My Citroen Ami Electric quadricycle has only covered 1460 miles in 6 months. Last week the front suspension failed, causing the front wheel to have excess movement and unpredictable handling. On inspection I found that the top mount for the right hand side McPherson strut had failed. The top mount's bonded rubber bush had broken away from the steel plate.
Citroen's only Scottish Ami repair centre was unable to look at the Ami until 4 weeks from now - so I decided to fix the problem myself. The replacement top mount is a part which is common to several other vehicles including the Citroen C4, DS3, Peugeot 2008 and 208 and the Vauxhall/Opel Corsa. The part was reasonably cheap at about GBP £20. Simple tools were required to change the broken mount: Floor jack, 10mm spanner and sockets, 21mm ring spanner, T45 Torx bit, 13 mm spanner or socket and a pair of coil spring compressors. The most difficult part was accessing one of the fixing screws holding a steel mounting plate to the chassis - I tried a variety of spanners and sockets and eventually got it out.
On inspection the cause of the failure appeared to be a manufacturing defect with the bonding of the rubber bush to the top mount - only a small portion of the circumference of the bush was correctly bonded as can be seen by the areas of the rubber which ripped and remained stuck to the plate. The remaining parts of the rubber bush were smooth and were obviously not stuck to the plate. The original top mount was a Citroen/Peugeot part with a manufacturing date code of 12/07/2022 (2322 stamped week code for early June 2022?). The replacement part I used was a Quinton Hazell pt.no. ERM4806. I bought two just in case there is a problem with the mount on the other side.
22 июн 2024
