sqeaking anti roll bar

[teldoyle]

hi guys

had my daughters 1.2 ibiza to teh garage today so i could find a terrible squeak.

turns out the antiroll bar in in contact with a aluminium bolt housing on the drivers side.

i went belwo the car whilst it was on the ramp and sure enough on the near side there was 1inch clearance between rollbar and bolt housing(i think dog bone one) and the off side was in direct contact.

anyway to cut it short whats been suggested is

accident damage ben roll bar , though no signs of it being accident damaged other than a few rust spots/spiders on the wing. recomended on this basis to buy salvage one and replace or heat old one a pry it away from bolt housing

roll bar could have moved, so we tried to force it back to no avail so doubt it has moved

faulty saddle bushes, surely if testing movement if the saddle bushes had failed then movemtn would be present wouldnt it.

so teh technition doesnt really know until we start doing work on it and try moving the anti rollbar etc.


so my burning questions are

is there a common fault that causes teh anti roll bar to slide in contact with any other part during normal use.

how hard are they to move ie if i take teh drop links of it will i be able to manouver the roll bar by hand or is great force needed to reposition it.

if i reposition it will forces acting on the wheel give it a tendency to pull in any direction etc

cheers

terry




either way

 

[RUM4MO]

What is the age of the car - roughly, I'd guess a 52 03 or 53. Up to this time VAG fitted an ARB that had plastic end stops. That was okay in theory, I believe Ford was first to try this in the original Mondeo - but in practice, the ARB, by its very design, allows the metal to twist along its length, this shears the paint, next the high carbon steel rusts, this expands the ARB and this breaks the plastic end stop free = ARB can walk from side to side, and so collide with the aluminium lumps called consoles.

Now, what to do to fix it, it has been said that a really clever person could slide large washers along the bar and weld in position, then buy rubber mounting bushes for the newer ARB and fit them - job done. The normal approach is to buy the later ARB new along with new rubber mounts and 4-off bolts. The down side is that the subframe needs to get dropped and that should mean paying for a four wheel re-alignment or suffer strange quality of driving and short tyre life.

Finally, if taking the usual (second) route, consider replacing the TCA console bushes for Cupra solid ones as doing that job also means dropping the subframe. Don't worry about fitting "go-faster" bits or bits from a faster car (Cupra), this is the wise way to stop needing to replace these bushes later.

I needed to do both jobs before much knowledge was out there about these cars, so paid twice in the space of two years - very annoying!!!!

 

[teldoyle]

the car is a 54 plate

 

[RUM4MO]

the car is a 54 plate

Well, that would probably still in the run out period at the factory for these "faulty" parts. You check if that car has the old style ARB by looking at the point where it should be gripped by the saddle clamps. If the ARB is thicker that these points - next to the end stops, then it is an older style ARB. Of course one of these "end stop and thicker section" will now have dropped off or moved along - if still on the car at least one should be free(ish) to move along the ARB. also, if you have a magnet you would prove if it is metal or plastic.

 

[teldoyle]

daughters taken the car out so ill have to wait till tomora or thurs to check
thanks for your help

 

[teldoyle]

when you say dont worry about part do you mean to use cupra parts or avoid cupra bushes

 

[RUM4MO]

when you say dont worry about part do you mean to use cupra parts or avoid cupra bushes

Use Cupra part but don't worry about the image that it might generate, "ie go faster" bits, the Cupra bushes are more robust and an added bonus is improved steering feel/response and reduced uneven tyre wear.

 

[stezo2k]

Those cupra bushes made a big difference to my old 1.2. In fact it handled the road better than my 1.9 sport rider

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

[RUM4MO]

No proper resolution to this problem yet?

 

[teldoyle]

yeah sorry about that im collecting parts in about half hour ready for monday morning.

the problem on further inspection was the stop ends on one side of the a.r.b so it was walking to one side and rubbing on teh consul, which i beleive you had suggested.

looks like im doing it on my drive for a first time anti roll bar change hopefully wont prove to hard for me to do

thanks for your help guys

 

[RUM4MO]

Changing an ARB should be very easy, but, VAG have hung it behind the front suspension instead of in front of it.

You should have bought a new ARB and 2-off new size mounting rubbers - and maybe new pipe clamps - maybe not if the old ones are the same size. Also maybe time to replace the droplinks and new nuts in case you need to destroy the old ones getting them off.

Now, you do realise that you will need to drop the front lower cross member to get the ARB out/in?

This will involve raising the front of the car up on to axle stands - ie both sides at the same time.

VAG workshops are meant to use special eccentric dowels/studs to allow the cross member to go back in exactly the same place, even when they are used, a full four wheel re-alignment is needed to avoid rapid/uneven tyre wear due to the geometry being "out".

It is for that reason that I suggest you get a VAG indie to do this job and replace the TCA rear bushes at the same time as a proper four wheel re-alignment is not cheap.

I do a lot of jobs on my cars and I took one look at what was needing to get done after buying the parts and then booked it in to my local VW dealer - though with a bit more time to think about this, I would have sought out a local VAG indie - which I did for the TCA rear bushes a short time - maybe a year, later!

 

[teldoyle]

yeah i bought new bushes and brackets to go with tha arb, didnt relise a crossmember had to come out i thought it ws a case of lowering a subfframe to get to it. im sure once i get under to look at it , it should becoem apparent a to the cross mebers but that wont be until monday now so ill get back to you onmonday night let you know how ive got on with it

thanks for all advise

terry

 

[RUM4MO]

Yes you could call what you will need to do is to lower the cross member, but as soon as you take all the fixings out you will have lost the reference to replace it in exactly the same place. For what it is worth, to get the bolts out of the ARB mounting brackets, you need to let the wheels hang free for one bolt on each bracket, then fully compress the suspension to reach the other bolt on each bracket. Now, coincidence or not, when my main dealer replaced the ARB on my wife's Polo - just before Christmas, on New Years day, when I drove it out of the garage, there was a loud metal breaking noise - tried to ignore it, reversed up driveway and the under cover etc started to scoop up the gravel - not good! Drove it back into garage and discovered the front was very low - O/S road spring had snapped at half height!! So was that not coincidence or due to the main dealer needing to fully compress the front springs to reach the ARB mounting bracket bolts? Remember all these nasty "down stairs" parts are all pure Skoda - which tends to mean that while they are manufactured to VAG's strict code of doing things etc, these crafty CZ people have ways of getting round that requirement.

So, all in all, that Polo went through a serious amount of money within a short period in time, ie new ARB + FOUR WHEEL RE-ALIGNMENT > new FRONT SPRINGS > new TCA BUSHES + FOUR WHEEL RE-ALIGNMENT, then a routine CAMBELT CHANGE. Yes, that is what these little cars can end up needing within a year when only 4 years 35,000 miles old!

 

[teldoyle]

just to let you know ive completed the anti roll bar, wsa a bit tricky and i need some help of a experienced mechanic who then went on to gun up a aliminium consul after striking the bolt with an hammer cross threading it severely he then ground down the threaded section and re-used the same bolt so now the wishbone to consul is now only secured by 1 3rd of its threads kinda well pished off with that
but thanks for your help guys it was appreciated