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Refurbishing repairing the front lower arms (wishbones) changing renewing the bushes and balljoint.

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The  lower arm or wishbone has three attachment points: outboard there is the front lower ball joint, whilst inboard there is a front pivot bolt and a rear suspension joint -both secured through rubber bushes, the front is cylindrical in form and the rear a doughnut. All three are obtainable separating from a variety of manufacturers. I bought the ball-joints from Sureline and all the other bushes from Febi. This means refurbishing the arm is a cost-competitive solution and could be considered alongside complete arm replacement- certainly if only one bush has failed (usually the ball joint). However, there isn't much guidance out there for anyone wishing to go down that route so I decided to recondition my old arms. This is a summary of my experience. The process wasn't too difficult as long as you have the right tools (see below) Ball Joint I ordered new ball joints from Sureline, each joint comes with a splined press-in section and a wire clip to secure it once fitted.
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Repairing rebushing the front subframe side mounting arms

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The sub frame is attached at the front of the car by a side arm fitted each side and mounted top and bottom through captive metalastic bushes. These bushes seem fairly complex in structure and the rubber is deformable as the bushes are installed. The old bushes were in poor condition even though they hadn't actually failed and no movement was detectable at MOT. I changed the arm anyway, but thought I'd investigate what was involved in reconditioning it anyway. To press the bushes I'm making use of a 10 tonne bench press, a Draper Press and Pull kit and the odd cup from my ball joint fitting press. Even so I still needed to raid my socket set for other sizes! Top bush Bottom bush New bushes, top bush (upper), bottom bush (lower) The new top bush looks different to the old and it wasnt at first obvious how this should be mounted. Fortunately I already have one reconditioned arm ordered separately. Looking at this the orientation of the new top bush is clear.
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Changing the wishbones (front lower axle arms) and subframe support bracket

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Jack up the  car and support on stands- I put the car on Halfords axle stands on the first pin position. Higher would be better as you do need a bit of room underneath to wield a breaker bar or torque wrench! I currently have 4 post ramp-envy! If you look at the A utodoc vid for changing Micra wishbones, you will see that its merely a 10 min job... yeah and the rest! Expect to take around an hour at least depending on how much trouble there is in releasing everything. The vid also shows a Micra 3 which is marginally different as it lacks the front sub frame support brackets.  The first step is to remove the wheel and then loosen the ball joint pinch bolt. You will need a 16mm spanner to hold the nut and an impact wrench with an extension bar. Tools for the pinch bolt The nut comes undone relatively easily but it cab be a pig to remove the bolt once the nut is off. Use penetrating oil, refit the nut and hammer it out... you can see the rust that sticks it in. I found it
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