Hi everyone
I'm just in the midst of grappling with a problem with my X Type.
Over time, it's developed a bit of a wierd clonk from the rear - I've read elsewhere that this might be bushes so I had a look online and I am bamboozled by the lack of information available on this part of the car!
The problem I have is that when driving along I've got an almost constant rattle which sounds like my brake caliper is flapping about in the wind. I have recently replaced the drivers' side rear caliper since my old one seized and was duff so I chucked it and got a virtually new Bosch one from a scrapyard (I had the sticky handbrake cable problem and fixed it twice, so if anyone needs to know how to do that I can help! Doesn't take long).
So I put the car back together and it was fine but then it started developing this rattly clonk which is really bad over bumpy bits of tarmac, but oddly it stop when I'm braking (whether hard or soft) which led me to think I'd been a wally and left a tool back there or hadn't put a bolt in. Checked it today and the caliper is solidly on there as it was the day I bolted it in place - no movement on the caliper, the disc, the hub, the axle, the dust shields or pads, all solid and operating 100% fine - so after some reading and a bit of past experience with Land Rovers I thought it could be a broken coil spring or a dodgy bush, so out came the pry bar. I tried any joint I could find but all were silent, however some looked a bit worse for wear.
My ARB's are fine, and ball joints look ok with no leakage or residue, shocks look good again with no seeping or leaks, but where I'm stumped is with the part names. Every parts place I can find seems to call every single bush 'trailing arm bush' or 'bush hub carrier' and there doesn't seem to be a chart or schematic which explodes the layout so I can find what I need.
I'm inclined to replace the arms assuming they come with bushes already in-situ as that would just be a bolt out, replace, bolt in job without having to !Removed! about with bush pullers and the like. I took some pictures and noticed that there are several parts;
1) The coil spring sits on an arms that is bolted through with a bush at the centre of the car, with an alignment adjustment. There is a bush at the other end which pins this to what I would call the back of the radius arm.
2) There is a big bush about 18 inches forward of the rear wheel at the front of the radius arm - this is one that i suspect is knackered (explanation later)
3) There are the shock mount bushes.
4) There are two arms, one upper, one lower - the upper is like a flat piece of cast metal, kind of like a boomerang. The lower is tubular with a slight kink in it but to all intents and purposes it is straight. What are each of these arms called please?? They appear to bolt to the chassis/subframe.
The reason that I mainly suspect the foremost radius arm bush is because I couldn't simulate the sound with a prybar on any of the bush joints, despite much wiggling and grunting (now now, children!) - I could only replicate it when I stood up, got both hands under the brake disc and yanked it sharply upward, and rearward - i then heard the clonking and it seemed to come from somewhere beneath the rear passenger seat on the drivers side. The thing I guess I'm a bit dubious about is that the problem could be elsewhere and the noise might just be transferring and reverberating up the body thus deceiving me.
I've attached some pictures to help visualise what I'm on about. The last one is of the lower kinky tubular arm mount, and to me it looks buggered and I'm guessing it's definitely not supposed to look like that - any ideas?
P.S. If anyone out there is near Hertfordshire and happens to have a bush pulling kit, I would very much appreciate being able to borrow it to do this job if at all possible!
Thanks in advance all.
