This morning, 3Km from home and a loud bang and the LHS suspension collapsed. I could guess the sort of trouble, stripped Tie rod end or snapped tie rod. Anyway, was able to drive home slowly with a severe list to port.
An hour later, suspension pot removed and the rear tie rod dropped out as the "mushroom" inside the spring canister on the end of the tiered had dropped off. Not quite what I expected of a complete suspension unit that was only 8 years old and on a road going car. Being of French supply (MCD) I would not even bother asking why this should happen, just hope the "Good" end is OK. Perhaps crack test it before re-assembly??

I have a couple of spare rods off the ancient suspension that may do the trick, one long and one short. Next weeks job is to grind off the end of the spring canister, clean it out and put it all back together again.

Are there any special tips I should look out for ??

BobH

Yep,
ignore some guidance on this forum regarding location of the tie rods and springs.
The correct mix is 'short rod and longer spring to the front, longer rod and shorter spring to the rear'...
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Front spring or rear spring? by slcchassis, on Flickr

Thanks Ken, hope to take the end off today, but waiting for some more MIG wire to arrive through the post so I can get it back together.
Bob

Well, my 'cans' are a Friday afternoon jobbie. Front has a short tie rod long spring (MCDA part number M1299 states 185mm long) and rear short tie rod and short spring (MCDA part number M1300 states 200mm long). There is something wrong there, but its been like it since I re-built it, so I will stick with it. ** [ Note the MCDA quoted lengths do not tie up with actual spring lengths ].
Because the cans are all wrong for the AZU model 'A' Fourgonnette, I had to use a couple of extended tie rod ends on the front rods to get a reasonable height geometry front and back. The reason the tie rod snapped is poor manufacture. Looking at the attached photo, there is a stress raiser just at the point the rod snapped. I have blended in this step as per second photo. As for the replacement rod, I am using an old rod from the original Citroen cans, probably 1962 manufacture.

Open image file with Paint, resize so it is under a Mgb (mine are usually resized to 40% for this), 'save as' with different name and select that from here.

If you are taking image on an android phone, you can crop the image and this may reduce the size. Works for me.

Thanks Mike and Roger, I am using a MAC so used the import / Export in Photos and chose Medium for the size.

Bob,
is this of any use, or is it too late?
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Springs 1 by slcchassis, on Flickr

Thanks Ken, pretty comprehensive. The welding wire arrives tomorrow, so will have a measure up before we" light up".
Thanks.

Bob

Its a bit of a stretch getting the knife edges back in as there isn't much slack on the adjustment, so I put a bit of smaller rod through the knife edge pin hole to temporarily hold the rod end, then raised the suspension arm to put some load on the spring. Then gripped the tie rod with "Mole grips" - I used 2 as security (See photo) and then lowered the suspension arm again. That gave enough play to get the knife edge back in through the tie rod end/ suspension bracket.