All,

I'm setting about doing a full refurbishment of the underside of my car including de-rusting, under sealing, shot blasting and powder coating the subframes and wishbones and a full re-bush including a number of other things. I now have pretty much everything to get going including a full set of spare wishbones.

My question is for those of you who have carried out this job is how did you powder coat the upper arms. I don't believe the upper ball joint is removable (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I'm unsure whether you can or would want to bake them with it in situ?

Thanks in advance,

James

 

I wasent sure about this either, both from the heat point of view and shot blasting. To get the arms clean , I don't know what urs are like but mine had flakes of rust so quite bad would have ned a fairly heavy shot blast and i dare say this would have done for the gaiters too.

So i de-rusted them manually with rotary wire brushes etc , then used the POR15 system, to de-grease, prep and paint them. followed by a coat or two of smoothrite. It is time consuming though.

Hope you have better luck with the ABS sensors than i did, they were really stuck fast , every one came out in pieces

In hindsight i would have also removed the rear subframe complete and then stripped the arms of, most.likely would have saved all of the adjuster bolts. I had no trouble getting the front ones out once of the car.

 

There is a knack to getting the ABS sensors out, plus I didnt bother doing my top wishbones because I had Megan ones. I susoect you wont be able to shotblast and powdercoat the top wishbones unless you factor in new balljoints.

 

Thinking about it i don't actually think the temp is that high, they usually only stuff bits of paper in threads etc.

I very much doubt any amount of knack would have removed my ABS sensors in one piece. every one of mine came out in little bits, the rust was solid and the new ones would not even start to enter unit i had filled the rust out and emery clothed the holes clean.

 

Thanks Chippo,

I'm sure I've seen a thread where someone powder coated all of there arms, but I cant remember where I saw it (or if I dreamt it for that matter).

Yeah the spare set have a lot of surface rust on them. Well hopefully with my car being a relatively low mileage and always been kept in a garage and not used in the wet may pull things in my favour with regards to the ABS sensors, well we can all but hope!

I'm not sure at what temperature they bake at when powder coating (google will be my friend here) but with that said the shot blasting on the upper arm ball joints maybe a little too rough on them.

Well I'm hoping to get a garage to do most of it for me (installation that is) as I should have a complete refurbished front and rear subframe and wishbones, bushes waiting to be swapped in and out. As I cant imagine a garage would be happy having a car sat on the ramp for a week waiting for the parts to be powder coated! Well not unless I paid of that time!

James

 

I'm not sure you can buy new upper ball joints? IT seems odd, but looking at the exploded diagrams there doesnt seem to be a part number for it...

 

Yes the upper ball joints come out.

Put the arm in a vice and tap the joint with a hammer and chisel, jobs a good un.

Make sure you do the top arms or you will be disappointed with the over all look afterwards.
I replaced mine with heavy duty ball joints from Dixon.

I would use por15 for coating aswell. I shot blasted mine in a shot blast machine at work prior to paint which really helped the finish.


Good luck

 

Oh right, so you can just press the new ball joints in? If you don't mind me asking how much we're the heavy duty ball joints from Dixon?

The hope is to get all the wishbones and sub frames both shot blasted and powder coated.

Cheers

 

Also to add.

You can shot blast the arms with the ball joints on, as long as you protect them.

I did mine this way. I just desided to upgrade them because I like wasting money.

 

Ball joints were £80 for a pair.

Remove all arms, subframes, ARBs and any other braces you have.

Get them all shot blasted and coated at the same time. It saves messing about in stages and will speed the process up.

I would coat every part you can, even aftermarket ones as they all rust in the end. All my Cusco gear went rusty after 1000 dry miles.