Surgery - part two

 So now the rears and these put up a bit more of a fight...

Disks and calipers all off pretty quickly, then bottom of the drop link was simple. Hood into the service position and the top mount bolts removed cleanly.

Next up were the 6 driveshaft bolts - also pretty simple. 

There was then some thinking to how best to continue - we  basically needed to get enough slack to get the top of the strut out of the wheel arch and we realised we had to remove a lot of the suspension to do this.

We first removed the brace arm that goes across, under the hub and arms and then the coffin arm, after marking the position of the alignment nut to try get it back in roughly the right place. Same with the trailing arm (?) - fortunately all these bolts came off quite easily.

But something had to make it hard for us and that was the top bolt of the drop link, that goes through the hub. We had tried to do the original front drop link but it defeated us and I had to take the car to a garage and we were worried we might have to do the same here.

The nut came off easily enough but the bolt was seized in the hub, like the fronts had been. After hitting it with a hammer did nothing, we decided to get the angle grinder out. Cearth cut off the other side of the link (I'd bought new ones already) and then used it to make sure we had access to the nut so we could get a breaker bar on it. With a complex mix of jack stand to take some pressure, we lent on the breaker bar and, thankfully, it relented. It took another 20 minutes of working it backwards and forwards, the impact gun and a hammer finally got the bolt coming out, with a drift and hammer to get the final inch done:

What a relief!! Lots of high fives ensued...

After that, it was plain sailing - the old strut came out with a few whacks from the hammer:

These rears were definitely in worse condition than the fronts had been, with holes in the rubber bellows and very corroded top mounts:

The new ones slotted into the hubs easily and the new drop links looked nice and shiny:

All that was needed was to replace the coffin and trailing arms, the brace, brakes and calipers and one side done, 3 hours in - not too bad.

The other side was almost identical, with the drop link feeling a little bit worse to get out but the same method worked.

Finally finished around 5pm, so a full 8 hour day (including an hour for lunch) and I'm knackered.

The short drive back showed I badly need an alignment, which I'll try get done this week. But initial impressions are good - the ride feels firmer (to be expected) but it feels taut, like it's not flustered by bumps and happily crashes through them, if that makes any sense.

A very tiring but rewarding day and saved me a grand or so in labour charges.