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Originally Posted by Night
Went to help pull the gear off the BA today and came across 2 problems I hope I don't get in the AU. The first was the steering rack was in the way of the rear control arm bolt so it had to be droped to allow the bolt to be backed off enough to get the control arm out. The second problem was with the front of the control arm, there are 2 bolts coming down infront of it and one of those stops the control arm coming out of its mount. I was told the stering rack is bolted differently on the AU so it just need to be loosened and backed off. Haven't heard anyone mention any of these things so I gather it's not a big problem with it, am I right?
Another thing I noticed when I looked at the AU next to the BA was the sway bar bracket. The BA bolts through the sides of the chassis where as the AU bolts underneath. I know its different and everything but there where bolts in the chassis in a very similar place on the AU to where the bracket mounts onto the BA. Those bolts didn't look like they were doing much and looked exactly like the bolts on the BA but as everyone has said, you just use one of them and drill through the chassis for the other. Which one do I use and can I just drill the bracket for the other hole? I didn't have a time to look further at that one.
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Yep - the steering rack ends can be a pain, but if you knock them off the hub mount/upright thing anyway (you need to do this as they need to be attached to the new one), and then turn the wheels full lock one way (or the other) you will get enough clearance to undo the bolt. If not, then just undo the rack end of the steering arm. It's just a large nut that holds it in (you need to remove the rubber boot for access to it) - much easier and less messy than dropping the whole rack.
The other bolts you mention are the K frame/subframe bolts, and yes, they need to be removed, so you can lever the frame down a bit while pulling the lower arms out. Not hard - just fiddly, and I guess if you didn't know you needed to do it (like I didn't when I did mine), it can add up to a lot of lost time trying to figure out WTF is happening (hence why mine took 11 hours for what should have been a 5 hour job - between the subframe and the steering rack issues!).
It's really just a big mechano set that you need to do in order, and hopefully the steering rack tips will save you some time too.
With the swaybar chassis mounts, there are already at least one, and IIRC, two, bolts that you can use, and they're even in the right position. The AU 1's have the outer bolts, but not the inner ones, hence the need for a through and through bolt. Here's how mine ended up. The two outer bolts were already there. The middle bolt is a high tensile 95mm bolt (8mm diameter, I think) and I used a nyloc on the other end of it (and a real bugger to fit on the V8 - much easier on the I6):
