Tackling Xantia Ball Joints

[Chlorate]

Sorry to resurrect a thread...

Mine needs a bottom ball joint changed, when I was on the phone to the mechanic earlier this is how it went down:

"Not sure how much to quote on that without looking it up, some of those joints are attached to the arm and you need to replace the whole thing"
"Not on this one, it screws into the hub carrier."
"Oh, one of those poxy things is it?!"

Why on earth did Citroen decide to design them like that in the first place?

[411514]

As has been said it's not a bad job to do yourself. Not difficult just a bit fiddly.
In terms of a garage doing it I would have thought that half an hour each side, so an hour for labour would be about right.
Just make sure that your garage use decent parts, I used lemfoerder ones and they have so far lasted 18 months no problem, Sam

[ecohouse1]

Job done! Wasn't too bad. The worst bit for me was actually trying to refit the ball joint protector shields. The old balljoints were definitely not the originals as the protectors shields were pretty battered and not in a great state. I used an airchisel to get them off - looked like they came off OK but when I tried to get them on they looked like they had shrunk!! There was no way they I could get the back on so snipped a bit off and then attached them to the hub with a couple of tack welds!

I actually cheated a bit as I went out & treated myself to a newer and better windy gun - a Gison 380ft/lb one and it had both joints out in a jiffy. I already had a SIP 240 ft/lb wrench but it struggles even with a tight wheel nut so didn't hold out much hope for it! I did apply some heat first though and managed to burn the N/S driveshaft boot so needed to fit one of those too! Note to self - watch where the blowtorch flame is going!

Quite a bit of play in the old joints which I noticed were Lemforder too.

One other thing I noticed, is that the old joints had allen key holes to hold against the nyloc nut but the new ones just had indents like they meant to drill out for an allen key but never did!! I had to jack up the arm to stop the ball joint shaft spinning.

Steering seems a little sharper but to be honest - not any real difference to the handling. Funny that

[Chlorate]

In the end, the mechanic that did mine took the upright assembly down to his local friendly machine shop for a treatment with their oxy-acetylene to get the bugger out.

Strange really how variably difficult this job seems to be, especially since (according to the service history - which I'm beginning to doubt) both ball joints on mine were replaced a couple of years ago.

Alex

[Harry1975]

a coal chisel and a lump hammer got mine of, next time i will do the same as went through all you are nightmare