Any mechanics in the house?

The awesome little Suzuki Carry van just failed on ‘Offside front suspension has excessive play in a lower suspension ball joint’

🙁

How much is this gonna cost? Is it a garage only job?

Cheers

£100 tops. Depends how good you are with spanners. Ed China makes it look simple enough

Not worked on a Carry van but I’ve replaced the front suspension on a variety of Volvos, Citroens, Renaults and a couple of Morris Minors.

It’s a fairly straightforward job providing you have space to work, a decent trolley jack, an axle stand and a reasonable toolkit. I can usually do 1 front corner in 2-3 hours providing I limit my tea consumption, nothing’s seized up and I have everything ready. It’s a lot easier if you have access to an indoor workspace with a hydraulic car lift.

HTH

That’s reassuring. Thanks chaps. I have worked on cars in the past so could feasibly do it myself. Except my tool collection is woefully low and no trolley jack.

you’re likely to need some spring compressors to be able to separate the suspension.

If you haven’t got them already then the cost of tools is likely to exceed what it’ll cost you to pay someone to do it.

How old’s the car? This is the sort of job that’s generally pretty simple until you find a seized bolt

It’s ten years old Northwind.

I just nipped down to my local garage and they said £60 + VAT fitted. Which is great. I could do it myself but as soon as I come across a seized bolt or something like you say, which causes lots of swearing and skinned knuckles it just turns into a nightmare. Add to that the fact I’ve no offroad parking or decent tools.

I’d take that too 😆 Old enough to be quite well seized especially with Legendary Suzuki Build Quality

i would pay as well as the tools will cost at least that

ball joint separator tool costs about a tenner. part costs twenty ish quid. how much value do you put on your time/knuckle skin? its probably cheaper to pay the garage £60 and go to work for the day instead of faffing about, swearing, bleeding and worrying.
that said im going to take the gearbox off my vw campervan this weekend so maybe i should learn to take my own advice before dishing it out?

Sorry to drag this up again,

It’s going in to to the garage at the end of the week.

I was just wondering how they test this? Out of curiosity I just jacked it up, took the wheel off and had a good grab of the offending article. Didn’t notice any significant play/movement etc.

Not saying they’re wrong, they probably used a more scientific method than grabbing hold of the lower suspension arm and trying to wiggle it 🙂 just a general interest in mechanic-ing really.

they use a pry bar.

The mot test ramp has a “mechanical jiggler*”, it’s fairly violent- certainly puts a lot more force on the suspension than you can by hand.

*Technical term obviously

Cheers. Thought so.

“mechanical jiggler*” 🙂

As above but with the wheel on, acting as a lever so it would amplify the movement.