Upgrading level sensor arms
 

Has any of you played with the idea of upgrading the old (and expensive to buy new) plastic arms for headlight level sensor with nice stainless steel ball joints and threaded bars as below? The only problem I see is getting a bracked that clamps on to the control arm as the original one.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HID-light...-/112241843105

I’m pretty sure that Michaela did this on my car, but I’m hopeless at finding old threads! I’m sure she’ll be along shortly!

I've done this on quite a few now, but I use rod ends with boots on from McGill Motorsport:

http://www.mcgillmotorsport.com/i.ph...ges/l/1053.jpg

In many cases the bracket on the control arm can be recovered with a good clean and a soak in evaporust, although when I eventually figure out how to print nylon I'll probably make a bolt-on bracket. I cut the ball off the original bracket and drill out to M6, then the rod end can be bolted on using a nyloc nut. Same process with the rear arm too.

Mike and I did try an alternative strategy with another one recently which was to buy one of the cheap chinesum sensors for the A6 which comes with an arm and bracket, then recover the bracket, ball joints and bushes from that and fit them to a D2 plastic arm. It was pretty fiddly but worked ok since I didn't have any of the rod ends to hand.

A friend in Germany has 3D printed the bushes from polyurethane which was an interesting idea, then recovered the original bracket and ball joint which were de-rusted, re-greased and reassembled.

You are always a few steps ahead! Bought and thanks.

This is what I did with mine earlier this year. Bought a Chinese one and as the rod was the wrong length, swapped the hardware over to the original rod. I tried to swap the bushes but that didn't work out so I greased up and re-used the original ones.

It's a long way from perfect and does in fact now have quite a sloppy movement but I don't think it will come apart.

The metal bracket that is wrapped around the control arm is a little tricky as it's not quite the same shape. Not sure if it will stay on but with a bit of fiddling it went on OK.

I just figured, as a cheap solution on a car that only does a couple of thousand mls a year, it's worth a try.

It went against the grain really as I like to keep my car as original as possible. The price of an arm from tradition though was just so ridiculous it even put me off.