Hey everyone --

I'm planning on doing the serpentine/timing belt swap for the 2nd time this coming weekend on my 97 850R. My car has 126K on it-- did it at around 65K the first time. Is there anything else anyone can suggest for things to examine / replace while I'm in there? I was particularly interested to see if anyone thinks that it would be a good time to replace the timing belt's hydraulic tensioner or the serpentine roller.

Second question: I had the car aligned last week at the dealer and they found that my left front ball joint (entire A-arm on the 97's) was worn out. I had them do it (~$270). I assume that the right one will be following soon enough... so I'm wondering if it's an easy enough job for a guy with a average set of hand tools and a mechanical sense (me) to do it...

Thanks,

Kyle

I just done it last week. It was fairly easy to replace. The tire-rods are not needed to be removed. All you have to remove are the 2 sub-frame bolts/nuts and the smaller bolt/nut on the ball joint itself. The 2 sub-frame bolts are easy to come off after the nuts were off. You can use finger to push the bolts out. But, for the smaller bolt/nut on the ball joint. It was very difficult to push it out after the nut was off. I used a lot of rust blaster (or WD40) on the thread and kept turning the bolt to lose up the bolt. I pushed the bolt out while turning the bolt with a rachet. It was not very difficult but time consuming.
After all bolts/nuts were out, then came the fun part. I used a 1/2" chisel to seperate the slot of the ball joint holder in the steering knuckle. A lot of hammering with a 3lbs hammer. Don't forget to hold the steering knuckle/brake rotor with a floor jack. That cut down the hamming time from about 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Once the slot is wide enough, the ball joint would drop down with a little effort. Installation is very easy and quick when comparing to the removal of the old part.

Ching-Ho Cheng
--
1995 855 NA, Bilstein Strut & Shocks, Volvo Protective Grill, K&N Filter, E-Code Lens, Alpine CD-Changer, AutoDim RearView Mirror, 6000K HID

The control arm (holds the ball joint) is fairly easy to replace. You undo the 2 mounting bolts to the frame, and the nut on top of the ball joint and you are ready to remove. You must also undo the sway bar links (those will no doubt need to be replaced too as they go much faster than the control arms...like every 30K). and you must undo the tie rods I think...I'm not as sure about this one as I just replaced my tie rod ends too to make sure my suspension was tight while I did the control arms/sway bar links. I'm surprised they only replaced one side..ususally you do them both for the sake of keeping the whole thing tight...although maybe one was defective. I like to do all the stuff at once since you need to get it aligned anyway...then you have a very tight suspension.

Point to remember:

DO not torque the bushing bolts until the A-arm is positioned in the normal position. This must be done with the car resting on the ground, suspension bounced up and down a few times and car rolled back and forth a few feet, to `find its home'.

This is done so that the rubber bushings are not permanently twisted at normal riding position, which could lead to premature failure as well as preventing proper design damping of the rubber element.