I'm not sure exactly what the Mistral spec is or where it fits in the range but the guys above seem to know their onions.
Anyway. Where are we with this....
iirc 2 Friday's ago (29th) I set about loosening off all the bolts to get into the driveshaft (as I was convinced the terrible noise was coming from there) but the first thing that struck me was the coil spring had snapped
So I tentatively put things back together and ordered from Ebay a coil spring and wheel bearing and then the following Wednesday, having knocked-off work early, went round the local breakers to look for a driveshaft.
Surprisingly there weren't many Mondeos in the yards, and any that were - were diesels. Late into the afternoon we found one yard with a petrol Mk3.
The car was predictably wedged-in between other cars and the OSF wasn't accessible, but the NSF was.
I know the left and right driveshafts are different lengths but (having had a similar problem with my old Suzuki Swift years ago) know that the bit which fails, on the inner joint, is the spider/tripod and I could therefore just use the inner joint off it or even just the spider.
Also someone else had been in and removed the strut before me so all I had to do was pop out the driveshaft.
This took much longer than I expected as the car was flat on the ground and it took a long time and many broken tyre-changing-jacks to get the thing up high enough to get any leverage behind it.
It was good practise for removing my own ones later I guess. The guy charged me £20 which seemed fair enough but I heard later you can get reconditioned ones for just over £30
My wheel bearing arrived on Thursday but I wasn't in and this happened again on the Friday.
On Saturday I fitted the coil spring. I've done this before on other cars without much trouble. The broken spring came off without much trouble but fitting the new one proved more difficult. Basically two compressors weren't enough as the spring need to be compressed down until the coils are touching almost before the top mount could be fitted on.
With the two compressors I had on tightened to the max the spring was still too long. You can't remove then to start again on another coil so it was a case of - cycle to Halfords and buy another set at £30!
I was also rather pleased that the extremely rusty OSF brake pipe unscrewed from the hose with little drama. A sharp action on the mole-grips gave a pleasing cracking sound. Hopefully the others would yield as easily.
I was also amazed that the screw for the ABS sensor came out too. So I replaced the sensor and drove home feeling safer with the new spring but still that noise and unsurprisingly ABS light still on.
Whilst I was working on the driver's side I felt for play in the driveshaft inner joint and there was none. My co-pilot said he could feel the rumbling on his side of car so maybe I was in luck getting the NSF driveshaft after all. That was a job for another day as the coil spring took me most of the day.
front spring has snapped at some point
looks pretty dangerous
sticker on shock gives a lot of data
new spring
unusual 18mm nut on strut-top. I have no 18mm ring spanner
old broken spring compressed fine with 2 clamps
lift off the spring and various parts
now we need to make the new one this short
]
which required more clamps