Estate trailling arms part1

Having obtained a spare pair of trailing arms and having become concerned over the suitability of regular poly bushes to avoif NVH on an estate, I cleaned and installed some superflex items to the spare arms and prepared to change them. Recent warm weather and Amanda working 10-6 gave me a spare hour or so yesterday to get started.

Having removed the rear wheel after jacking the car up and supporting under the rear sill jacking point, the handbrake cable was disconnected, the drum was removed and the 6 small retaining nuts removed from their studs. Driveshaft withdrawn and brake backplate secured out of the way after undoing the brake pipe retaining nut on the trailling arm bracket, left me with the scene below.

The rear shock retaining nut was removed after supporting the underside of the trailling arm. Once undone the jack can be carefully lowered and the spring removed, I had already loosened the trailling arm pivot bolts.

So the trailling arm was removed and on the floor. I installed new springs, poly insulators and the poly bushes shortly after we bought the estate, so the insulators were taken from these arms, wiped and placed into the cleaned arms in readiness to reinstall.

The picture above shows the replacement arm ready to go in, I had cleaned it up and sprayed with clear laquer. Looks much better.

Replacement is just reversal of removal, cleaning and greasing the splines on the driveshaft is a good maintenance idea and new nyloc nuts on the six small hub retaining studs should be considered essential. The box of new nylocs is just showing at the bottom of the picture.

The brake shoes and inside of the drum were sprayed with brake cleaner to safely remove any dust and the drum and wheel were replaced. The trailling arm bolts should be tightened with the car's weight on them and the handbrake will need to be adjusted once the nearside is completed. This took an hour and a half to do one side, the other side will have to wait until the next couple of hectic long days at work have finished. Mind you we need the car for an April fool's day run on Sunday.