At 95K miles you can accept the odd noise here and there. I've been super lucky and got to nearly 100K without any squeaks, clunks, rattles or other unwelcome noises.
However this week I heard a little bell like tinkling sound over certain types of bumps, so Shifty went to the Honda doctors to see what was up.
Poor little Shifty has a broken suspension coil spring, the bottom end where it sits in a locating cup had corroded to the degree where it broke, shortening its length by a centimeter or two. The bit that had broken off then was dancing around the cup when it was jiggled just the right amount by a bumpy road.
The broken bit was about 3cm long and you could see that it had clean snap across it and the end was corroded quite badly. Now that it has been lifted out of the cup there won't be any more tinkling noises.
I could have left it at that but I don't like the idea that Shifty would have a battle scar for the rest of its time with us so it's going in for surgery at the Honda hospital in a couple of weeks. It'll be getting a nice new spring so after that it will be properly able to cope with life's road humps and bumps.
The Honda people said it was rare for them to replace a spring on a Jazz. I felt instantly guilty - certainly I'm not doing my bit washing under the wheel arches and clearing out winter's salty gunk. I stopped doing it with the last Jazz because I thought I might be causing the rear brakes to keep seizing up.
The older generation Jazz, 1999 - 2009, models with rear disc brakes did have a problem with that and our second 1.4 CVT-7 probably had five or six dismantle, clean, lubricate and reassemble sessions in its 150K miles with us.
So, in reflection, I probably wasn't causing the sticking problem since I wasn't cleaning the brake calipers directly and any debris falling from cleaning the wheel arch and the general water splashing down wouldn't be worse than driving on a wet road and through a few puddles.
Thinking it over, we've had three Honda Jazz and covered over 300K miles in them, so one suspension spring over that time isn't too bad!
Cars are really made very well, I guess it's down to us as their caretakers to look after them properly. I really just jump in and expect the car to just work. OK, we do spend a few hundred pounds a year maintaining and keeping the Jazz in tip top shape, and we drive it sympathetically over the 25K plus miles it does every year but, still in reflection, they are astoundingly resilient compared to cars even twenty years ago.
