With my mates ##cough## copy of ELSAWIN at hand research was done.
The wheels bolts were loosened off prior to lifting. The front end of the car was jacked up and placed on axle stands, with the car raised as high as possible, as I’ll be dropping the sub frame I don’t know how much room I need but you can never have too much room.
As I have recently driven the car and I was going to drain the oil I thought I should do this while the oil is warm and thin. So under tray was removed, catchment tray placed below the sump plug and sump plug pulled. We have a Miller’s oil laboratory engineer on the forum, I have been meaning to take up his offer of getting my oil analysed to check for engine wear characteristics etc. So when the oil was draining I took a sample of this draining fluid mid stream in a suitable container. Hopefully nothing serious will be found in this but better to know, I’ll let you all know when I get the results back. The oil filter was removed and the filler cap was also removed. This was all left to drain off.
Next was to wire brush and coat all the bolts that are to be removed with WD40 to allow easier removal, hopefully!! These were left to soak and the wheels were removed. As I have 20mm hub centric spacers, for these alloys to clear the callipers, these are a proper PITA to remove. While waiting for my old man to get back to
help with this I decide to remove the battery as I plan to change the transmission mount from the Street density to a Track density one and route a cold air supply from the front of the car. When the battery is removed I realised that the brakes won’t work without the battery and I need these one to hold the disc in place for removing the spacers, feck!! So with one shot at it my dad pressed the pedal and managed to remove the spacers, thank feck!!
The bolts have soaked for a few hours now so time to crack on with sub frame dropping, ELSAWIN was followed some bolts were backed off and double FECK, snapped one of the power steering pump bolts, one of four. It seems like there should be an amount of stub sticking out so hopefully I’ll get this out with the sub frame dropped. Reading ELSAWIN it mentions that the ball joint position needs to be marked prior to removing this, initially I couldn’t think of why but on closer inspection the swing arm has slotted holes in it to allow some degree of camber adjustment. As you can see from the pictures these are all the way out to the edge of the slot, so no need to mark these. I will be fitting new wishbones anyway.
Swing arm nuts from below
Some of these bolts were very tight but with a 2ft long breaker bar these were removed. The sub frame was supported with a trolley jack with some wood, the final bolts were removed, sub frame lowered down and pulled out of the way.
Sub frame
On initial inspection there seems like no big wear on either of the bushings LCA front and rear or much rust but these bushings will be removed as I have new ones and bolts (thanks to David at Seremotors for this) and maybe paint the bars too.
The wish bones were removed and the bushings inspected, the front ones have been in since new (2003) and the rear ones are Powerflex ones which have been in for 3 years. These are gonna be a bitch to get out. I have a small gas torch and a vice so hopefully I’ll manage.
Wish bone before removing bushes
