Hello I am new on here - I wonder if someone may be able to help me regarding replacement of sway bar bushes. The car is a 1996 2.6 V6 Avant automatic left hand drive. For a while now I have had a loud metallic "clicking" from the front right of the car. I had the lower arms replaced by a mechanic but the noise is still there. Today I took off the under-tray and could see straight away that the bush on one side holding the sway bar to the subframe was totally shot. It looked like an easy job - two 19mm nuts - easy! However ... I quickly realised that rather than these nuts being on fixed studs or some kind of captive bolt the whole thing just turns like its a regular bolt.


I could just about get a finger above the subframe and sure enough I could feel a bolt head spinning as I tried to loosen the nut. The problem is I cannot for the life of me see how I can get a wrench or socket or anything onto the bolt to hold it still whilst I remove the nut. I even remove the whole air box from under the hood thinking there must be some kind of access hole but there is no access at all.


How do I do this job - do i have to drop the whole subframe? Seems extreme although it does look at though its just four bolts, two at the front (by the bushes in question) and then two at the rear which also seem to hold the end of the lower arm.


I would really appreciate some advice here.


Many thanks
Sam.

 

The sub-frame must be lowered. You may be able to get to the back-side of those four bolts by removing the two front sub-frame bolts, with a floor jack supporting the sub-frame in the front..then carefully lowering the front sub-frame till you can get a 17mm or 3/4 inch socket on the bolts through the sub-frame. The passenger side is tough and I needed several different sockets and a thin ratchet or straight bar in the socket to hold the bolt. An air gun helps spin the nuts off when you secure the backside bolts.

And do take care lowering the sub-frame..it holds the transmission up in the back on the transmission mounts.

If you can't get the back-side bolts off ..then you will have to drop the entire sub-frame.

 

As Rusty Spokes said, support the cross member with a jack, take out the two front bolts (and make sure you replace them with new ones, because they are stretch bolts, you torque them to 120 Nm I believe, and then you go another 180 deg), slowly lower the cross member (it is under tension from the sway bar), and you have access to the bolts of the sway bar. The tough one is the rear passenger side, but you should be able to get to it from the rear inboard side. You do NOT need (or want) to take out the rear bolts of the subframe, so, at least on the 100 C4, there is no issue with the transmission mounts

 

Correction: Torque for front subframe bolts is 110 Nm, plus a 90 deg additional twist, NOT 180 deg

 

Hi thanks very much both of you for the replies - very useful. I have just a few questions before I give this a bash: 1) to confirm I only need to remove the two front bolts right - I don't even need to loosen the rears to allow the front to drop down on a jack? i.e. it will pivot down with the rears still tight? 2) will it just freely lower under its own weight? Or does it need to be pryed down? 3) since the ARB is under tension will I be able to get the old bushes out with the subframe lowered or need to jack it back up again/or jack suspension up or down and 4) both of you state that the passenger side is more tricky - mine is LHD so is your passenger side my drivers side? Logically I have ordered two bushes but the other one looks okay for now so if its really hard I could just do the one: on mine its the LHD passenger side that's cooked - the side which has some kind of air duct (alternator cooling?) just before it.


Thanks again I have been searching high and low for how to do this so to get two replies in 24 hours is extremely helpful.


Sam.

 

The sub-frame should be supported by a jack when you remove the front two bolts. Then gently lower the front sub-frame with the jack. You should not have to loosen the two rear bolts unless you find you must drop the sub-frame to get to the back-side of the SB holding bolts.

Once the SB brackets are off you should be able to slide the new bushings in..note the orientation of the old ones. Use some Vaseline if the new bushings wont glide on.

Dont know about RHD cars..but those SB bolts on the right side should have the same difficulty as LHD..frames are the same.