Hi folks.

Do you ever have one of those days where you wish you just hadn't started? Well today I did.
I've been collecting parts for a suspension over haul for a few weeks now and today was my first and only day off for months so I jacked the car up and got to work... Sadly absolutely everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

Firstly it took 2 hours to remove the drop link, it just kept spinning and I ended up sawing the bolt and driving 15 miles to get new drop links.

I decided to just loosen the track rod end in the hope it would give me enough movement in the hub to remove the strut, this turned out to be a mistake as once I'd knocked down the tre the hub didn't have enough movement to get the strut out and the tre just spun when I tried to remove it fully, I ended up retightening it then completely undoing the nut. Then my next mistake, by this time it was dark and when I went to hit the tre out with my rubber mallet I had actually picked up my metal hammer which resulted in me ruining the threads on the tre AND smashing what I assume is a ceramic heat shield?


That still didn't give me enough wiggle room so I turned my attention to the ball joint, I removed the bolt without issue but no matter how much pressure I put on the lower wishbone I can't get the ball joint to fully separate, at this point (half 9) I called it a day.



So the state of play is, I need to find a new tre in the morning, work out how to split the ball joint and push the lower wishbone down and work out what it was I smashed. The plan was to change the ball ,p bushes and front bushes whilst I'm doing the springs and top mount bearings but after this faff and having seen the state of the ball joint mounting hardware I'm starting to think I shouldn't have bothered.


Any advice or just encouragement would be a great help!

Cheers Jord that's a very generous offer but 1. This is my only car and 2. Sadly I'm at the family home in Blackpool.

I think I'm going to go and get a tre in the morning from the nearest motor factor then just get stuck in.

A couple of questions, firstly does the ball joint have to be fully seperared to give enough room to remove the strut? Secondly, my old ball joint seems to have 3 rivet style fittings so how would I go about removing it? Finally, what was the ceramic thing I mullered? ABS sensor heat shield maybe?


I think I'll decide in the morning whether to go the whole hog and do the p bushes and ball joints this time round.

I have lemforder ball joints complete with fittings ready to go on, is the only option to grind off the rivet as I don't have a grinder.

Balls, might be able to drill them I guess. I need to measure them to, the new ones are 16mm and being a pass 3 I fear I may need 18mm ones.

Much easier to remove the wishbone, and to do that I suggest you get a balljoint splitter fork

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FRESHLY RE-FURBISHED GTI BEAMS
FITTING AND LOWERING AVAILABLE.
ALL AXLES BUILT USING GENUINE PEUGEOT PARTS

IF I'M NOT HERE, IT ONLY MEANS ONE THING.... I'M SOMEWHERE ELSE!

Well failed indeed!

If you were doing a suspension overhaul, why weren't you changing the droplinks anyway? They are pennies. If your trying to turn anything on the suspension (bolts, nuts etc) and they spin, if you jack up under the hub which is in effect loading the suspension, it'll normally give the bolt tension so you can undo it.

My car is a p3 and has one 18mm and one 16mm ball joint! Someone done a great repair in the past!

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205 GTi Red - G939 RTU - Died!
306 GTi 6 Diablo - Being resurrected! Project Thread

Looking for:
VTS P1 Rack
PR1.2 16"

NEVER wedge a chisel in the balljoint clamp, sure fire way to f**k them, neither do you need a balljojnt splitter.

its a straight pin, so will slide straight down when you apply inward pressure on the hub and lever the wishbone down.

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need a part number? get on here - http://public.servicebox.peugeot.com

Bring on the Trumpets.

Yep little pressure pushing bottom of the hub inwards and a lever on the arm always gets them out easy with no damage.

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1998 Supercharged White Rallye
1992 205 GTi6
205 Turbo 340bhp

you have a big f.o spring clamping it, not surprised that you can't turn it.

track rods are standard rh threads

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need a part number? get on here - http://public.servicebox.peugeot.com

Bring on the Trumpets.

Get a 21mm spanner on the track rod end retaining nut and grip the actual track rod with a spanner. There are flats on them for this purpose.

Drop link wise, if they were OE you could have slid a spanner between the boot and link to hold it still whilst you wound the nut off. 15 or 16mm iirc. Many of the aftermarket ones have a torx head in the end of the stud which you can also grip. Obviously too late for that now, but something to think about for next time!

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Senior Test Automation Engineer for the 306GTi6 Owners Club Forum

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