.

There is more on what salt actually does under a car in our note on salt air and your underbody.

What is safety and what is comfort

Not every finding is urgent, and it is worth being clear about which is which rather than presenting one list.

Play in a ball joint or a tie rod end is safety. A leaking shock is safety and will fail an inspection. A corroded brake line is safety and is not negotiable.

A slightly perished anti-roll bar bush that makes a clunk over speed humps is comfort. It should be fixed eventually, it will not hurt you next month, and it does not need to be presented as though it will.

You will get both lists separately, with what each one costs, and you can decide the order. If the car is going through a safety certificate soon, say so, because that changes which list matters first.

Wheel alignment

Worth mentioning because it is nearly always the next question. An alignment on worn suspension is money wasted: the geometry cannot be set accurately when the components locating it have play in them. Do the wear items first, then align. Any workshop offering to align a car with a worn tie rod end is selling you something that will not hold.