Afternoon fellow Citroenites,
the xant needs a new ball joint on the passenger side (advisory on mot), nosing through seems a std ball joints about a tenner and lemforder ones are about £17 ish, (ebay) Are the Lemforder ones worth the extra over the standard in terms of lasting??
dont mind paying the extra if its going to outlast a generic one!
Ta muchly in advance froma mildly windswept Kernow!
I treat my Xantia estate harshly at times. It tows heavy loads (700kg and up), travels with a lot of gear inside, and frequently needs some sort of front end work (spheres, track rods, tyres, whatever) - so there is always a good dose of stress on the balljoints with a surfeit of "jiggling" about.
At present, I have some Fleabay Taiwanese balljoints from "Autoprochassis" for about £28 delivered - I notice they pretend to have an address in Fife for UK customers. These were fitted around July last year, and have endured all sorts of mischief and misadventure over a good 30 000 kilometres. There's life in them yet.
I have a coupla pairs of Lemförders here, so when the hub carriers get swapped for bigger brakes I will try them and see what lifespan is attained. No real love for this brand, though.
I have just put lemforder ball joints on my c5. Whilst i havnt had enough time to test and tell their lifespan they do have a good reputation and are standard fit on amongst others many mercedes, they were less than £25 delivered for the pair including nuts from eurocarparts and came next day so you could certainly do worse than go the same way
i would always choose lemforder over non branded joints any time,
bear in mind if a lower swivel did ever let go that wheel would go were ever it chose to got, and you can guarantee it would not be were you wonted it to go,
Two of the Lemförder balljoints I have here, came from ECP.
One is actually labelled as TVA brand (ZF/Lemförder spinoff company), and is in gold passivate - not silver zinc. Neither it, nor the Lemförder monogrammed "brother" have the same locknuts as a pair I purchased from a German supplier with good provenance. All packaging indicates they are made in Spain.
Eurocarparts soiled their nest when they sold me a clearly used oxygen sensor, then in utter cowardice ignored every complaint I made about this item.
Thanks guys, will have a dearch of the normal pllaces and see who has what etc. We don't have a local branch of either gsf or ecp down here, nearest is plymouth, a good hours drive from here,
It seems as much like all things, some peeps have good experience of cheaper parts and some bad of expensive ones, its not a job I really fancy having to do repeatedly so may seek the lemforder ones!!
Need to get a sealey ball joint tool too! So muchly depends who has it instock too!!
addo, no matey, just hand tools,
surplus tools shop down the road has Loads of old style sockets so will have a nose down there again! -a always a pleasure to, small wharehouse Full of random tools!!! = Man time!
The "windy gun" as Handyman likes to call it, will make each side a sub-20 minute job once jacked up.
If you are sticking to hand tools and have a steel spare, it may be possible to crack the driveshaft nut with the car still on the ground - passing the socket through the wheel's centre bore. Freeing up the ball joint with hand powered tools, though, is never going to be easy.
Have been down the surplus shop this morning and they have quite a few 35mm sockets and spanners! £15 a pop, £8 for the adapter from big to 1/2" too,
So looks like with tools first ones going to cost about £50 for the lot and then any more are just the cost the ball joint,
I double checked tonight and the socket I use for the XM driveshaft nuts is a near new 34mm one.
I had forgotten to loosen the driveshaft nuts on the current XM that I am turning into spares.
Got too far to lock things up as well.
In the end I undid the nuts using a wheel bolt, a 17mm open ended spanner and the 34mm socket on a breaker bar.
The wheel bolt was inserted to stop the disc shearing the disc screw.
I inserted the 17mm spanner in a pair of adjoining vents in the disc and rotated the spanner against the appropriate side of the caliper.
With the disc firmly locked I could put as much force as needed to release and undo the hub nut.
Timmo wrote:Thanks guys, will have a dearch of the normal pllaces and see who has what etc. We don't have a local branch of either gsf or ecp down here, nearest is plymouth, a good hours drive from here,
It seems as much like all things, some peeps have good experience of cheaper parts and some bad of expensive ones, its not a job I really fancy having to do repeatedly so may seek the lemforder ones!!
Need to get a sealey ball joint tool too! So muchly depends who has it instock too!!
Ta for the words guys!
I have a Xantia/406 ball joint - unused . came in a QH box ( Quentin Hazel) originally . P.M if interested ?
