[s-cars] Rust penetrant?

[Tom Mullane]

Ian,

I recently had my Coupe Q aligned and was faced with the same challenge.  I
figured that the tech will take care of these who take care of him.  In
other words, make the job easy to do and you will get a "dead nuts"
alignment rather than the "barely in spec" alignment (the difference between
commercially acceptable work and good work).  Mine was particularly crusty,
and I ended up unbolting the whole assembly from each strut housing and from
the steering rack.  I slid the assembly out one of the access holes in the
side, then disassembled it in the bench vise.  I cleaned the whole thing up
then reassembled with liberal amounts of (dare I say it?) antiseize.

Overkill?  You bet; I'm told I specialize in it.  But if you are faced with
a really badly seized adjuster, it is the easiest way.  My alignment is
right on.  And I won't need to do it again.  The tech's comment to me?
"Nice job up front.  What happened in the rear?"

 

Tom 



Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 20:16:59 -0500
From: "Fred Munro" <munrof at sympatico.ca>
Subject: RE: [s-cars] Rust penetrant?
To: "Ian Duff" <iduff at rcn.com>, <s-car-list at audifans.com>
Message-ID: <ELEILALKJKMBKDDGOMAIIEMJEFAA.munrof at sympatico.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

Hi Ian;

I just did this job on my '94 S4 - 200,000 km of rust-belt driving on the
original tie rod ends.

I cleaned up the exposed threads with a wire brush, backed off the lock nut,
knocked the compression collar loose, and scraped the rust out of the arm
slots with a dental pick to expose the threads. I gave it a shot of Walther
Bolt-Off (good German product, that) and both tie rod ends easily came right
off. I was totally amazed, considering I gave up on the same job on my '91
200q and it took two dealer techs 90 minutes with a flame wrench and a BFH
to get one side off on that car. The inside threads on the S4 were clean
with the factory plating intact.

Hopefully yours goes as well!

Fred Munro
'94 S4




-----Original Message-----
From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
[mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com]On Behalf Of Ian Duff
Sent: January 5, 2004 2:54 PM
To: s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: [s-cars] Rust penetrant?


Holy war time? I hope not. What's a good rust penetrant? I'm shortly going
to need to get an alignment, and don't much feature the idea of the
alignment shop trying to sell me new tie rods or whatever because they're
rusted solid. I'd much prefer to douche them with some elixir that gets thru
the rust and makes them adjustable again. Suggestions? As always, low cost
and ready availability are near to my lazy Scots heart...
-Ian Duff.