hoosier58

I have mainly driven trucks over the years, which had traditional shocks instead of MacPherson struts. My daughter's car, a Tercel, seems to have blown out the top mount of a rear strut. I don't quite understand how the top mount is supposed to keep the shock shaft from moving up past that mount, but her's failed, and the top was riding about an inch high and clunking around.
I grabbed a strut/spring from another Tercel yesterday, but the color painted on the spring was different than the springs on the car.
I'm a garage door tech, and color codes are used on torsion springs to identify the wire size. I'm guessing automotive coils use a similar coding, but can't find a source to identify the colors. Can anyone help?
Thanks.

k7q

iTrader: (37)

You mean the whole spring is a different color? Might be lowering springs.

I think you should be fine if you got the shock off the same year car.

hoosier58

Actually, there is a stripe of paint on one coil. The springs that were are the car have a blue stripe, and the one I got yesterday at a U-pull has a kind of orange-brown stripe. I know that I should really have matched springs. I'm trying to decide whether to go buy the other one, or swap my blue striped spring onto the replacement strut. The replacement was from a Tercel 2 years newer, but of the same generation. My daughter's is the completely stripped one, but the other one had more options, so probably weighs a little more. I'm guessing that the orage-brown striped spring is stiffer, but am trying to confirm it.

SCstone

you are right and that's why they have these stripes. some have 2 or 3 stripes. tolerance/stiffness. say the model was AWD there would be a certain stripe to tell wither or not it was a AWD spring or the 2WD. all in all it shouldn't matter if it's what you got. but if you were to use such said springs for 1000's of miles you might want the right spring for the right vehicle. i'll use the SC as an example because we have 2 models.(colors are examples too)

Same car different model - the 300 and 400 have different engines,weights,torque,power options the manufacturer accounts for these difference in springs. sure you could use either spring for either model but really the tolerances are different.

Same car different year - say an early SC will have a yellow stripe for its tolerance. a later SC has changes in options,power,torque,weight..ect so will have a blue stripe cuz it's different not much ofcourse but they still account for it..

hope this helps. tried to be through for others.

hoosier58

Thanks. That did help. Is there any way to know what the color means in an objective way though? A garage door torsion spring will have (if I remember correctly off the top of my head) blue paint near the cone if it is a 262 gauge wire spring, but will have red paint if it is a 250 gauge wire spring. It doesn't matter who made the spring. The colors are accepted, and in common use.

You almost made it sound like the colors are just a code the manufacturer's use for their own purposes --- so orange might mean one thing for Honda and another for Toyota. I was trying to figure out if there is a color code, that could teach me something about a spring no matter where it came from.

This as an academic discussion for me now, because my daughter didn't want to spend the money for a matching strut/spring before selling her Tercel. I feel a little guilty, because we sold it with mismatched rear struts and springs, but I figure it had to be pretty close --- and besides, it's done.