Yaris Front Arb Links

[Cyker]

Took the car in for its MOT; Advisory came up yet again for the front ARB droplinks, only this time they said they'd actually split rather than just perishing!

Didn't fail it, but I figured I've been ignoring the advisory 3 years running now so it's about time I had a look!

Took the front wheels off and had a look at the front ARB links - Yeah, they look pretty bad so went about removing them.

Had a set of poly bushes that I'd bought some years back from SuperFlex (http://www.superflex.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=SF451-8.5130 if anybody;s interested. Bit over £40 tho'!) so set about removing the old bolts so I could fit the new ones.

My god, what a fiddly job!

Problem one is that the superflex bolts HAVE to go in from the top. If fed through the bottom, the end of the bolt sticks out and will hit the drive shaft!

The OEM bolt looks much easier as the top and bottom have to have nuts threaded on, so you could put it together from either end. It's also the correct length whereas the superflex one is a normal hex-headed bolt and about 1.5cm too long.

Problem 2 is that feeding it from the top requires the ARB mounting bracket for that side to be removed as well otherwise the driveshaft blocks the bolt from going in. Since you need to change the bush on the ARB mount bracket anyway, it's not so bad, but removing the mounting bracket is a massive PITA.

It has 2 bolts holding it down - One you can access from the bottom of the car but the other one you have to access via the wheel arch and it's extremely tight. Had to use a spanner as my socket wrench was too big! And you can only do a partial turn each time to remove it so it took me ages to get the damned thing off!

The passenger side is slightly less irritating than the driver's side one as there's less pipework blocking the spanner.

Hopefully the poly bolts will last a lot longer so I won't ever have to do it again! (Or maybe I'll just pay someone else to do it )

Looking at the old OEM bolts, they're pretty corroded and the metal discs supporting the rubber bushings are actually bent slightly. The bushings themselves look pretty manky on the outside - lots of cracks on the outside edges, but the inside is fine so IMHO it was mainly cosmetic damage/wear. I reckon I could have run on them for a few more years without problems (Well, aside from the annoying MOT advisories!)

The difference between the OEM and the poly isn't as noticeable as some people on the forums have made out. It does feel slightly stiffer when cornering but not much different between me running stock and higher psi in the tyres tbh.

[HowardL]

I've had advisory notes stating that the rubber is perished ,

Well, yes, maybe, on the outside, but the inners are probably fine

they aren't knocking,

untill that happens I wont get them changed, mine has done 60,000 and it's 9 yrs old