Front Axle Strip Down

OK so it took a bit longer than hoped - but I have finally managed to completely strip down the front subframe.  Life has been a bit busy with packing my eldest off to university, having to decorate the spare room and other small jobs that my better half deems more important than me 'playing in the garage'.....

Given that I'm a bit behind with the blog, I am not going to do a step by step strip down of the front end (there's plenty of info out there on other blogs) but thought I would share a couple of tips based on my experiences.

The first would be to invest in a heavy duty (and long) breaker bar.  I bought a 3/4" drive bar which was 600mm long from Machine Mart.  In hindsight I would have gone for the 900mm long model.  Some of the fastenings on the subframe, particularly the brake caliper carrier bolts and the ball joint nuts were particularly stubborn to remove, despite lashings of penetrating oil,  and needed some force on the breaker bar, combined with the ballast of a 14 year old boy standing on the subframe, to get them to shift.

600mm Breaker Bar compared to standard 3/4" Socket Wrench

The second would be not to bother wasting time buying a ball joint / remover separator of the type that consists of two hinged halves that work by trying to pry the ball joint out of the joint.  I found that the one I bought a) only fitted properly on the upper ball joint in any case and b) was not strong enough for the job anyhow - it only managed to release one joint and this was a joint that I had had to clamp back together in any case to allow removal of the nut without the ball joint stem just spinning uselessly!!

I would go straight for the ball joint splitter / pickle fork option.  Even this required some hefty blows from one of my largest adjusting hammers (combined with the aforementioned ballast) to finally split the joints.  This tool does destroy the rubber seal on the ball joints, but as they are being replaced this is not a problem for me!

Ball Joint remover at top - "Pickle Fork" below

The tear down of the front subframe was actually quite straightforward and without incident.  The order of events was as follows:

• Unbolt and remove brake caliper and pads
• Unbolt and remove brake caliper carrier
• Remove brake rotor
• Remove dust cover, undo stub axle bolt, remove front hub, bearings and oil seal
• Remove brake shield
• Undo upper and lower ball joints and remove stub axle
• Undo and remove upper and lower wishbones.

I have also drifted out the inner and outer bearing races from the front hubs.  I have bagged everything up, keeping left and right axles parts separate, ready for degreasing, cleaning and painting at a later date.

All parts from one side of front axle fully stripped down

Fully stripped front subframe

Now to get started on breaking down the rear axle!