Removal and Replacement of the A-Frame Ball Joint on Coil-Sprung Land Rovers with Britpart’s All-in-One Kit

Hello and welcome to the Britpart Workshop I'm here in Shropshire. At Britpart HQ, with Paul Myers. Who's Britt parts, MD. Paul, how long have you been with the company? I've been with Britpart 15 years out of it. We've gone has been trading about 35 years. So I've been here for quite a while. Wow, so 35 that means you started in 1982. Yes Fantastic, on this site? Started locally to here, not on this site, but literally started in a cow shed and moved our way up for a couple of different premises to this site. Wow. It's now absolutely massive isn't it? Yes it is, yeah yeah. Brilliant. So today, we're going to be working on this. What are we looking at here? Okay. This is the A-frame offered correspond, off a vehicle. Mhm. Locator back axle, and it stops the back axle moving backwards and forwards. Right. Typically we get a motor failure where the rubber boot will split that water and dirt into a ball joint. Creating too much movement on the ball joint. And there's a lot of movement there, isn't it. What would you hear? Normally, you hear a clunk in the back axle and it sounds like the whole axle is coming loose. Yeah. But a very small amount of this is magnifying through the car. And because it locates into the axle it sounds, absolutely terrible. Well, that looks pretty millard to me. What piece is replaced which hear? Okay. Here's we've got the replacement, fulcrum bracket and a ball joint. As we can see the bolts in here have been in a long time. Yeah. There'll be rusted all the way through. Easiest thing to do is cut these bolts, off and replace with the new bolts. Right, Okay. And that this kit allows you to do that? We've got everything in the kit. Castle washer. The split pin on the bolts everything we need to, to put it back together. Great stuff. And, um, what is this here? This is an extra thing here? This is actually off discovery too Okay. This is a more modern solution to the same technical solution of how to de-locate the back axle. And this pivots like this on this. Okay. On these we get the similar motor failure. Splitting a washer. Let's in a mud water. creates ,creates a knocking and it needs replacing. Great. And all these kits come from Britpart, you're able to supply them off the shelf? We supply all these off the shelf. These, these ball joints are one of our pop most popular items. Well, I bet they are. Well look, we're gonna go over to the workshop now. to see how Steven Martin get on with fitting this all up. Right. So here we are under the discovery. We're just unbolting, the old A-frame ball joint bracket from the rear suspension. The unit itself is held to the vehicle in three different ways. The first thing we need to release is this large nut which holds the ball joints taper into the bracket on the top of the axle. This is often extremely tight. And because it's been under the car, presumably from new. There'll be a lot of corrosion on the split pin, the nut, and the thread. So what we're going to do is chisel the ends off the old split pin. Hammer a socket over the top. And then crack the nut off with a breaker bar. On this particular example, we've actually had to heat up and cool down the thread on the joint because it's that rusty. It just didn't want to let go. But we finally got it loose. Steve's just finishing, winding the nut off, and then he needs to break the taper on the joint where it joins to the axle. From there, two long bolts, hold the tape, the bracket through the arms on the A-frame. And what happens is over time, corrosion builds up on the end of bolts. Which makes removing the nuts a real nightmare. So what we're going to do to give ourselves a fighting chance. Is get in there with a grinder and a cutting disk. And cut off the exposed threads, on the bolts. Which will hopefully allow them nuts to come off a lil easier. When that's done. We'll be able to remove the old bracket. And fit the new bracket, and the new ball joint. Thank you. Right. So we've got the old A-frame ball joint and bracket off the car. Now, as you can see, by the lump of bolts still sticking out of it. It was an absolute pain to remove. We actually had to cut through,part of the bracket and the bolt in order to remove it. Luckily. The new brick part item, comes with the joint pressed into a new bracket. So it's not really too much of a problem. So. That can go on in a few minutes. But just having a look at the the old joint. There is ply evident in it. And also the boot is split, which will be allowing dirt and, all sorts of nasty stuff. Water, etc, to get into the joint. and cause wear. This is a really important part of having a condition on your land driver. Otherwise the handling will be all over the place. His fast to tell you how important it is. So here we have. The A-frame ball joint. Now. This little feller is here to actually keep the rear axle, exactly in the correct position. Without any lateral movement from side to side. Or any twisting movement, backwards and forwards. When you're putting on or taking off the power. Now, this one. Is worn. I can just feel a little bit of play here. It's only a tiny bit. That I'm feeling. But that transmits into an awful lot when you put it through an axle. So the twist would be noticeable. That would have a knocking sound. And also it means that the lateral position of the axle can change. Which means rather like a dog with its back legs, trying to overtake its front legs. Which would put the vehicle into a crabbing situation which would mean, that the vehicle body will be going along the street. Like that kind of sideways that's exaggerated, of course. But the front axle and rear axle would be, actually going along in the line but one would be further out than the other. It's not a good thing. You get loads of tire wear, it's dangerous. Bad for the vehicle, bad for handling. And it's going to affect your ride an awful lot. This is the A-frame is situated. This is towards the front of the vehicle. Imagine my shoulders are the outer edges of the A-frame. And here, this pin goes through the rear axle. And if there's any movement here, it will allow lateral movement from side to side. Just a little bit here, can amplify into an awful lot at one side or the other. And also, while the vehicle is trying to move away, so the wheels are going around. Then it will allow the axle, which is attached directly and solidly to this pin. It will allow it, to tip forward or backwards. And that's what we want to avoid. That's why, if this is worn it needs to be replaced immediately. Okay. So, new ball joint is now ready to fit What we're going to do to prevent having the same problem as before. We've got a new Britpart bulk kit here. Because obviously we had to cut the old bolts. We're going to smear these in copper slip So that if we ever have to remove the joint again, hopefully it will all come apart nice and easily. And the other thing to note when you're fitting the new joint. Is that it might be necessary to put a jack under the diff pinion, Just to level the axle enough for the tapered part of the joint to fit nicely into the axle. Once you've got the cost late and not tight. Obviously use the new split pin that came with the kit. And make sure you stake the ends over. So the nut can't come loose. And that's about it really. So, we're going to crack on with that now. Be sure to check out the other Britpart workshop videos, for more handy tips on how to work on your land driver.