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Front ARB bush replacement

After receiving the full set of bushes from Guildford OPC I decided this afternoon to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather and get under the car again.

After jacking up both sides of the 944 I set about loosening the droplink bolts after removing the front wheels. Access is good and a breaker bar came in handy getting those bolts to budge. There's no chance of getting them off with a standard ratchet that's for sure.

I found that after removing the droplink from the driver side control arm (wishbone) I needed to use a  jack to raise the wishbone on the other side in order to get enough space between the strut and bolt to loosen it with the 17mm socket.

Once all the bolts were removed the anti-roll bar just drops out from under the car.

It took a few taps with the hammer to get the old bushes to budge and quite some muscle to remove them from the ARB. I started to get worried about installing the new ones, them being significantly more compact to the eye than the old ones.

To remove the droplink bushes I simply cut the flange off on the one side and worked them out with a screwdriver, before cleaning all the metal up with a wire brush.

I decided on preheating the rubber bushes with some boiled water to soften them before installation and lubricated them with rubber lubricating spray. It took some real effort to get the new bushes to seat correctly on the ARB and lubricating them with the spray was the trick to sliding the new tight bushes into position.

I fitted the two inner droplinks first to position the ARB correctly before attaching the droplinks to the wishbone -starting with the passenger side which was still slightly raised by the jack from the removal procedure. As always refitting is not quite the reverse of removal and I need to use the jack to compress the wishbone bushes enough to attach the bolts. It took a bit of fiddling but after 3 hours I had them all installed.

I headed off for a short drive and the difference was immediately noticeable - the front-end is much stiffer and there's more of a solid and direct feel to the steering. Result!

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