I've always used Skf wheel bearings. From what I can remember the original AUDI ones are Skf. They can be such a pain to change I didn't want to risk an unknown brand. That's unknown to me anyhow.

Make sure you lubricate the new bushes as you fit them. I forgot on my first one in the upper control arm and it got stuck half way. It picked up on the aluminium, jammed and then just started to crush as I pushed it in. Wasted a genuine Audi (£60) bush.

Good advice, thanks. What did you use to lubricate the bushes? Anything in particular to use/avoid? I believe Copper Grease, for example, plays right into the hands of galvanic corrosion.

Got this back from Schaeffler this morning. Can't over express my surprise at getting such a quick response from a big company about such a small matter!

Dear Madam or Sir,

the following message was submitted:

713 6103 90 Wheel Bearing Kit

Hi,

Can you please tell me what exactly is included in this kit?

Looks like the eccentric washer is included, judging by the picture. But is the eccentric bolt also included? Doesn't appear in the picture.

Found a similar Ruville item which shows the eccentric bolt in their picture.

Is the eccentric bolt actually included in the FAG kit and it's just the picture which is wrong?

And if it's really just the same item in different packaging, it would be great if you can let me know that too :)

Thanks in advance,

Gregor


Good Morning Mr Harris,

Just been looking into this, and the eccentric bolt has been dropped from the bill of materials for this wheel bearing kit.

The bearing and the accessories would have been the same in both kits. However the Ruville brand is not available in the UK any more.

I have emailed back to see if they've maybe any old 'new stock' of the eccentric bolts, but I doubt they will if they've been taken out the kit. Oh well.

The Febi 3226 split bushes are an exact match for the genuine Audi ones 4D0505171H which arrived safe and sound from Latvia today. Except for being encased in steel rather than aluminium, of course. As previously reported, galvanic corrosion doesn't seem to have been a problem in my 2nd hand trapezium arms so I'm quite happy to fit half genuine and half Febi steel. (Or maybe buy another 2 Febi and leave the genuine ones to my kids so they'll generate a million quid for them at auction in 50 years time?)

Steel encased bushes are 145g each while the aluminium bushes are just 62g. The overall potential saving of 332g surely won't affect my 0-60 that much?


.

Gregor
What did you use on the headlights? They look amazing!

Thanks, Jim. Blood, sweat and tears mostly :ROFL:

It's a really nerve wracking process sanding your headlights until they're opaque. Then the next pass with finer grit paper appears to do nothing at all, your heart starts thumping and there's a sick feeling in your stomach as you keep repeating "oh no, what have I done".

I bought the Holts restoration kit and it's okay for the most part. Just work up through the grits, coarse to fine. Didn't like the result using their 3000 grit discs on the drill attachment as it seemed to leave bad swirls and pigtail marks from the edge of the disc. I just did the 3000 by hand using wet and dry in the end. Their paste isn't all that gritty so I added in a little G3 Professional Scratch remover which seemed to help remove the 3000 sanding marks. The wee sponge they give you in the kit is pretty good.

I think I used the Farecla polish on them after that too. Then it was finished using the aerosol sealant in the kit. That stuff is proper slippy btw when it gets on your wooded floor. Family not happy!

Best advice I'll give is to go heavier than you think you should on the first two coarser grits. At 20+ years old it takes quite a lot to get the plastic level to all the pitting. Just need to have confidence that the polishing stages will indeed repair the initial damage you are doing.

The aerosol sealant was enough to do 6 headlights. (I practised on a cracked spare first, did the D3's, and re-did one of the D2's as I wasn't happy with it initially) Can't seem to find the aerosol on its own anywhere.

Washing the insides really helps too, I think. Just be sure to blow dry them somehow as water spots on them quite easily.

It's a time consuming process. I suppose I wasn't in a rush but it probably took most of the day to do the pair properly. I was in there initially to replace the headlight aim motor so the insides got a good clean out too. +++

Thanks Gregor. I’m pretty sure that I’ve got a spare set of headlights in the garage, so I’ll have a go and see how it goes. I’ve done it once before with PlastEx (I think that’s what it’s called), but I didn’t get anything like your results!

Have made a bit of progress on pressing in the bushes. But mostly used my time at the garage on Saturday to separate the old wheel bearings from my spare hubs to see if the hubs can be resused for building up off the car. Think they will be okay. Will be sensible to fit new bearings and I think I'll go for FAG brand. The Ruville brand isn't directly available in the UK (although it is from Autodoc) but the guy at Shaeffler confirmed that the eccentrics aren't supplied in either brand's box. So no point in paying extra for an unknown brand and not getting the eccentrics anyway. Frank has kindly sent me his old ones which look like they'll clean up well enough.

Couple of points to note which might be of help to others:

• Removing bolted on wheel bearings - unbolt the 4 bolts, screw them back in a couple of threads and evenly hammer on them to separate the bearing from the housing. On my fronts I had chiselled out them out by going at the wheel bearing from behind. Which seems really daft now I know the better method. :o
  
• Hub flange - separates quite easily from the wheel bearing in a vice with some hits from an appropriately sized socket. No real need for a press. Lighter blows on the first one left a piece of outer race on it whereas a couple of really sharp blows on the second separated the bearing intact from the hub flange.

• The apertures for the bushes on the arms have tapered edges and the bushes should be pressed in ONLY from the tapered side. I only noticed the taper when seeing some aluminium starting to peel off the second bush whereas the first one hadn't. Caught it after a mm or so, so no damage done. And lesson learned.

I also managed to clean up the aluminium arms a bit more. Best tool, short of blasting them, turns out to be a nylon bristle attachment for a drill. See pics. Probably could have done this in the first place and not had to bother with trying to clean conventionally. Although removing grease and dirt chemically would still be a good idea.

Think I'll go with a mix of genuine Audi aluminium split bushes and the Febi steel ones. The aluminium ones are really easy to chisel out so my thinking is that, if I ever go to replace them again (unlikely!), then the aluminium ones will come out easily which will then give easy access to press out the steel ones from behind even if they do suffer galvanic corrosion. Steel does not chisel out easily!

Making progess on the rear-end rebuild. Thanks to Frank's kind loan of the split-bush-pressing-tool and a bit of paint, things are starting to look ready to go on. At some point . . . . .

Used Tetrosyl acid etch primier for the base and Autotek alloy wheel paint for the top coat. No idea how durable these will prove to be but they look good as ornaments at least.

Bought the FAG rear bearings and the kit does include everything except the eccentric bolt, just as they said. It does have the eccentric washer and a new driveshaft bolt however. The new bearing to housing bolts are also there but don't look like they have the greenish coating to prevent galvanic corrosion as far as I can see. Might just reuse the old ones as they're in decent nick.

Somewhat disappointed to have CHINA glaring at me from the face of the bearing though. Contacted Shaeffler again to query this and got the 'all made to our exacting specifications with regular inspections' spiel. Guess time will tell if they'll last 20 years and 174k like the originals have . . . . .

My musings on this subject:

D3 hub bush on the left, D2 on the right. For some reason the D3 centre sticks out a bit more than the D2 version, even though the geometry of the hubs and arms is identical. This means when both bushes are pressed in to the hub, the centres will touch and push the outer flange out slightly. Strangely this doesn't appear to make any difference to putting it all together.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

This one is interesting - the D3 uses two different parts on the hub. The D2-style one goes on the front, and this one goes on the back. I think this is intended to provide stability under braking as it will stop the hub twisting.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

I did think the D3 metal bush was intended to stop the bush squishing out of the hub like it does on the d2, but its only usually the front one which does this and the metal bush goes in the rear on the D3 :Confused:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

This is the two of them together

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

Fitted to the D2 hub

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

D2 bush compared to the D3 one which did indeed push out slightly. This hub fits perfectly in to the lower arm though. I did wonder about putting two of the metal bushes in, but as the assembly requires the centres to move, and the metal one has to be pushed in on the actual metal washer bit (rather than the flange like the other one) it would be impossible to assemble with two of them.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

B5 Lemforders fitted to the lower arm

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1615313644

My back end is creaking and rattling!
 

So this thread has a lot of good info in it. Before I dig through and pick out part numbers and pull my hair out, is there anything that's not available, in either OE or "suitable replacement" format? I want to do all the bushes on the back end at once, no point in fannying around!

I'm not doing poly, it destroys the ride on cars!

All the bushes are available apart from the diff mounts. I machined down the diff carrier to take C5 bushes and that worked fine - not sure whether that is in this thread or another one.

Some of the bolts have to come from Tradition or other models, although usually everything apart from the inner tie rod eccentric and diff mount bolts come apart and can be reused with new nuts. I just use standard M12x1.5 nylocs rather than the originals which are NLA and were £3 anyway.