Front Suspension Refresh -- My experience

[rwilner]

Hi All,
Using the numerous "front suspension refresh" threads on this side, I had a very successful experience pulling my front suspension apart to replace a arm bushings, ball joints, sway bar bushings, and turbo tie rods. Here are a few bullet points from my experience:

• I couldn't get a pipe wrench on the goofy castle nut -- I used the special pin-nut socket on my 1/2" drive ratchet with a 3' cheater to loosen it. I also put a jack under the ratchet drive to make sure it kept in good contact with the nut. This worked great for both driver and passenger sides.
• You can leave all the brake stuff intact while working on the a-arms and tie rods.
• The tie rod separator tool from our host is worth every penny. I literally had the tie rods separated from the steering knuckles in seconds.
• I removed the driver's side tie rod using the rod as a wrench, a big screwdriver, vise grips, etc. On the passenger side I had to get more creative due to clearance. What I did was unscrewed the tube from the threaded part of the tie rod (REMEMBER THIS IS A REVERSE THREAD -- CLOCKWISE TO LOOSEN). I then took off the tie rod end, and installed the nut that secures the tie rod end onto the stub that remained in the rack. The original nut on that stub was still there, so i tightened these 2 nuts together, and loosened that stub with the "double nut" technique -- I used an open end wrench with a cheater. See pic for the double nuts on the stub. (What a PITA.)
• Study up on your curse words when installing the tie rod boots.
• For what it's worth -- the right tools, a 3 lb hand sledge, lots of reading beforehand and a little patience was what I needed to get my whole assembly apart, drama-free. Note that my car only has 64k miles so it probably came apart more easily than most.

Here's the pic of the double nut on the threaded tie rod stub:


A huge THANK YOU to this forum for giving me the knowledge needed to make this smooth and easy for me and my dad!! Hopefully the bullets above help someone in some small way.

Rich

[rwilner]

Same photo, rotated so you can see it better:

[Nickshu]

FWIW installing turbo tie rods (and the cursed boots) is much easier with the steering rack out of the car. The rack is not very hard to remove (esp when you are that far already) and gives you a chance to rebuild the rack too.

[gsxrken]

The boots go easier if you utilize a hair dryer tomsoften them up and some silicone spray.

But I agree on the invaluable nature of this board. I could hardly afford to maintain or modify my car without it.