Anti roll bar mounted upside down 2002 9-5 vector ?

[carrera]

Now the transmission is sorted on the silver car I noticed on a little drive that there was a banging when turning sharply.

I put a couple of jacks under the front end, expecting that there was bad bottom ball joint, track rod end or broken spring.

All those looked fine, as did the Powerflex bushes on the subframe 

I then turned the wheels to front lock and noticed that was when the noise occurred. The steering rack track rod was touching the ARB. Strange, so I took a photo to research later.

Having looked at my blue Aero and EPC I have concluded the ARB may be mounted upside down. You can see the rust on the ARB where contact is made - this is the drivers wheel, photo from the front..The other side is the same.

Is that even possible, what do you think ?

[sgould]

The only picture I have is this one.  I can't see from it if your ARB is OK, but are the drop links too short?  There are different ones around for the 9-3 and 9-5 and they look similar, also it would be unusual for a car of that age to still be running the original drop links.

[carrera]

Thanks for that. Good idea on the drop links. 

I juts had time to take that photo yesterday, no real investigation time.

Later on I looked on EPC and noticed the ARB was different between sport and standard chassis, but that drop links were the same. I never thought of 9-3 bits being fitted in error. The angles on the ARB on EPC look quite different to the photo, but who knows how accurate that is ?

As I have a spare drop link it'll be easy to compare...... and thinking about it a little more I also have an ARB with one chopped drop link on which makes it handed, so I should be able to confirm that the ARB is upside down or not.

Of course , I am making the assumption that even on full droop a non sport chassis car should not have contact between ARB and track rod. (and in any case there is noise when on the road too, so something is not right)

[carrera]

Further examination this morning confirms that the ARB is upside down   

WIS seems to think an awful lot of things need to come off to replace it ............. I'm going to try and find an easier way. Wish me luck 

[sgould]

That's very odd!  The biggest problem you may have is that the bush clamp bolts are seized.  On my old saloon the dealer had to drill out and re-tap.  They had already tried heat, etc, but the bolt still sheared off.

But on the bright side, they must have come undone to fit the ARB upside-down!!

[carrera]

Well, that wasn't the easiest job in the world, nothing difficult, just hard to access.

I ended up removing rear engine mount, shock absorber below it, bolts for the steering rack, right hand wishbone from the subframe and slackened most of the subframe mounts and removed the rear 3 pieces. The drop links were unbolted from the ARB. The exhaust remained in position - not something I wanted to disturb if possible

Then it was possible to pull the ARB out to the right hand side. Fiddly !

I had noticed that the subframe has been polybushed, as had the ARB, so it seems quite obvious that whoever did that work put the ARB back upside down. They also lost one of the ARB clamp screws using a standard M8 bolt instead, and one of the washers that goes on the top of the long steering rack bolts had also gone walkies. One of the wheel nuts was also snapped, so that has been drilled out and another one used.

While I was underneath I fixed the boot for the steering rack which had seen a bit of damage and blew a bit of paint on the ARB, which is which it doesn't show up so well in the picture below as it is now so black.

For future reference, on full droop the ARB cranked part runs almost parallel with the wishbone. Another way of thinking about it is that the cranked part is like part of a crescent. In the correct orientation, it goes away from the track rod, when upside down it rises to hit it. 

Here's the after pic, complete with purple ARB bush

[JTC]

I know on the 93og to polybush the ARB you have to remove the subframe to get at it obviously whoever done that 95 did it away from the subframe and then must have turned it over when they put it back on, then put it all back together realized their mistake and then boodged the droplinks lol opps 

Good spot David, BTW I now have a working keyboard, thank god for that 

[carrera]

I did a bit of subsequent digging into the history file.

The subframe etc was polybushed in 2016, by the owner prior to the one I bought the car off. It was a supply only invoice from PFS, so I suspect the owner did it themselves at the same time as the subframe.

So, 3 years, and two MOT's down the road I got the pleasure of performing the diagnosis and ultimate fix.

No noise at all on full lock now 

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