Good Evening All,
My 94' 850 wagon squeaks in front end over bumps and even just getting out and shutting door causes squeak in front suspension. I know I have at least one leaking strut in front of vehicle. The car has 135,000 on her and runs beautiful and drives beautiful. Over heavy bumps vehicle rattles but on nice smooth highway driving, car rides like brand new. I know the front struts are original and just the rear shocks were replaced a couple of months prior to me purchasing car. Vehicle passed safety inspection with legit front suspension test, so i assume lower control arm bushings and associated parts are good with little play at best. Do you think if i were to replace rear springs and bump stops and front struts complete with springs and all new hardware that i could safely say suspension will be good again?

 

metal on metal squeaks or thumps? thumping over bumps is typically a worn/broken sway bar end link or broken strut spring seat. Squeaks are worn bushings - could be subframe bushings or suspension bushings (ie control arms or sway bars). Unless there is a broken spring (more common to the S40s) there's no reason to replace unless you want to lower the car. For your goal of "refreshing" the suspension I'd consider doing the following: New struts, spring seats, strut bushings (aka strut mount) up front. Check the sway bar end links, consider replacing the sway bar bushings (may require to separate the subframe to clear some room - in fact I'd suggest installing the IPD heavy duty sway bars - single best handling improvement you can do for the 850 - even if you stick with Boge Sachs OEM struts). Inspect tie rod ends, control arms and ball joints. If you suspect the control arm bushings I believe the 94 has a one piece control arm with ball joint part (go high quality after market/OEM here - cheap after market will wear out too soon). If you put in the HD sway bars, inspect the sub frame bushings. In the rear, again there's no reason to replace springs - replace the shocks and upper mount. check the rear sway bar bushings and ends. There's also a part (forget what its called - a delta link?) that goes into the rear suspension that can wear out but I had a dealer do that since it calls for a special press tool. I'd say you don't need to worry if your car is tracking true and has no issues keeping an alignment or has wobbles when cornering. When it comes to bump stops - inspect but I'd say properly securing the dust boots are more important to add life to struts and shocks. You may try spraying some WD40 on various parts to see if that can make the noise go away - it won't fix the problem but could give you a clue as to what to replace.

 

Thanks for an awesome response. It is nice to know there are still people out there that are willing to take the time and share there knowledge. I am definitely going to research this front end and do it right once. This is a commuter car for me and I am very quickly growing very fond of this car. I have worked for American and import dealers from porter to service manager and have driven a massive amount of cars. I left the auto business full time 15 years ago and am very happy I did. I enjoy working on my cars again! My wife likens it to a form of therapy for me. Thank you again! I will keep everyone posted on what I find.

 

I always like the posts when people include pics or a write up notes on a procedure! Here's a pic I snapped when finding a broken front spring on my '00 S40 was making a creaky noise... damn thing was longer than my compressor. LOL, I can do the struts on an 850 in about an hour a side but the S40 took a full weekend due to a trip to buy some new tools.

 

joecool: are you going to DIY this job or no? Do you have mac strut spring compressor, etc.?

When refreshing the suspension on these cars, what brand of parts you use is important too. There's lot of aftermkt crap out there. I always recommend OEM for hard parts like front lower control arms (don't bother replacing the rubber inner bushings, just do the whole LCA part which includes the ball joint) and the front upper strut mount (metal pivot part). Same with tie rods, etc. go OEM.

For the front upper spring cap (very common failure point on these cars) go with either the XC90 mounts (HD version of the 850 ones) or the HD ones at IPD.

Shocks I like are in my sig; konis are excellent as well. If you don't care about cornering performance then the stock sachs will be fine too. When I bought my car the PO had recently put some cheap monroes or something on the rear but didn't replace the front struts; car rode terribly! Couldn't throw them away fast enough..