Stiff Stearing

[PeterN]

Well done. you need to get it nice and oily now so it can work into the joints. Chain saw oil is ideal but if not gearbox oil is fairly viscous, failing that engine oil will do but you will need to lubricate it regularly.

Peter

[bytecode]

Well done. you need to get it nice and oily now so it can work into the joints. Chain saw oil is ideal but if not gearbox oil is fairly viscous, failing that engine oil will do but you will need to lubricate it regularly.

Peter

Hi Peter,
thank you for your help. (thank you everyone!)
It's been a couple of weeks now - I spent a few days spraying various lubes up into the UJ, none of which seemed to solve the stiffness completely - it was still so bad that I started worrying about the possibility of metal fatigue and fearing that maybe one day I'd turn the steering-wheel only for the car not to follow suit!
But thankfully, this didn't happen.

I jacked the car again this weekend - got my girlfriend to sit in the car and turn the steering wheel whilst I scrubbed, scraped and picked any gunk out of the bottom (outside) union joint. I asked my GF to turn only a few degrees at a time, then I would try applying stress to the disk in the middle of the UJ, spray it with engine de-greaser, then soapy water.

Then I prayed in a load of WD40, then copper lube spray, and finally - after more of this - It was totally free!

So I gave it another lube and then stuffed the joint with gob-fulls of molly grease, and worked into every part of the UJ.
The car steers like a dream - good job too, I had to dive into a hedge on the way home from work to avoid an on-coming HGV that straddled the centre-line - It would have been really hard with the stiffness.

Thank you all.

[bytecode]

Finally - for this thread - some thoughts/tips for anyone wishing to replace their own coils, strut top-mounts or top-mount bearings, in no particular order:

• WD40/plusgas everything - the nut & washer on the top mount, the nut on the hub-carrier, the brake-line bracket bolts, the clamp-bolt in-board of the hub carrier.
• Slightly loosen the top mount strut bearing to break any corrosion/binding - I didn't and then I couldn't undo the nut whilst the strut was off the car.
• Do NOT undo the top nut until the coils are safely compressed - else everything will fly off and you could easily end up injured
• You need to retain the coil with coil compressors after removing the strut from the car - I bought a single set of two for £9, I wish I'd bought another pair, preferably the type with locking pins to stop the compressors slipping off and taking your head off.
• The second pair of compressors would have been useful as it would have made the compressing easier once the spring was partially compressed, to get onto the next "winding" or tier of the spring that becomes available as it pulls away from the spring seats.
• When compressing, the "windings" of the coil get very close together - so much so that my compressor tried to push itself off the coil as the next "winding" of the spring was pulled down against the "claw" of the compressor. I used heavy duty cable ties to help stop the claw slipping off the spring and also tied around the compressors with some torn cotton sheets to retain them just incase they DID fly off again.
• a STRONG HEAVY bench vice is really useful to hold the strut whilst compressing/uncompressing the coil - I physically COULD NOT have done this without my bench vice.
• The 10mm bolts that retain the brake-line bracket are fiddly, prone to cross-threading and snap easily.
• The strut has a little "bump" at the back where it sits in the gap in the hub carrier (inboard) - I found marking this with tippex in a big line up the length of the strut really helpful in orienting the strut so that it would drop back into the hub-carrier.
• The wishbone is biased to push UPWARDS - making taking the strut out a bit of a pain. Retain the wishbone using a long bar, old exhaust pipe etc.
• If you are removing the strut from the gearbox side of the car - you need a catch tray under the tranny where the driveshaft goes into the gearbox as you'll lose gearbox fluid when the drive shaft comes out due to wiggling of the hub carrier. I suggest buying replacement gearbox oil ready for a refill. I didn't and had to use motor oil temporarily so that I could drive to the shops to get 2litres of fresh gearbox oil!
• remove the wheel arch liners - if you don't, the job is harder, takes longer, and you'll end up removing them anyway.
• there is a square metal tab on the strut to which the drop link attaches - this needs to be oriented correctly on refitting in relation to the pin and bolt holes of the top mount (and therefore, where they pass through the holes in the car).
• Make sure you have the right sized Torx bits - you need a different one for the top mount to retain the strut, to that of the antiroll bar drop link.

Thank you to every one for all your help and advice.

[PeterN]

Sounds like a good job - well done.

Peter