Your vehicle’s steering and suspension play an important role in the safety of your vehicle. The steering and suspension system, together with tyres, determine how your car will ride and handle. You should have both inspected at least once a year. To ensure vehicle safety and prevent expensive repairs it is highly recommended that routine wheel alignments, tyre rotations, and wheel balancing be also performed.
What is Suspension?
Your car’s suspension is a system of springs, shock absorbers and linkages that connect your vehicle to its wheels and support its weight. The vehicle’s ability to absorb shock, maintain contact with the road surface and it’s cornering ability are all dependent upon the suspension.
The coils, shock absorbers, strut and tyres all affect driver’s ability to control the car, while keeping passengers comfortable by reducing the impact of road noise, bumps, and vibrations.
Springs: Coil or leaf springs actually handle the bumps and potholes that the road (no matter how flat and even it looks) places on your car. Tightly wound springs are built for handling. Loosely wound springs provide a smoother ride.
Shocks: Shock absorbers handle the abuse produced by the rebound of your cars springs.
Struts: A strut system brings together the coils and shock absorbers of a conventional system and places them into one unit. This does away with the need for many other parts. With fewer parts to the strut system there are fewer parts to break or replace during the ownership of the vehicle.
Diagnosing Suspension Problems
Press downward with your body weight on one corner of the vehicle. If it bounces more than once, the shock or strut is probably worn and needs replacement.
Other symptoms: If you get the feeling that your car wants to turn when you want to go straight; if your car leans excessively in curves or if you see uneven tyre wear. These are all signs that something may going on with your suspension.
At The Gas Man we can perform a more detailed diagnostic check of your suspension to determine the exact cause of the problem and make repairs before additional damage occurs
CV Joint and Boot Service
Each vehicle has a so called Constant Velocity (CV) axle which consists of two Constant Velocity joints. The main task of this CV axle is to transfer the torque from the engine to the wheels of your vehicle.
Your cars engine produces a lot of energy and the special mechanism is needed to deliver all this torque to your car's wheels. CV joints allow all the power to be transferred very smoothly.
When the CV joint rubber boot is cracked it can no longer protect the CV joints from dirt and moisture. This causes the joints to fail and stop working. Dirt gets into the unit which increases the wear of its parts. If you start to hear a clicking noise, this usually means that there is a crack in your CV boot.
Power Steering
Power steering system consists of a pump, fluid reservoir, pressure and return hoses and steering gear or steering box. The pump, which is driven by the engine with an accessory drive belt, consists of an impeller, pressure valve, and fluid reservoir.
Pump pressure builds only when the engine is running. The pump impeller turns, picking up hydraulic fluid from the reservoir and feeding it to the steering gear under pressure through the pressure line. The fluid is then returned to the fluid reservoir through the non-pressurised return line.
