Took my daughters A6 for an MOT today and it passed with a couple of advisories for the front suspension real lower link arm bushes. A quick look on the net and Eurocarparts had them and I could have a 30% discount so I booked online then collected them. When I returned home I was surprised at how simple it was to remove the old arms and the tools required were a couple of 18mm ring spanners.
Looking at the new balljoint end it looked different to the old one and I thought it must be a sleeve, so I put it in the vice and gave it a few sharp hits with the 4lb lump hammer. It never even budged, so a little heat applied and tried again...nothing. So I called ECP and spoke with them, they confirmed it was definitely a sleeve, so I put the arm in the big vice and using a forked balljoint splitter and applying more heat I attacked it with the 4lb hammer, it did eventually part from the balljoint and went flying across the garage floor, so if you are doing this fit the old nut onto the threads before hitting ten bells out of it.
The reason I thought I would post this here is I suspect the A8 will have a similar set up and this information might be of some help to others working on their cars suspension.
Old balljoint
New balljoint without the sleeve
This is the sleeves that have to be removed from the old arms and fitted to the new arms
