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I will add some words when get a chance.

Bloody anti roll bar 17mm nut sheered off. CJ where are you???

Simon
i hope it was the nearside one, he has no offside ones in stock. I've spoken to Baxter about having new ones remade but will take time

Twas the near side. The powerflex fittings take a bit of aligning, and are not as compressible as the old mangy rubber. I did probably over torque it, only needed 20 odd pounds, my big torque wrench is a little imprecise at the lower torques. it was avoidable by not having attempted to fit the anti roll bar in the rain at 830pm at night.!
The avoidable breakages are the most upsetting. Had 33 lbs shown on the wrench and off it came.

I was quite worried about doing this job, as I had heard that the bottom ball joint was difficult, and required pressing in and out with special tools. I was also worried about alignment afterward.

In retrospect here are some tips I would give to front end first timers.

1. You will need some big sockets. 30mm for the hub nut, 27mm ring spanner for the radius arm nuts, a 24mm socket and spanner, and 22mm for the very tight lower shock mount. The track control arm mount is 19mm.

2. Loosen the hub nut with the wheels on the ground. I managed with a 2ft 1/2 extender bar, but it needed 15 stone on that to get it moving.

3. I then, several days before took the wheel of on each side in turn and had a go at loosening everything. Have a look at the lower track rod 19 mm bolt. I had a seized one on one side and the other came out easily. The seized one needed cutting out with an angle grinder, the power hacksaw would not touch the hardened steel bolt. If she slides, then it is easy. I alos measured up the threads on the radius rods for the castor adjustments.


4. The ball joints were all being replaced, so I was not worried about damaging them when they were being released from steering knuckle, the problem that I did have on the first side, compared to the second was that the threads were shot on the top joint, and the joint broke free from its shank and turned uselessly with my spanner. If it does this you can hold it with a suitable tool.

The second side I got the entire not of with the knuckle still attached, the tension helped hold the joint still and stopped it from spinning. I did not need a ball joint splitter, a simple tap separated the joints.


5. I did not need a puller to get the CV joint out. It just pushed out real easy.

6. The lower track control arm bushes on one side were so shot that I could get the power saw in and chop up the rubber to remove the bush. The other side where the bolts had come out was harder. The steel insert stopped the saw from getting in, so I heated up the insert and out it slide lubbed by melted rubber. I then did the same with the main rubber section. Took about 10 minutes.




7. The lower ball joint hammered out real easy, took about 10 blows and was the same on both sides.

Retain the snap ring. Installing them was easy too, a flat ended punch was used, and the joint has a large lead in, so it is easy to keep it straight. As soon as the joint starts showing through you can see if it is straight. Keep hammering until you can get the snap ring back in. I was expecting lemforder to have new snap rings.




8. Clean up both radius rods, and make sure that all of the old rubber is out. On mine the part which faces rear ward has a lip which fits through the chassis, this had worn off and remained in the chassis making it look like the hole was not big enough for the new part.

9. The fun bit was the re assembling. I found that a helper here is essential. The powerflex bushes have much reduced flex and this means that fitting is a more precise affair and required a bit of levering to get things aligned. It was much easier on the second side to have the suspension raised up high.

This aligns the radius rod as best it can be, and makes fitting of the big fat new rubber bushes much easier.

10. Use a lot of copperslip. You might have to do it all again in another 20 years.

I tried to fit Poly bushes to my anti roll bar while I had uprated springs from Buschmiede fitted. Gave up in the end.

A word of warning about torque wrenches.....

I worked as an Area Technical Sales Manager for a large multinational company which specialized in the manufacture and sale of DC electric assembly systems - the sort of assembly tooling used by motor manufacturers all over the world. We could tighten nuts and bolts repeatability to the the target clamping force with a tolerance of +/- 0.4%. Trust me when I say that that is a very good trick. Also note that I said 'clamping force' and not 'torque'. There is quite a difference. Torque in this instance is a measurement of the force required to run a nut down a bolt. With a brand new nut and bolt the requirement is minimal but if the nut and bolt is rusty or damaged or being used to pull something together then the required torque to run the nut down is larger. Now think of this. If you need, for example, 30 ft/lbs clamping force, a new nut and bolt will require 0.5 ft/lbs to run the nut to the face, a rusty old set up could require as much as 8 ft/lbs to run the nut to the face so when you apply the force to 'click' the torque wrench you have got two different clamping forces on the two set ups - 29.5 ft/lbs and 22 ft/lbs. Yet the wrench 'clicked' at the same torque setting but we have two different clamping forces......

Are you still with me? Now lets throw in the nasty little variables - accuracy and people.

I have yet to see a click type torque wrench with an accuracy of less than +/- 20% and some of the cheaper ones were more accurate than the dearer ones. Unless a transducer is fitted these wrenches cannot be anymore accurate.

How many times have you used a torque wrench and clicked it twice on the same joint or given it 'a little extra for good luck' ? .... why would you do that?

Click type torque wrenches are probably the best guide we have but please take them with a pinch of salt cuz they simply are not accurate

Simon.... Thank you for a good photo guide with lots of good information for those who will in future get around to doing this. I guess you were - at half eight on a wet and windy night - trying to use the 17mm nut to pull the poly bushes together, on an old and probably fatigued roll bar drop arm with a big spanner and it sheared off. Well we have all done it, we will all continue to do it, all sworn at it but at least now we have an idea why. Join the club!!

For more on tightening nuts and bolts go to Atlas Copco Tools dot com

Yeah, those polly bushes were a pain in the backside to get in, to have got it in and snapped it off was a an exercise in self discipline in not wanting to go and sledgehammer something. I got them in by fitting them before the shock, and taking the body mounting off. Moving the suspension up and down with a trolley jack found the sweet spot where it all aligns, this seems to be in the compressed state, I guess where the vehicle would sit when on it's wheels. I was tired and thinking of something else. I need to get it off now to see what is what.

Thanks for the words of caution on the torque wrench's.

Simon.

If you post me samples I am willing to fund getting them made.
I don't have sampes to send away, so i can't really do anything.
There are a few varients on the syncro too aren't they?
Without looking at ETKA then I can't really remember, i did look a while ago, but as usual, in one ear, out the other.
Poly bushes you syncro boys, they are fine on 2WD!!
Torque wrenches are for girls, you just know when something is tight enough! (except cylinder heads, they do need to be right)
I bet the end wouldn't have snapped off a new link....

Simon Baxter wrote:Torque wrenches are for girls,

Simon!

Simon Baxter wrote: Torque wrenches are for girls, you just know when something is tight enough! (except cylinder heads, they do need to be right)
I bet the end wouldn't have snapped off a new link....

Damn right!!!

It's this one.



Got to cycle to work until this is fixed, round trip of 22 miles in the rain. Great.

CJ has lots of that one thankfully, there's a complete set on a avn which hopefully he will send to Baxter for future proof, I'll check if classic and Henning will be remaking them too.

Simon, good thread. On re-fitting the LCA, I've found a ratchet-strap around the arm and the subframe can be used to 'encourage' the arm into position to get the rubber bushings aligned.

Nice job Simon. Glad you've found the pitfalls coz you know you'll be helping me with mine soon!

All back on the road, had a welder re fabricate the lower bolt part of the drop link.

Centered the steering on the marks on the rack and did all the alignments by eye on a flat concrete surface, compared it to Mal's 16" (syncroswede)

She now seems to self center and hold a straight line perfectly.

The ride quality seems to be much improved, no knocking or squeaking anymore.

Happy days.

Lovely weather down here in Devon, staying well away from the crowds at the coast.