This was several weeks ago and I’m forgetting the details now but, anyway, it’s all covered in a very good TalkFord Wiki here: “Droplink Replacement – Rear”
I had the suspension knocking noise (more like a loud rattle) coming from the rear driver side for quite some time, and it happened when going over even very small bumps and dips in the road. Apparently, worn out droplinks (anti roll bar links) are a common cause of this on high mileage cars like mine, so I bought two replacements. These were made by “TRW” and the part number was JTS457.
I did soak the nuts holding the old droplinks on with penetrating fluid for a few hours first but maybe leaving them overnight would have been better because everything was still quite nicely seized up. I also found it very difficult to get enough leverage / force on the ball joint part of the old droplink with the Allen key and only managed to do the driver side one in the end…
For the passenger side (with the still good droplink) I could feel that the Allen key was going to round off the hex recess if I kept trying at it, so I’ve had to leave that one in place… Bugger!
The nut on that side will probably need to come off with an angle grinder, but I have more pressing things to do at the moment so it will have to wait. (Note to self… remember to loosen the lower nut while the link is holding everything steady before you go cutting away the rounded off top nut! )
The new TRW droplinks have a flattened edge on the ball joint parts so you can choose to fit and remove them using two spanners rather than the one spanner and Allen key. Much more sensible, I think.
One slightly strange thing about the TRW replacement droplinks, however, was that they came with 5/8” nuts rather than the 15mm nuts that are on the original Ford parts. I didn’t think anyone still made things using imperial units…
Happy 120th !
Shortly after doing this job, the car made it to 120,000 miles (okay okay, 193,000 km then).
Fairly normal for today’s cars I guess, but I remember when I started driving this would have been an unusually high mileage for a car to reach; even if the engine could take it, most cars were a pile of rust before they could make it this far!
