Hi All

About 2 years ago i got caught out with my felicia at MOT time as the struts were rusted to bits and sagging on the wheels but as i needed the car i had to get garage to put new struts on front.

Anyway, since then i replaced the lower wishbone ball joints and everything seems ok down there. However going over rough surfaces at lower speeds there is a lot of rattling noise similar to when the ball joints were going.

Would this be at the other end of the strut in the top strut bush? One thing i have noticed is that the brake calipers when properly greased up rattle a bit although i wouldn't have thought it would have been able to make this level of noise?

By the way it flew through the MOT. Any ideas or is it going to be a case of coil spring clamps and swearing???

My guess is the little spring things on the pads have broken, causing he pads to rattle. This has happened to me a couple of times, normally with the pads only half worn

Will check but they were only recently changed.

Have you found the rattle yet?

Not yet but i am pretty certain it is the looseness of the brake caliper as the sliding pins are well greased up!!

I am going to have a fiddle and see what it is over the weekend so shall report back. One thing i have noticed is some general creaking noises from the steering and suspension strut but they are recent and all bushes look good as i changed the lower balljoints less than a year ago.

:confused:

How old are the track rod ends? New steering rack and track rod ends cured my creeky steering, which the MOT man picked up on as all being worn in an advisory.

How old are the track rod ends? New steering rack and track rod ends cured my creeky steering, which the MOT man picked up on as all being worn in an advisory.

Old!!! they don't look to have any play in them and the steering has no play in it so i guess that perhaps the track rod ends have maybe got dry with age???

Next question how difficult to change as this is something i have never done before but they seem cheap enough to replace?

On the track rod ends, I found the split pin difficult to extract - but a blow torch on the nut for about 5 minutes allowed it the nut to come off without extracting the split pin.

Once you have taken the nut off, apparently keeping the nut on the thread as you separate the joint is a good idea (but not sure why, guess it's so you don't damage the housing). There are two approaches, one is swinging a hammer at the big chunk of metal the track rod end goes through (there will be a noticeable "crack/bang" when it gives). The other way is a ball joint separator, you slide the u shaped piece just under the track rod end dust cover, then there's a bottom arm intended to push the bottom end up. You simply keep tightening the bolt, and it keeps pushing the track rod end from the bottom, until it goes bang. Using a ball joint separator sounds easier than it actually is.

Before doing all that it's probably best to check you can undo the lock nuts on the track rods. The one's on mine were quite badly seized and apparently a garage had said to previous owner they couldn't adjust the tracking so this explained that. It is possible a blow torch would have got them off, but as I changed the entire rack I haven't tried.

If the track rod ends are the same as the old ones, if you screw the new track rod ends on the same amount as it took to unscrew the old ones/screw them up to the lock nuts - the tracking should be close enough.

I couldn't identify the play the MOT man mentioned, but when I took the dust covers off the track rod ends I noticed they were both full of muck.

Thanks for that. I didn't bother looking this weekend as i was too busy getting rid of bits of rust and patching with Hammerite!!

Trust me it looks better than it sounds!!!!