Front wishbones. How difficult to replace rubbers ?

[stuttgartmetal]

The car is tramlining, and I am advised this is one of the symptoms associated with inner bush wear on the front wishbones.
I'm tee-d up for that little head ache.
I've sourced new bushes etc, I'm replacing these with oe items.
I'm only looking at doing this once, so wishbones, drop links, ball joints. ARB rubbers.
Okay.
Tell me the worst.
Fill me in.
Skinned knuckles ?
Rust in your eyes?
What's the worst or trickiest part of the job, and in what order should I proceed ?


Let's imagine I've got the car up on axle stands.
Let's.
Let's further imagine the front wheels have been removed.
I haven't done this as yet. It's 8 o'clock on Sunday night. Let's just imagine I have.
It's ten o'clock on Saturday morning, (it isn't, let's imagine it is)

Aaaaaaand (claps hand together horizontally ] ACTION! .

 

[stuttgartmetal]

And...

 

[stuttgartmetal]

And.

 

[stuttgartmetal]

And.....

 

[Endoman]

Get hold of The Bentley book. Drop links easy, Wishbones harder. Fitting bushes difficult without the right tools. I'd let Chris Franklin do it.

 

[Gwsinc]

I swapped my a-arms out recently along with the lower ball joints and tie rods. I 'cheated' and bought refurbished ones from Carnewal who uses Walrod PU bushes, they're excellent, not too harsh but steering is more direct.

Fitting it all, you'll be pleased to know, is fairly simple, just nuts and bolts. The hardest part is realigning it so it doesn't chew your tires up on your drive to Center Gravity to get it aligned again

If it were me I'd get the wheels off, measure the position of the hub in space relative to fixed parts of car to replicate the caster angle later. Then replace the ARB link and bush. The ARB will help keeping the strut from moving too much when the wishbone is off so I'd do it in that order. Then pull the wishbone off. Do what you need to do with the bushes, then clean and de grease all nuts and bolts, Porsche say replace, but mine looked new after a good clean (check for hairline fractures etc). Fix new ball joint to a-arm with copper grease round eccentric bolt then replace. Fit to car then torque all to spec once you replicate position on space.

Repeat on other side. Then replace the tie rods. I removed them then tried to replicate their length on the new ones from the mating surface with the rack and the end of the rod end. Fit them with new bellows and drop the car. The car should be broadly aligned to the extent it won't immediately shoot you off the road.

Then use string method to get toe to reasonable spec, you can keep the car on the deck and get to the tie rods with 17 and 24mm (might be 22mm?) spanners. Place slideable material under wheels to allow them to rotate. Before finishing roll car back and forth a few feet then re-measure.

Things to remember: note where each bolt goes, they may be the same thread pitch but some are serrated some smooth. Use whatever novel method you like to note the position in space of the hubs, to re-align the wheels up again, and be prepared to use the axle stand and string method especially if CG is 2.5 hours away. Make sure steering rack is aligned using alignment hole before measuring anything, keep rechecking the steering wheel as adjustments you make may move the other wheel rather the one you're adjusting.

I avoided the bush replacement because it seems like a faff and have heard it to take days. Without this the above work took me less than a day, skinned most knuckles, got stuff in my eyes and inhaled too much brake cleaner but still worth it. :thumbs:

There are some photos of this work from a few weeks ago on my Instagram below.

 

[AP90]

I replaced the bushes in the wishbones many years ago, replaced with poly bushes

Did it old school using blowtorch and hack saw. It was a major pain.

I'd do the exchange bit that a few suppliers offer nowadays

There are also mixed reviews on the benefits of poly bushes, not sure what the current thinking is. The ones I put in (Powerflex), have been great, still ok, 2005 I think!!

Hope it goes well but make the job as easy as you can, you'll then need to get an alignment which is expensive these days I think 175-200??

 

[wozy]

Bite the bullet and spend the money and buy new oem. I replaced everything on my 993 suspension wise for new other than recon wishbones which I sourced from Hartech.... 8K miles and 18 months later they were shot.

Buy once and hopefully last 60k miles..... Same with drop links, it just ain't worth the faff :thumb: