Repair-It

Sew fahnsay.

While I was under I sort of scoped out the lower control arm job. We were discussing whether removing the axle would be required to disconnect the lower ball joint from the knuckle. Plenty of clearance. In fact you can see how removing the axle wouldn't really even help because it seems like the control arm will hit the knuckle itself first anyway.

Now here is the rear bolt that requires raising the steering rack. I am wondering if disconnecting the tie rod and flopping it up would make enough clearance for the bolt. Front bolt.

Pulled the trigger on the Mevotech front lower control arms. $345 shipped. Not super cheap so I hope they are good. The ball joints become greaseable. Not super excited about adding a maintenance item but maybe my lower ball joints are in need of replacement anyway. After all, the driver's side upper was shot...
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 044&jsn=16
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 044&jsn=17

The rush is the suspension is not improving with age/mileage, and the inner part of the front tires is beginning to get quite bald. Not doing an alignment or replacing tires until I refresh the lower control arms. On the plus side these are the same front tires the car had when I bought it at 125k. Has 152k now so not bad for used car tires. Would have gotten more life out of them if the front suspension wasn't worn out.

The question is, do I dare add engine mounts to this job? I need to do more research. I have them in a box. I'd love to do them but it is supposed to be a real pain. Just seems like I will be a good way into the car by doing the lowers and may gain access to some stuff. In fact, I have to loosen and raise the steering rack to get the rear bolts out of the front LCAs and that may also help with the mount job. Or...I could attempt to pull the axles but I dunno. I will get some gear wrenches in bigger metric sizes from Harbor Freight because a forum member reported an 18mm one being a life saver for loosening the steering rack bolts. May help with the mounts, too. We'll see. The motivation is quite strong because both the front LCAs and engine mounts are contributing to the car not feeling nearly as nice as it should.

My goodness these are beefy. They are aluminum but so sturdy that they are still quite heavy. Of course that big cross bolt in the arm holds the weight of that corner, due to the shock design, as opposed to a strut design where the LCA doesn't really hold the car's weight at all.

Warning: cancer and reproductive harm

While I was under the STS I noticed there are spots on the inside part of the tread that are down to the cords.

So I need to really schedule this job, which also means coming through the engine mount situation. And that probably consists of only two options:
1) Order Creative Steel poly mounts which are smaller and easier to slip in - apparently I'll never get the big factory mounts back in without removing more crap.
2) Skip this at this time and just to the LCAs

The get an alignment, and I guess front tires.

Option 3.
Sell it. You have a new daily, and a car 10 years older that needs less.

Yeah. Except I don't want to sell a broken car with bald tires.

kevm14 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:44 pm Yeah. Except I don't want to sell a broken car with bald tires.

Those are worth about $100.

After doing the shock, I reconnected the knuckle to the upper ball joint to let the knuckle and brakes hang on something while I was working with the lower control arm.

There is a lot of stuff to loosen and it's all big stuff.

- Anti-roll bar end link, the lower connection to the LCA. This required using a 5mm allen wrench in the stud to keep it from turning while loosening. Struggled to get it to pop out of the LCA but I just needed to find the right height of the LCA to take the pressure off, then it popped right out.
- Loosen lower ball joint nut. This wasn't too bad, I can't remember if I had to use the 6mm hex bit to hold it. Actually, no, this was a bit of a disaster. I guess I didn't clean the threads so the nut started to bind before I was able to remove it. I did snap a 6mm hex driver trying to hold back the ball joint stud from turning. Then I grabbed a 6mm socket to jam into the now free short 6mm hex driver. Broke the socket. I've had those particular Craftsman sockets for almost 20 years. Sheesh. Tried a nut breaker. Then I just broke out the angle grinder and worked on it for 10 minutes. Eventually I got the nut off and probably part of the BJ stud.
- Remove nut for outer tie rod because I wanted to try my trick of lifting the tie rod instead of lifting the steering rack
- Loosen LCA mounting hardware.

Loosening the BJ from the knuckle took some doing. Tried prying with a pickle fork. My BJ remover wasn't the right one for this, either. So I moved to my favorite: heat. I heated up the knuckle, gave 3 whacks on the stud/nut and it popped right out! I guess I can't prove it wouldn't have done the same thing without heat. The knuckle is aluminum so it's not like steel which I feel grabs harder, perhaps due to rust. This worked well straight away on the passenger side without doing anything else first.

Got the LCA out of the knuckle and was able to pull the rear bolt out by just grazing the tie rod boot!

Had some difficulty getting the ball joint stud back into the knuckle because it's a downward facing design. Seemed like the LCA was hitting the axle (that thing Adam commented on). However, after a LOT of screwing around I tried removing the mounting bolts and letting the LCA drop down and this gave a good angle to slip the stud right in. Then I was able to jam the control arm back in the subframe ears and lightly tap it where it needed to be with my mini-sledge.

Lots more screwing around tightening stuff. I scribed the ears so I could install the LCA in the right location. The mounting holes are oblong to provide caster/camber adjustments. I duplicated what was there, which seemed to be fully forward for one location and fully back for the other.

The driver's side is done except I need to do the final torque of the LCA mounting hardware with the car on ramps with weight on it.