Daily Archives: July 4, 2020

Land Rover Discovery 4 Front & Rear Wishbone Replacement.

The owner of this Land Rover Discovery 4 decided he wanted to replace all four of the lower suspension arms as they had excessive wear in most of the bushes (common problem).

After a bit of research he booked it in with us to carry out the work for him.

Anyone who has tackled this job before will know its not a five minute job, especially when the bolts seize inside the bushes!

First thing we always do on jobs like these is to wire brush all the bolts and spray them with freeing oil in the hope to make life easier for us.

This did work on 50% of the bolts but there were several that no matter what we tried they needed to be cut out.

After replacing all the arms it was time for a full geometry setup as the arms had adjustments for Camber, Castor and Toe.

I must admit once all the work had been carried out the Discovery 4 drove perfectly, there was no more wandering at speed the steering was precise and not loose, it felt like it should do.

We did advise the customer to bring the Discovery 4 back after a few hundred miles so we could re-check the geometry once all the suspension components had settled in.

Aarons Autos car service garage.

Your friendly car garage in Derby

Give us a call at Aarons Autos for more info.

Vauxhall Corsa D 1.2 (A12XER) Timing Chain Rattle.

We had this little Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 booked in with us for a ‘really bad engine noise’.

Once the car was in the workshop it became apparent very quickly what the noise was, the Timing Chain was rattling so bad we were surprised it hadn’t jumped a tooth and caused engine damage!

When we were stripping the engine down to put the Timing Tools in place we could see just how badly stretched the chain had become, the crank locking pin went straight in but both cam shafts were out by quite a lot.

There are several variants of the Vauxhall timing chain engines most of which requiring different timing tools which we have, 1.0 – A10XEP, 1.0 – A10XER, 1.2 – A12XER, 1.2 – A12XEL, 1.4 – A14XEL, 1.4 – A14XER, 1.4 – A14NET to name just a few.

Timing Tool A is for the Camshaft Position Rings, Tool F is for the Camshafts.

After removing the timing chain cover we could start to see what had caused the problem, the oil was very black and there was a lot of burnt carbon oil inside all the covers.

All engines require regular servicing to keep them in tip top condition but especially modern engines that run a timing chains rather than a timing belt, we are seeing more and more engines requiring timing chain kits prematurely due to a lack of servicing, poor quality oil or the wrong spec oil.

Once we had replaced the timing chain kit and re-aligned all timing marks it was time to clean all off the engine casings and refit, replace the oil and filter and refill the coolant.

When we removed the oil filter this gave us another indication of what had caused the problem, the middle of the oil filter had been sucked in, caused by the paper element of the filter being completely full of oil carbon and struggling to allow fresh oil through it, which in turn starves crucial parts of the engine of oil (timing chain) allowing them to wear, over heat and stretch.

On this particular car we advised the customer that over the next 20,000 miles they should have several oil and filter changes to help remove carbon deposits that we couldn’t see or get to whilst doing the job and this will help increase the life of their engine.

Aarons Autos car service garage.

Your friendly car garage in Derby

Give us a call at Aarons Autos for more info.