Further Adventures in Chineseum . . . BMW sway bar links

 A couple months ago the front suspension on Annie's car started to rattle . As I don't drive it all that often it really was not foremost on my mind but eventually we narrowed the source of the clunking down to worn out sway bar links .

 So a month ago I ordered some new ones from Fleabay and when they arrived I gave the seller positive feed back and five stars for his prompt service and chucked them on my workbench where they got lost in the clutter . . . and there they remained sealed in the plastic bags on my bench gathering dust . . .

. . . until yesterday when I went to gas up the car for Annie and I just couldn't stand the rattle any more so I screwed my courage together to tackle that potential can of worms . 

Hey Look they have Zerks grease fitting which the original ones don't have . 

Hmmm OK . . . I suppose that's a good thing .

Waaaait . . . WTF is that ? look at that hole in that Zerk fitting . . . That's supposed to have a tiny little sprung ball in it to keep the grease inside the ball joint . . . and that one is missing . 

Yep , chineseum of the best kind .

So I jacked up the car , pulled the front driver's side wheel off and proceeded to remove the sway bar link . Top bolt required the use of a pickle fork to exert pressure on the somewhat loose ball joint in order to have enough resistance to unscrew the nut . But when I put the pickle fork on the lower ball the whole thing just came apart . 

OK . . . so that makes removal a whole lot less trouble as I can hold the ball with the Vice-Grips while I undoo the nut on the back side . Usually getting the old sway bar link off requires the use of a Sawzall to cut that ball stud off cause there is no way to keep them from spinning . 

Sometimes the man upstairs smiles at fools and gives us a break .

No wonder that thing was making a racket .

Cleaned the thing off on the wire wheel . Look at the state of that ball . That has been compromised for quite some time to get that pitted . 

Greased and installed the new link with the two good Zerks fittings on the driver's side . The passenger side appears to be a replacement and still seems to be tight so I will wait to replace that one till I can find a new Zerk fitting for it . . . Took the car for a spin and the clunking is now gone .

The appearance of competence is intoxicating .

 
 Now about those Toyota front brake calipers on my bench . .