Renovation upper suspension arm (wishbone), pivot bushes and upper ball joint

I was hoping not to have to tackle any of the suspension in order to get the car through the MOT. I did know that the job would need to be done eventually (soon), but I had hoped to have a bit of a financial rest first! However, on removing the front right wheel to attend to the brakes, I found one of the ball joint boots was split and that opened up the whole can of worms!

LH front upper ball joint- boot split

That said, it is true that now, whilst I have the hubs stripped off to deal with calipers and discs, is a very good time for the necessary access to do these jobs! Obviously I will need to do something to this joint as a split boot is a guaranteed MOT failure. It's possible that just rebooting the upper ball joints would do, but if I would need to detach the vertical link/stub axle anyway, so it's just as easy to change the ball joint and I will do the top arm bushes as well. The upper arm is not under spring tension. The spring is contained between the chassis and lower arm, it's extension being controlled by the shockabsorber. This means that it can be safely dismantled without worrying about spring compressors. However this is not so for the Lower arm and all reports suggest that lower arm ball joint, pivot bush and anti-roll bar bushes are likely to be very difficult: both because of needing to control the spring and because they are tight and hard to fit as well. Despite the golden opportunity that this access provides, I think I will leave the lower arm until I find out if they need doing immediately at the MOT. Strange after all this time to be actually thinking of the MOT!!!

I started the upper arm strip by loosening the ball joint bolts

 Followed by the ball joint itself, the taper broke easily with a BJ tool, the boot looks worse than I was expecting!

 I was puzzled by the inner pivot, there are two nuts (i.e. a nut plus a locknut) on the forward side-
My initial plan had been to remove the nuts at this end and then tap the pivot out towards  the rear. However it quickly became apparent that there is insufficient clearance to the front or back for the pivot bolt to be removed! I Guess it must have gone in before the body was attached- so good one ACB! However the process is simple- you just need to remove the nuts from both ends (hence the need for the locknut) and then separate the sides of the upper arm at the ball joint and remove each separately. There are 2 washers flanking each arm.

Lock up the locknut by unscrewing the rear nut tightly up against the locknut. Hold the nut tight and...

Remove the rear nut, note the washer between nut and arm.

You can then remove the lock nut  from the forward side

... and then remove the second nut, note washer!

Rear spar of top arm. Note second washer between arm and chassis mount

One wishbone removed. Its not necessary to tap out the pivot bolt as shown here- that was left over from my abortive first attempts.

Ball joint removed- pretty terrible state!

 I also intended to replace the inner pivot bushes in these arms- I'm using rubber metalastic basically because they are so much cheaper than polyurethane. In fact they didn't look in bad condition anyway,  but while the arms are off.... I had intended to use this Draper press and pull kit, but there were two problems- firstly it didn't have any press adapters small enough and secondly its really intended for working on an arm whilst it is still mounted on the car. This is because its really hard to both support the arm off the car and apply force to the extractor bolt. However in this case where clearance was so limited its pretty much impossible to use the screw method in the car. Anyway I used the  threaded puller from the set combined with a deep (23mm) and a shallow (19mm) socket to press out the bush on the bench. This was hard work but succeeded with the first bush.

Sadly though, I just couldn't apply enough force to the second arm and resorted to a bench press to shift it. Inspection of the removed bush showed that it had been "shaved" as it was originally pressed in, the outer casing had been scraped off.

Bushes as removed- sides pretty much shaved. LH bush is the one that was difficult to remove. A shiny spot on the top shows where it was binding.

I suspect therefore that it is much easier to press out if its pressed back out the way it was originally pressed in. Pressing it further  in the direction it was inserted would mean shaving the last section of bush metal coat and this would take a LOT of force. I think therefore that when I used the Draper screw press method, I was probably pushing it the wrong way! - Not that there is any way of telling which way (if any) is actually the right way! Anyway it popped out really easily in the press. It might be worth trying to decide in which direction the bushes were fitted when removing- although there may be no obvious sign.
I degreased the arms and soaked them in DeoxC before rinsing, Jenoliting and finally spraying in Aldi black metal protection paint.

I stripped the other side and prepared it in the same way. I fitted the new bushes using the bench press. For this I supported the arm using. Nielson press plate. Very pleased with that as it was a lot cheaper than the Sealey version and worked fine. For the amount of use I will give it, it should last me fine.

Lubricated bush with corrosion protect grease and placed it in position Upper arm in this pic has already had the new bush inserted

Arm supported on Neilson plate

Started pressing with arbor only- here bush is halfway

Complete using a socket to press bush lip into arm

Discbrake dustshield  re-fitted, again this was done using loctite threadseal as I do not want these working loose.



I assembled the upper links with their new ball joints and bolts onto the chassis, I tightened the ball joint up whilst everything else was loose so it could be drawn into alignment via the vertical link. Final tightening will be done once the car is standing on its wheel so all bolts left loose at this stage.

Ball joint-upper arm bolts tightened to 15 ft lb