Suspension bushes dying on a Ford Ka

They're 40p each :)

Yes, and that quote will probably be using cheap arms so will die again after a year or so. Ford wanted £95 per arm however, I knocked them down to £85 each and got a set of pads for my Fiesta at the same time so it all came to £195 I think.

Not got round to installing the Ford arms yet (keep getting rained off) but it looks like the bushes will last a fair old while.

Peter.

This is a tricky one - in my experience the Ford arms last about 3 years. Fitted pattern arms may only last 1 year, but at 20% of the cost of the Ford arms I could refit them 5 times before I've bought a Ford arm. This is especially true if I'm fitting them myself and so avoiding labour costs.

Another question -though - what's the logic in replacing the whole arm and not just the bushes? I take it a special tool is needed to fit the bushes, but the bush has gotta be a whole lot cheaper than the arm?

In message , Tony writes

My own experience was that the pattern arms were about half the price of genuine arms and lasted less than 10k miles. On ours, the original bushes were noted as "starting to go" as early as 10k but it took until

30k before they needed replacing.

Getting the old bush out is more difficult than pressing in a new one. Also you get a new ball joint with a new arm and they can sometimes get a bit creaky.

In message , Peter Spikings writes

If you re-read the thread you will find that I pointed this out originally. I use a jack to compress the strut but you have to be careful that the jack doesn't shoot out.

OK..... I have some time to do this now but have had a potential snag pointed out to my by a garage which I'd like to clear up with you lot so I don't find that I can't finish the job after I've got the old arms off. They say that it's tricky because the holes in the bushes for the bolts don't line up with the holes in the bracket until the arm is in it's normal position, i.e. connected to the hub carrier with the suspension compressed by the weight of the car. How difficult is it to get the bolts in?

Thanks,

Peter.

Ah, sorry.. I thought originally that you were suggesting that to make it easier to get the arm into the carrier, not to get the bolt holes lined up ;)

Thanks,

Peter.

To all that need to do this job later,

I've just finished doing the nearside arm (yes, it does take me a while to get round to stuff!). The offside arm is only making a tiny amount of noise over bumps so I'll leave it a bit.

The method I employed for getting the holes in the bushes to line up was as follows:

- Get the rear most bush in place with the rest of the arm sticking out of the wheel well and push it's bolt all the way through.

- Rotate the arm, angling it down quite hard to pass underneath the hub, to get the other bush nearly in place.

- Push the tip of the other bolt through the lower hole ready to catch the hole in the bush and push the remaining bush into place.

- Push the bolt far enough up so that it won't fall out.

- Insert the balljoint pin into place in the hub carrier

- While pushing the bottom of the hub inwards, hammer the bolt upwards until it comes all the way through.

As suggested I tried to get the hole to line up naturally by jacking the hub upwards but when I heard the sound of the axle stand relaxing as the weight came off it suddenly seemed too dangerous, didn't want to risk the hub coming off the jack and pulling the driveshaft out of the gearbox or something else nasty.

If the Haynes book is right you're supposed to tighten the bush bolts to

50Nm and then angle tighten 90 degrees, I'm a fairly big guy but the last bit of tightening was nearly too hard for me (bear in mind this was done on the ground and I couldn't use my weight at all), and this is with a two foot breaker bar.... Must have ended up applying 250-300Nm which seems a little excessive. I guess those bolts aren't going to work themselves loose :)

Peter.