MOT failed, front lower arm & ball joint, front spring

Hi, sadly my Wind 1.2tce GT line just failed it's mot. The garage says they can't get the parts so I need to. It's failed on the nearside front coil spring so needs a new one of them, and the front lower arm and Ball joint needs replacing. I've had a look on eBay but the parts can be quite pricey so I don't want to order them and find out I got the wrong bit. Does anyone know a good place to order from? Thank you!

The need to replace the whole front wishbone (suspension arm) when the ball joints or even just their rubbers fail is; in my opinion; a major design fault by Renault. 

The same must apply to the similar aged Twingo & earlier Clio; both built in Renault's Slovenian factory which also built the Wind: whose floor pan & underpinnings the Wind shares so Renault should still stock these parts.

They are costly: I had to have both mine done purely because of rubber seal failures.

Renault supplied these; at a price; & I am unsure whether they can be obtained elsewhere.

Coil springs? With today's potholed roads spring failure is in the lap of the gods.

Ideally springs should be replaced in pairs  but cost & labour time considerations made me replace just one front spring on my daughters 2008 Audi TTS with no obvious impact on handling etc. Trouble is if you replace only one then you should use a Renault part to as closely as possible match the; admittedly worn; Renault original on the other side.

Perhaps the testers from Top Gear might notice the difference in handling but most of us live in the real motoring world.

Sadly I have no knowledge of trusted more reasonably priced parts.

I did manage to find everything on eBay for £180 in total. Garage is fitting it all on Tuesday, assuming the parts are the actual correct ones. First time I've had to source parts for myself, even with my Alfa, which was twice as old, I never had to do that before so I've convinced myself they'll ring and say it's all wrong. This all happened while I was in the middle of moving house and then the pandemic happened, so for long and complicated reasons, the car itself is in Sunderland at my mother in law's house while I'm now living in Portsmouth.

What type of Alfa did you have.

I had a 2001 Alfa Spider 3.0 V6 for a while.

I loved it.

Beautiful to look at & real hooligan when trying to get V6 power down through just 205 section tyres

It was a 156 2.0 Selespeed. Fully loaded with all extras. It was gorgeous. Stupid garage fit the wrong sparkplugs, one exploded and set the coil pack and the rest of the engine on fire.

Jackalope1981 wrote:It was a 156 2.0 Selespeed. Fully loaded with all extras. It was gorgeous. Stupid garage fit the wrong sparkplugs, one exploded and set the coil pack and the rest of the engine on fire.

What a nightmare. I hope they took financial responsibility.

Good news is all the parts I sourced from eBay were the correct ones, a total of £180 in the end, then £90 for labour and my Wind has its MOT. Gonna be driving up in a few weeks to collect it, so I'm hoping there's good weather as I wanna try and drive all the way back with the roof down.

pittstop wrote:

Jackalope1981 wrote:It was a 156 2.0 Selespeed. Fully loaded with all extras. It was gorgeous. Stupid garage fit the wrong sparkplugs, one exploded and set the coil pack and the rest of the engine on fire.

What a nightmare. I hope they took financial responsibility.

Yeah, got compensation which went towards the Wind. I was looking for a first gen Twingo, as I really just wanted a small, fun commuter as my wife now has a larger car, then remembered that I'd always liked the Wind and checked out the prices and was surprised by how cheap they sell for now.

Glad to hear you got it all sorted Jackalope1981!
Have you joined The Renault Wind Owners Club UK on Facebook?
We have 208 members now and lots of helpful people along with one who works for Renault parts department, which comes in handy when wanting to know part numbers and what not!
Everyone who loves the Wind is welcome and no one outside the club can see anything you post!

Thanks, gone and sent a join request!

My front coil spring snapped and managed to buy a pair from Germany. About £80 and a pair of track rod ends.

Note, tired to buy a driveshaft from Renault and they don't stock them any more.
You can buy cv joints kits and all Bearings on ebay. Some cv joints come with reluctor rings for ABS.