Rear Strut Rods And Bushes

[ambermarine]

Good to read your progress. The LEXLS.com site suggests 2hrs. Like you, it took me a day to do one side. With my Mk3 the bushes on the hub seemed in good condition, the worst one was on the body side of the trailing arm. According to the various diagrams I had this should be the Adus 5056. Took everthing apart again yesterday and ended up taking the arm and bushes to Kwik Fit where a friend of a friend works and he had a go at pressing the bush in. No joy. I also had a pack of bushes for one of the suspension arms, the one which has bushes on both ends (the other has a ball joint on one end). These came as a set, Adus 583. Anyway, one of those proved to be an excellent fit for the body side of the trailing arm, although, once again, I had problems with the sleeve being too long for the flanges. When I torqued the bolts the bushing was still loose. So cut down the sleeve to allow the flanges to compress against the bushes when torqued. Success!

Had a go at the other side, feeling confident! However, took me two hours to get the bolt out of the body side of the trailing arm. Finally managed it. Car feels nice a firm and as I still have rubber bushes on one end I don't feel the ride is overly firm.

BTW did you have to jack up the hub in order to get the trailing arm to re-fit?

There definately seems to be differences between the Mk1 and 3.

Jim

Hi Jim

It sounds like you have solved the problem by trial and error I was thinking when we did ours that could be a solution to your problem (cutting the sleeves to the same length as the inserted bush) but without seeing it in the flesh was reluctant to do so for obvious reasons.

In answer to your Question on the jacking up of the hub to get the trailing arm to fit ,the answer is no, as we had also replaced the lower arm bush first and everything was slack until we torqued up the body side of the trailing arm, we loosened that fixing so we could swing it down out of the way while we got the hub bushes out.

We are doing the other side saturday and I will take a few pics to show the methodology of our approach to this task . After our experiences other members will need all the info they can get on what is a very demanding task and should not be attempted without the right tools and someone with a good deal of mechanical experience.

Update Saturday

Task completed and the ride is superb.

It took less than four hours to do this side mainly because we had the tool made up to remove the bushes the trailing arm bush was gone the corrosion was really bad the lower arm bush was failed inside the sphere.

Another tip to fellow members undo the bolts not the nuts as the nuts have anchor slots in the washer plate . I had intended to stick some pics on, I am not allowed to put them on this board so I have put the Pics on the workshop tips forum under a reference to this topic .

The main thing to remember is be patient it is not a job that can be rushed.