I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: __ARBs
I had the following comments on my MOT test last time.
Are these the famous drop links?
A)Should I get this done professionally or should it be simple enough for someone of moderate mechanical ability?
B) if not done, will it fail the next mot?
Repair as soon as possible (minor defects):
Anti-roll bar linkage ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Both Front Linkages (5.3.4 (b) (i))
Anti-roll bar linkage ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated Both Rear Linkages (5.3.4 (b) (i))
Yes drop links, seems all four need replacing.
Not expensive items, probably £50 all in.
Rears easy enough, well they was for me, nuts came off ok with a little easing oil, straight off and on with the new. You can probably get to them easy without getting the car up in the air, depends how low your car is?
Fronts are wheel off jobs each side, I had to cut one of the bolts off and it was seized. If If remember I had to part the joint to get them off (big hammer) then get a pair of stilsons on ball to get the nuts off or cut them, can’t quite remember.
Sometimes its brute force:muscle: depends how crusty they are.
Have had a grovel and sprayed the nuts and threads with GT85, which claims to be a penetrant and I happened to
have some.
The mot report complains about boots but I can’t see any sign of any boots, just what look like rubber washers
It looks like I may be able to do front and rears with wheels on the ground by turning to full lock?
Links arrived today, so I thought I’d make a start.
Took me half the afternoon to get one bolt off and that was by sawing through it
Its really difficult to get at with the car on the ground.
You can get one hand in there ok but not the three you need.
The problem is that you can’t just heave on the nut to undo it as the ‘bolt’ has the ball at the other end and just rotates . There is a recess to take an allen key in the end of the bolt but its very shallow and rounds out before you can get the nut all the way off the thread.
I note the allen recess in the autolink version is much deeper.
Normally, I would drive a star bit into the rounded out allen recess to regain some grip but there’s no room to do that.
It would be so much easier to do on a lift…
I think maybe I need some better penetrating fluid for a start and to find a way to grip the ball so I can get the nut off. Vice grip pliers perhaps?
Ouch.
By cutting through the nuts themselves?
The one I cut off was by cutting through the ‘bolt’, having wound the nut off the thread enough to get a junior hacksaw blade behind it
depends how crusty they are.
