UrS6 - Front LCA - Metal Sleeves - Essential ?

[macspring]

As above, the thin silver metal sleeves that are supposed to be tapped up into the centre of the rear of the front subframe bush before putting in the bolt to tighten up.

Are these sleeves really essential ? If the bolt is tight, presumable the (Lower Control Arm), LCA will not 'move' around ?

What is supposed to be their purpose in theory ?

I have new ones and can fit them, but they are such a pain to remove. down the road.

Thanks for any comments / experiences.

[UrS4boy]

100% necessary. Locks the LCA into the subframe mount with no slop. Install. The round end goes in first, pointed up.

Removal is easy if you use a wheel bolt threaded into the sleeve from the bottom and then pull/pry the bolt and the sleeve out.

[macspring]

Hi Dave,

I know you say it is / to do so is the correct and formal answer, but also looking for the ghetto experience also, but has anyone run their car with sleeve and no knocking over a prolonged period, say at least a couple of months ? Where they were 'forced' to do it without it as they didn't have a need one to hand when doing the job.

Having said that I will probably inevitably end up fitting pair, but I don't agree that you can get them out with a wheel bolt. I've tried it a couple of times over the last two years on my cars, so eight times, and each time was a right pita. Although the last time I developed a new method.

I decided to 'write off' a Teng tool, one that is specifically for taking off gasket residue.

https://www.iedepot.ie/gasket-scraper/

Dave, you maybe able to link / insert a better photo of the wide flat 'screwdriver tool ? thanks.

Once a scaffold bar is used to lever down on the mid to outer upper section of the LCA and bottom of the subframe and pop the ball joint out of it's 'hiome' position, and then bolt in the subframe / LCA is full removed, I used this Teng wide thin flathead to punch through the metal sleeve on top of the LCA and the bottom of the LCA like a guillotine, which allows the LCA to be withdrawn as if the sleeve is not there. The last remaining top section of the sleeve is then very accessible and can be 'gunthered' out relatively easily.

Ironically the Teng tool was not even marked, no mind damaged after this 'misuse' of the tool.

Having said that It made the job so much easier that I would be happy to buy and keep a second one just for 'wrecking' on this particular job. A regular wooden chisel will not work as it is too thick. I think it also helps to loosen the three smaller bolts around the bush to allow the subframe to be a bit looser / more flexible to facilitate this 'guilotining'.

As mentioned previously, I'd recently changed the springs on the car and even though it only had 50k miles on it, it's respective bolts were still tight, and a bit seized with age, e.g the ball joint in it's home spot in particular and also not forgetting everyone's favourite, the ABS sensor. On reassembly everything was smoother in copper grease, and so taking it all apart again a month later was a relative joy.

I cannot recommend highly enough how much of a great idea it is to clean bolt threads using a desk mounted grinder that has a wire wheel / naturally use eye protection to protect your eyes / the plastic / glass lenses in your spectacles. And use a wire pipe cleaning brush (in battery drill ?), to clean the threads of the nuts and the two 'bores' of the ball joint, and the ABS sensor. And then most importantly of all to smother everything in copper grease before and during reassembly, did I say that already? But is essential if you want an easy time in the future, when you revisit this area as you will with these cars. Have an old towel readily to hand to wipe the excess copper grease off your 'rubber' gloves.

HTH.

Sorry some of my posts are so long / go into such **** detail, but it is for my own benefit later on in the future when I forget the grief I went through, as well as for other members on here.

[UrS4boy]

Hi Dave, I know you say it is / to do so is the correct and formal answer, but also looking for the ghetto experience also, but has anyone run their car with sleeve and no knocking over a prolonged period, say at least a couple of months ? Where they were 'forced' to do it without it as they didn't have a need one to hand when doing the job. Having said that I will probably inevitably end up fitting pair, but I don't agree that you can get them out with a wheel bolt.

I would not recommend anything other than what Audi's engineers decided was needed. Anything less is not ghetto, it is simply dangerous. Sorry.

I have personally removed the sleeves from my LCAs using the wheel bolt trick. Worked very well. That said, my car has zero corrosion. When I took the sleeves out, they were almost perfect. I might have even reused them. (But I think I used the new ones that I had bought and just kept the old ones as spares for the future when they go NLA).

If yours are rusted in there, then they can't be reused and any technique that you can come up with, even a destructive method, might be fine. Don't kill the subframe mount in the process.

[mcandmar]

Its been a while since i've done it but i dont remember having any issue getting the sleeve out with a hammer and deep socket. Just make sure you undo the tension from the antiroll bar first so it isn't preloaded.

[macspring]

Agreed re the prelaoding. Can't recall the previous to last time if the LCA was preloaded, but it seems so obvious, I assume not.

Hopefully when it is back together this time, I don't have to revisit it for ages.