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I finally got some new bushes for the rear of my car and set about fitting them to the spare lower rear arms I had for just this porpoise. I replaced only the pillowball type bushes (31Av & 31AW in the diagram) which go in the rear inner and outer registers on the arms. The inner front (31AU) is a solid rubber bush which seemed to be perfectly serviceable on both arms. Diagram: The first job was to make a tool to push the bushes in and out with. This is a piece of 1 3/4" water pipe. Inside it is a piece of aluminium to make it a snug fit on the seal lip of the bush purely to locate it centrally. . This tube is to support the arm and allow the old bush to pass through as it came out. It's a piece of old steam pipe from the railway, it was probably around when Dr Beeching was in short trousers. You can see where it's been machined out to allow room for the bush without needing pinpoint precision. Here's one of the old knackered bushes. All of them were loose from wear but at the same time unable to rotate axially as they were designed to. I didn't actually take any pictures of the bushes coming out. Once it's all position it's not really the time to stop to take snaps. Suffice to say I stacked up the steam pipe, then the arm then the water pipe, line it all up and press. There was no real drama, they all let go quite easily and the tools did their jobs. One arm sans bush. The registers were cleaned up with a sandpaper drum(?) in a electric drill. This was just get rid of any corrosion present. One thing which you must be aware of is that only one end of the register is machined flat and at right angles to the register itself. This is the side that must be down on the bed of the press to get the bush to go in straight. I did purposely push the insides out of one of the old bushes to have a look. An interesting design but I really think the sealing should be more robust. All of the seals were in tatters, much the same as the ones on my car.

Here I press out the hub and ball-joint from my spare o/s front suspension upright ready to fit new parts. It's not a complicated job as such but you do need the right kit and the ability to hit things really hard without breaking them. This is a basic diagram of the front suspension : The home made press frame which utilises a porta power hydraulic chassis repair ram. Here's the upright in the press. I loosened the four bolts but left them in an equal amount so I could push on them all at once to start with rather than the centre of the hub. This lessens the chance of the hub going out of alignment and damaging the upright: A clearer view of the back of the hub: This hub came out with barely any pressure, unlike the ball-joint which was stuck so very tight: Setting fire to it didn't help.. I cut the pin off as it makes it easier to push, hammer and generally abuse the joint. Eventually the ball-joint let go. It took two of us, a lot of heat in the upright and lots of hammering to get it to move. Once it moved a little getting it out the rest of the way was easy. I did the other side last year and in contrast the ball-joint was dead easy whilst the hub put up a real fight and took over 12 tons to push out. I actually prefer that it that way around because getting the upright correctly set up in a press for the ball-joint is very tricky. The upper end of the upright is right in the way and as you can see there's very little meat on the upright around the ball-joint to get a purchase on. Having anything even a little of centre is not an option, you have to be spot on with these sorts of forces involved and the consequences of distorting the alloy parts are pretty big, especially if it's your cars original one. All in I would say that this is a doable but awkward job with many variables relating to the corrosion holding onto the hub and ball-joint. It could be easy, it could take you all afternoon. Personally I wouldn't tackle it with the original upright from my car, only with a spare one as I did here because if it goes wrong then you aren't stranded with no car and no spare upright. I have heard of them being scrap because the hub is stuck so tight.. Fitting the new hub is easy as it's not a true interference fit, just snug. The ball-joint is different. It's purely interference and the same things that make it awkward to remove in a press make it a pain to fit. I will be exploring different options and will update as and when I do it.

Thank you. I will set the tracking and see how many miles I can get out of the rear tyres, about 3k miles I reckon, one has slow puncture though. I paid £92 delivered for the bushes from http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222206363126?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT As I said in another thread I waited for a month for Racing Green to show some small degree of customer care before giving up and getting these instead. They arrived in five days, no messing about. The track-rods came from d2pautoparts10 on ebay. The chap was very polite and apologetic when I called about the failure so it's only the product I have beef with so far. Unfortunately a lot of the time the majority of examples of a particular component are off the same production line with different brands stuck on the box so it's difficult to know what you're buying. Had just one failed then I could have put it down to a single manufacturing error but both of them are bad so I'm more inclined to think that they're just rubbish. The exacerbated wear did cross my mind but then even if it had reduced their life by, let's say, a ridiculous 90% they would still only have a life of 30k miles and that's still rubbish. No chicken about it, it's a big proposition for a lot of people. I could not have even attempted it without quite a lot of tools, space and time, all valuable commodities. If I earned even a half decent wage then it wouldn't have been economically viable to do it myself. Not that that would have stopped me, no I like doing these things myself and above all learning and gaining experience. One mistake I have made in this thread is in the title. I put XK instead of XF, is there any way to change it?

Fitting the new bushes was dead simple, "reversal of removal" as Haynes say. Again no pictures as such but there wasn't much to see, the purpose made tools were the important bit. On fitting the re-bushed arms today I found that the slider pins on one rear brake caliper carrier were seized solid. Some wrenching about in the vice freed them and they were put back together cleaned and coated in CV grease. More worryingly there was an awful of of play in the inner end ball-joints of both rear track-rods which I fitted brand new this year! They've done probably 3k miles at the most, absolutely shocking. The supplier offered to replace them but they're out of stock and I think I'll be calling back tomorrow to ask a refund instead of another set! I thought the wobbling was getting worse a quite a rate and these would be why, there was a good 5 degrees of free play in the toe of each rear wheel. I replaced the old ones because the outer bushes were worn out so I've reused the old inner ends with the new outers. All the suspension bolts came undone with no fuss save for the bottom of one drop link but even that was no real problem. The damper and the three bush bolts which are a mix of 21, 18 & 19mm. The drop link was a 7mm hex on the pin and a 15mm nut. Annoyingly the brake caliper an its' carrier have to come off to allow the outer bush bolt to come out, there's only an inch in it but it has to be done. The spare arms with two nice new bushes and one original, Well, two outta three ain't bad according to Meatloaf. Front inner bush. Outer bush, rear inner bush, drop link & damper. Fitting these arms is an easy job, even on a gravel driveway. Probably half my time was spent messing around with the other problems that I found along the way. The new bushes come with washers to pack the outer one out to fit. For some reason the original outer is about 5mm longer than the inner rear one which is otherwise identical. I'd imagine the after-market don't want to tool up for two different bushes, hence the washers, that's absolutely fine with me. I will set the tracking properly once I have new rear track-rods and a front track-rod end. Already the ride and handling is transformed from the level of a Ford Zephyr up to at least a Sierra and once I have done the front lower bushes and set up the entire geometry it should be really good! As little as I like having to replace suspension parts I do find a silver lining in the promise of a nicer, more involving drive.