[Azurael]

Spent the whole day trying to change one of Hugo's wishbones today. It didn't go well. My 19mm socket exploded when I was trying to undo the wheel bolts... Should have seen it as a sign of what was to come. After a lot of swearing, we managed to change the anti roll bar link, which were an advisory but it looks like the wishbones (bearing in mind we have to do both sides) are going to be a right f**er. We managed to free the bolts on one side... Now need an 18mm ring spanner to whack on the nut on the top of the centre one as it's just spinning - hopefully the one at the hub end will come out relatively easily once we've got the 'right' tool, because there's no way to get heat on it 'cause it's so near the CV joint boot.

Now, a question to anybody who's done this before; did you disentangle the whole steering rack/hub carrier from the wishbone before changing it? 'Cause the useless pile of cr*p (Haynes manual) says it's necessary but it looks like you should be able to get the wishbone off just by supporting the strut/hub carrier adequately.

As you can imagine, having spent the whole day achieving precisely nothing (well, my dad found a decent pedal rubber on clutch pedal on the SIXTH Lag in the scrapyard... fscking pedantic tester, we managed to align the headlights, and freed up the bonnet catches...) I'm not in the best of moods at the moment, in fact I got to a point where I felt like smashing the car up with a large mallet... But I've spent too much on it already for that.

 

[Lagdti]

You just undo the bottom joint and lever the wishbone off of the hub carrier,no need to remove the hub/steering rack or anything else.

 

[Azurael]

You just undo the bottom joint and lever the wishbone off of the hub carrier,no need to remove the hub/steering rack or anything else.

Cheers! Just need to find 22mm and 18mm ring spanners now :-/ Seem to be as rare as rocking horse teeth.

Do you even need to support the hub carrier/strut? I guess it must already be at full extension with the wheel off the ground. I'm just paranoid about the CV joints!

 

[Lagdti]

You're right,the strut/hub assembly is at full extension with the car jacked up,you can drop the wishbone off and it will be fine.All you need to make sure of is that you don't pull the hub out too far as you can pull the inner CV's apart.You have to pull them out a fairish way for that happen though.