Opinions Please {Weird Handling}

[allbluedave]

hey guys. :) ok so ive had my 02 plate mondeo for around two months and over that time this problem has been getting worse. when the car is driven over bad road the car seams to skip over the road insted of the bumps been absorbed by the suspension. there seams to be a knock on the drivers side front but not all the time. mainly the back end that skips over the bumps. does this sound like the subframe bushes? dont have a haynes at the min so excuse me if mondeos dont have them. sure i read somewhere they do. cheers guys

[BOF]

My first thought was shock absorbers, but you could be right about bushes.

What happens when you bounce the corners?

[allbluedave]

aint bounced the corners of the car bof. i,ll try that tomorrow. if its the bushes is it the kind of thing you can do at the roadside? dont have a garage

[BOF]

You should be able to do it anywhere that you have four wheels on the ground; sometimes it is a bit difficult to get it bouncing, depending on how firm the suspension is, but the idea is that, if it continues bouncing and does not come to a fairly quick stop after you stop forcing it, the shock at that corner is probably gone. Mind you, another clue is if the shock is leaking oil...that tends to be evidence that the the shock will soon die.

I think that you should do this first as it is the easiest test. If you don't find anything from the bounce test, it is probably time to take a look underneath and see if there is anything there, an obviously disintegrating bush, for example (and there are probably a fair few bushes that are candidates).