My 1974 BMW 2002

From shell to road, the rebuilding of a classic automobile my way.

November 2005

Well, not a lot has happened with the 02 in the last couple of months. For September and October I got to do a little tweaking on it but nothing much really. School and getting ready for our new daughter took a good amount of time. Mackenzie came home November 3rd. Since she is starting to sit up I thought maybe I would test her in the 02.


She took right too it.

 

Thanksgiving weekend gave me some time to work on the car. I spent some of the day Wednesday taking apart the front suspension. This is the first time this bolts have been touched in 10 years at least. It took a bit, air impact wrench wasn't enough, had to get out the breaker bar.


Before I could get the lower one though I discovered that pretty much everything needs to be removed to make the job easier.


So once the caliper and disc were out of the way I had to remove the dust shield, it is 3 bolts normally, mine only had 2 since I lost the ones in the lower left.


Next remove the sway bar links. Take a pic or make a drawing to remember how they go, and don't go by mine cause I don't think this is right, PO did it. You need a 14mm for the top and the bottom has 2 nuts, should both be 14mm but one of mine was a 13mm.


I had known that the control arm boots were bad, so I am taking this opprotunity to replace them with ones I got from Rob T. when I got the red strut housings, I think that was in '99. But they are still good, never used since rebuilt, very rare. :)


This bushing was toast, it is the one in the front that control fore and aft movement of the wheel, it wasn't doing a good job.



I was able to push out the front bushing with my fingers.


I found this surprising, this one actually looks to be in good shape and I found out that it is when I tried to remove it, which even though it is good, I have the urethane ones already so I might as well. I believe all these bolts and nuts are 24mm, but I used 13/16 if I remember right as I only have one 24mm wrench.


It's out, need to clean it a little.



The home made tool in action.


Once I got the control arm off I this. This is the inner bushing, is it supposed to be 2 parts?

 


This happened last December when I took it out for its first drive, the wheel came off and this stopped the body from getting it too bad. Actually the fender is the only other thing that was damage and it was by the wheel.

 


The urethane bushings for the front come in 2 pieces, I guess it is supposed to make it easier to install. This is just showing the front part of the one that at the front of the subframe.