Thread: Weekend fun, New Lower Cont Arms Complete and Bolts

Yep. About ten days ago for the first time and without a hoist. Firstly, read the procedure in the workshop manual. Secondly, watch the videos from Britpart and others to see how they do it (albeit on a hoist). Note that you must mark the position of the bolts before disassembly. Thirdly, be grateful we don't live in Britain. My bolts were in such good condition I didn't really have to use the new ones. But I did and have since cleaned and repainted the old ones for possible future use. All nuts were fine and were re-used, too. Mind you, my car is only 90,000km old.
You will need the following tools in addition to your normal tools:
1. 24mm podger stick or ring spanner and a short length of pipe for leverage. This is for the rear LHS nut which is a tight fit in front of the exhaust.
2. 24mm deep socket for all the other nuts.
I would also recommend:
3. A rattle gun or one of these new-fangled battery ones (hence use impact sockets)
4. An air impact driver (magic for the ball joints). Remember to use hearing protection.
5. Copper grease to coat the bush bolts on re-assembly.
6. Tyre levers or some other form of leverage for repositioning the hub assembly to the air spring.
Note that the workshop manual mentions the following for good reason:
7. Before jacking up the car, place it in Access Height. BTW, jack the front of the car up on the centre front jacking point (using a trolley jack) and place axle stands on each side of the chassis with enough clearance to give you access to the rear bolts. Leave the trolley jack in place. Ideally you'll have a second jack to raise each hub assembly to re-assembly clearance height (466mm from axle centre to edge of wheel guard).
8. Simulating Normal height by raising the hub assembly to 466mm from axle centre to edge of wheel guard. Then tighten the bolts to 275Nm. Actually, just tighten them as best you can. The wheel alignment people will loosen and re-tighten them anyway.
9. Fit the air spring bolt after you have tightened the bush bolts. You'll see why you had to put it in Access Height now!
Other notes:
10. Do one side at a time. That way, if you're not sure about something you can refer to the unmolested side.
11. You MUST get the alignment done in Tight Tolerance Mode. Ignore anyone who tells you otherwise even if they've "done a hundred of 'em".
12. Drive straight to the wheel alignment place. No matter how well you mark the concentric bolts there is no way you'll be within cooee of an alignment.

I was quoted about $1.3k to get the job done by a very good Landrover workshop (genuine parts), but decided there was no reason I couldn't do it myself. I probably spent about that much but I was happy to buy a good set of deep impact sockets and an air driver (and, yes, a new-fangled battery rattle gun).

Oh! The manual says to reset the steering angle. I didn't need to do this. Ideally, you should have a Rovacom or GAP tool. What you save in labour you could put towards that!

As above

You get all new bolts in Meyle Kit.

Mark the cams with a white pen in a few locations. I tried the spray can trick and it was a disaster. Transfer marks to new cams.

Loosen but don’t remove ball joint nut. A solid whack or 3 on the rounded hub part with small sledge hammer will release ball joint from taper. On reassembly you may see the ball joint is turning. Load up the taper with a jack underneath the hub and it will tighten.

On 2.7D small brake cars you need to release the hub nut to pull out the hub out far enough to create enough gap to release the LCA up and out of the taper. I found this out the hard way.

You lower it down the LCA on an angle on the inside and wiggle up at the hub. At first this seems impossible but using another person simply pull out the hub more while pushing the drive shaft in with a hammer handle or similar.

On later larger brake cars it seems you can extract the LCA without removing hub but.

As above, my car was so far out of alignment the wheel was at 45 degrees to steer straight and sent the car into lowered mode with a dash full of lights. Still got me to the alignment shop ok and perfect again once aligned.

Have fun!

All sounds pretty simple unless! It took me two weeks to get the RH rear bolt out of the control arm even with the help of a mobile heavy duty farm mechanic. That is the main thing that could cause you problems.
Good luck.
Nick

Originally Posted by Pippin

All sounds pretty simple unless! It took me two weeks to get the RH rear bolt out of the control arm even with the help of a mobile heavy duty farm mechanic. That is the main thing that could cause you problems.
Good luck.
Nick

Use an air hammer. My favourite tool now (even though I'll probably never need to use it ever again!).

Originally Posted by DieselLSE

Use an air hammer. My favourite tool now (even though I'll probably never need to use it ever again!).

Yep thats the way, but even with that it was a close call to get it to move.

Saw blade comes next but almost unheard of in Oz.

There is a very very funny YouTube video of a guy in UK changing his D3 rear wheel control arms.

It ultimately takes him about 4 weekends and dozens of broken saw blades. Every item was rusted solid.