Front suspension accessory packs

[LeftHandThread]

Hi everyone. Long-time lurker turned newbie here.

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find anything:

Is there an official VW accessory pack of fasteners for the front suspension on a 2013 6R 1.2? I see that if you buy the complete pre-assembled strut some manufacturers then include the package of replacements for all of the one-time use nuts and a bolt. Those would be axle shaft nut, 3 nuts for ball joint to wishbone, bolt and nut for shock to knuckle and the nuts for the shock shaft (especially if you are replacing the coil spring). Some packs also have the top bearing and the dust cap.

I can't believe that you have to build up the replacements individually if you are doing work on the strut and have to dismantle it, or is this a subtle way of selling complete struts every time?!

[RUM4MO]

I'm afraid there isn't, but, I found that Autodoc sell a Febi kit which has 2 bump stops and 2 gaitors.

I've owned and run Polo and Ibiza since 2002 and know from bitter experience that the road springs will break if you own a car from new, for say 10 years, happened to the front driver's side spring on the 2002 Polo when it was only 6.5 years old, on New Year's Eve - snapped at half height, car dropped down as I drove out of garage and the front spoiler started scooping the gravel up - so that was that, brilliant time of year (in Scotland) to need to go buying new parts and new tools as this was my first "working on a Fabia that had smarter clothes"!
Some year/years later it failed an MOT for a rear spring that had lost a couple on inches of the top coil, so it ended up with getting new maybe Sachs springs (ECP specials).
I retained the single "okay" spring, it was genuine VW parts that I bought, maybe 6 years later that "okay" spring was required to be put back on that car!
I was looking after our older daughter's 2009 SEAT Ibiza when it decided to break a front spring while we were driving it to the airport when going on holiday - nice! That one only snapped near the top so continuing to drive it was okay, but I sorted it out quickly after we returned home, much easier this time as I had all the "special" tool, that Ibiza was maybe 7 or 8 years old. By the way, by this time, that car had failed an MOT for maybe 1/2 inch missing from the top coil of a rear spring - and the garage doing the MOT sorted that one out as they had the car!

So, as my wife's 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI is 9 years old, I feel that we are on borrowed time and I felt the need to clean up and paint the rear axle beam round about the ends where the hub and spring are located, sort, I bought new Sachs dampers from ECP - the listed ones were the wrong items when compared to the Sachs online catalogue - ECP "contact us" sorted that out and provided me with a link to the part I wanted to buy which was not for a Polo in their world! I bought a pair of Lesjofors springs via Autodoc, a pair of new "lower underlays" which are sacrificial aluminium anodes, new bump stops as one was tearing anyway and new top and bottom bolts and nuts all from VW. I had started building up a "kit of bits" maybe 6 months ago as I had planned back then to just replace the bump stops which biodegrade and tear into sections. So that end was "refreshed".
Now for the front end, as Lesjofors springs are quite cheap when buying from Autodoc, I bought a new pair for the front, in both cases I had already confirmed that what I was buying was the equivalent to what was currently fitted to the car, then as I found a discount code for ECP, I bought a pair of Sachs front struts! Again, I had planned to strip down the front end suspension maybe 6 months ago to investigate "clunking" which annoyingly vanished, so I had got together all necessary bolts top bearing, threaded collar thing and top mounts - again from VW along with a pair of ARB links - try to avoid buying at least the ARB links from VW as they are serious money! Now I'm in the final stages of building that original "kit of bits" up for completely replacing the front struts, and to reduce the time that car will be off the road, I'm buying enough extra parts to build up the struts before I start work on the front suspension, so that means buying in 2 top spring plates and the Febi kit of bump stops and gaitors, which will be on their way soon from Autodoc.
Again, maybe 6 months ago, when I initially started looking into the front end clunking, I discovered that the lower arm rear mounting on the driver's side was needing replaced, so, as I had bought a tool to press them out a few years ago, I just bought a pair of Lemforder mounts (as originally fitted to these arms) via ECP along with all necessary bolts and nuts from VW and replaced them just before the MOT last week.
So yes, a bit of a mission buying in all the necessary parts, only thing, that I didn't replace, so far, is the front lower swivels - I can't work out why I have not done that as well!
After doing all that, I'll be less than pleased if that car ends up breaking a road spring!

In case you don't know, Autodoc charge £3.45 for "safe ordering" that covers you needing to return any parts that you ordered in error, and £8.85 carraige, and it looks like they only despatch to UK on a Wednesday meaning Evri delivery on the following Saturday or Monday.
Also, ECP or Halfords are sometimes cheaper than Autodoc when you factor in carriage - I've been too hasty a few times and ended up with 3 orders over the past 6 weeks where it could have been just one order! Halfords source a lot of spare parts via ECP but can often be cheaper than ECP - this I have discovered!

Good Luck!

Edit:- one really really helpful thing to get hold off, is a copy of "CAR DATA" for your exact car, you should be able to get this from your local VW dealer's parts department by giving them your reg number, this contains all the options fitted at original assembly, and that means all options like which version/code of dampers, brakes etc etc, to work out road spring part numbers you need to read off the "colour markings" on the front and rear springs. By options, here I'm meaning "build options" for your version of Polo, not not just "factory fitted options" which will also get included in that list.

By the way, most of the gas had escaped from the rear dampers when I removed them at 9 years and 50,0000miles so I'm guessing that the gas will also have gone from the front struts as well.
What exactly do you plan to replace at the front?

[LeftHandThread]

Hey thanks for all that information!

I am thinking of doing the front coil springs, having had one just fail on me. It seems that if I buy the complete suspension strut, which I don't need, as there's not been any sign the old ones have problems, then the GH-Teile parts come with the necessary accessories of nuts/bolts and top bearing and mount. I'm just surprised that, as far as I could see, there is no standard kit which, when the official information says they are all single-use and have to be torqued then stretched, there is no ready availability, and you have to concoct your own assembly of the bits.

The signal I got from the other side of the pond was not very encouraging. It seemed that people running small shops just don't bother, when some video was posted showing the fastenings (not on VW, but there it was BMW) all being re-used without any attempt to replace, and the tightening was impact-driver precise! That same view came as a post to the thread as well: "Why should anyone feel the need to?" "Who's going to bother to search out the correct new fixings from the dealership if they're not provided with the replacement part?" -- Is that really how it goes now?

It just strikes me as rather casual, although some suspension fasteners are going to be more critical than others, I suppose. My thought was if you re-use, so the old parts aren't stretched any more and possibly not even at the correct torque, and then you have an accident in which the suspension is shown not to have been correctly set after you worked on it, what's going to be your position regarding the insurance?

I just wonder also how much manufacturers are going to be cutting back on stocks of parts as they all start to say they will not be releasing any new internal combustion models, and they are really wanting to encourage us to get rid of what we have been driving and buy electric from them instead?! How long will the aftermarket keep things going?

[RUM4MO]

I agree on the issue with reusing "torque to yield fasteners", I've used a good VAG Indie a few times, and while I've supplied new fasteners where "replace" was mandated by VAG, that place did not use many of my supplied new VAG fasteners, which was annoying, currently I've got a box with roughly £75 worth of new bolts for old 2011 Audi S4 - to replace all the engine frame bolts and the frame/body stiffener bolts, I'll get round to doing that "soon".

My wife has an August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI SEL 6MT, during warranty one of the things that I complained about was clunking from the front end on the over run, amazingly the first action mandated by VW UK in this sort of situation covered by warranty, was to remove the gearbox mounting - a metal/rubber/metal affair, and smother it in copper grease! Now, I had heard about this being the first step, but was more than annoyed to find traces of copper grease under the bonnet, at first I just thought that another mechanic with dirty gloves had being having a chat with the guy dealing with this car - wrong! Anyway, that "cunning/clever" fix did work - but only for a few days, so back in it went.
Maybe 5 years later, during the winter, one day I opened the garage to drive that car back in, and spotted a head of a bolt on the garage floor, not very impressed by that, I lifted it up and had a look underneath as that bolt head looked a lot like being from one of the 6 bolts that hold the subframe up to the body frame - and sure enough it was, one of the front bolts had lost its head! I quickly ordered in a new set of 6 bolts, managed to remove the shank of the bolt that had lost its head, and the shank looked like it had failed for two reasons, firstly it had corroded a lot, and secondly, the break looked like it had occurred at the point where the bolt had been over tightened and was necking/stretching!
So, firstly, why had that, or these subframe bolts, which or torque to yield been either retightened and/or over tightened? Probably something to do with me reporting clunking noises during warranty period - not good!!
Secondly, the corrosion or excessive corroding at the head end of the shank, well that is a nasty one and probably affect all VW Group cars that use that basic subframe design, water seem to get into what is effectively a long tube which this bolt seals up the base of, so this will always end up happening, this is restricted to the front 2 bolts only, all the other were clean when they got replaced - I got that good indie to carry out a full four wheel re-alignment to that car and replace all the bolts while doing that.
Lemforder is one brand that I would have expected to provide "repair kit accessories" - and they do in some cases but not for every area, also when you buy their replacement parts, which can be a smart move as they supply VW Group and other factories, and they always grind off any VW Group ID from parts that they also supply to VW Group, or apply a thick paint paste to fill in stamped ID in sheet steel parts, and they also include all nuts and bolts - where the part from VW Group will be the bare part, I've just bought new lower swivels for that 2015 VW Polo, and worked out that the Lemforder parts come with roughly £9 worth of nuts.

Edit:- another example of bad behaviour from VW dealer's techs when carrying out warranty repairs, but maybe at other times as well, when that Polo had its gearbox upper mounting removed, greased and re-fitted, all the bolts were replaced, and I show that in the work sheet being submitted for payment by the warranty department - yes I was one of these annoying people that consider that any of my cars, still under warranty are being worked FOC, I am still entitled to get a copy of the work sheet. The action on that car, in that area, was to replace the normally aspirated petrol engine (this was a turbo charged petrol engine) gearbox mounting fitted at initial assembly for a TDI engine version - no bolts were replaced that time, so VW UK warranty seems to demand that they are only billed once for them!!

Another Edit:- one other thing that I discovered when thinking about building up completely new front struts, on the factory fitted original VW Group front struts, there is a plastic cage that is used to trap the bellows covering the strut piston from road debris, probably a new VW Group strut will also come with that plastic cage fitted, but no aftermarket struts come with that fitted and it is not listed as an individual spare part - so that means I can't build up these struts before I remove and strip down the original ones!