Creaking noise from rear end.

[GH77]

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.
  
• 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!

[GH77]

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 . . . . .

[MikkiJayne]

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.



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.



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



This is the two of them together



Fitted to the D2 hub



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.



B5 Lemforders fitted to the lower arm

[B4-Andy]

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!

[MikkiJayne]

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.