1998 550 Maranello "sorting" thread--DIY

Step four: Loosen the two 17mm nuts that hold the top of the shock assembly to the car body; you will see the whole arm assembly lowering as the bolts are loosened. (Photo 1).

Step five: I elected at this point to remove the single 19mm nut that holds the bottom of the shock and remove the bolt gently while applying upward traction on the shock assembly. This allowed me to carefully remove the washers and preserve their orientations prior to removing the assembly. Once I did this I finished removing the upper bolts and the shock assembly literally falls right out. Easy peasy!

Step six: Inspect the rear control arm bushings and the rear tie rods. My tie rods look fine, but here it is apparent that my control arm bushings need replacing. (Photos 2 and 3)

Therefore, it is time to query Superformance and get new bushing sets (might as well do the fronts "while I'm in there")
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To remove the control arms on this car (as with any car I imagine) is quite a bit of work.
First off, you need a tool to hold the brake disc, caliper and spindle level while you undo the lower ball joint and the control arm bolts. Ferrari makes a tool for this, called AV 3206, which if I could find it anywhere I'm sure would be very expensive. My tool is cheaper (Photo 1).

Once the suspension is securely held, you should start by removing the bolt that holds the lower ball joint to the lower control arm. Photo 2 shows an exploded view of this joint, photographed looking out from behind the brake disc. Note that there are shims that are placed between each side of the ball joint, and that the number differs front to back (in my photo 4 shims on the back side, one on the front). It is important to keep them together and not let them all fall in a pile once you remove the 17mm nut and bolt holding this in place.

Once the bolt is removed and you place the shims carefully in an order you can preserve, the control arm can be made to drop away from the lower ball joint (Photo 3).

Now you can turn your attention to the bolts holding the lower control arm to the chassis. Note that the bolt and washer are asymmetric, which is part of alignment adjustment. (Photo 4). I will attempt to carefully preserve the orientation of both sides of each of these bolt/washer combinations.
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It is important to mark each side of each lower control arm bolt, noting the orientation of the washer relative to the mounting flange. (Photo 1)

Once all 4 sides (2 sides of 2 bolts) are marked, you can remove these 22mm bolts and using a rubber mallet, bang the lower control arm mounting points UPWARD and out of the flanges.

The upper control arm had previously been detached from the upper ball joint so it was a simple matter to remove the bolts holding it in place and remove the arm, again using either a rubber mallet or a pry bar. (Photo 2)

What you are left with is now upper and lower control arms ready to have the bushings pressed out (Photo 3).

The upper control arm bushing removal is easy. Using my el cheapo 12 ton press from Northern Tool and a 1 1/2 inch socket, the bushing is easily popped out with no damage to the mounting flange (Photo 4).

The lower control arm is a much bigger pain in the ass. The tools that Ferrari sells to punch these bushings out are extraordinarily expensive, so I was left to try to find stuff at the hardware store to accomplish this. The bushing is larger in diameter than the upper control arm bushing, and the arm is shaped such that it is much more difficult to position on the press. However, in the end I discovered that Hill Engineering ring nut tool RNT-28 (previously purchased for removing Gilmer drive gear ring nuts on the 550) fit perfectly inside the barrel of the lower control arm. Using a 1 1/2 inch galvanized pipe union from Lowes and RNT-28 I was able to pop these lower control arm bushings. None of them appeared to be welded, just press fit.
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Finally, my shipments arrived from the UK of my new suspension bushings from Superformance. Combined with replacement nylocks from Ricambi and the upgraded 10.9 bolts mentioned by FBB, I am ready to begin reassembling the front suspension on the car.
(Photo 1).

Step one is to press in the new bushings. I coated each one of them with Mobil1 synthetic grease (recommended by WSM is Fiat MR3 but good luck finding that crap) and pressed them in as pictured in Photo 2. Here I ran into a little issue as the bushings go all the way through the control arm and pop out the other side by about 5-7mm. If you look carefully at photo 2 you will note that I am using an ordinary bearing driver between the press and the control arm, but this flat surface bearing driver will stop the bushing from peeking out the 5mm or so it is supposed to from the other side of the control arm barrel. Therefore, I pressed the bushing in until it sat flat against the bearing driver and then replaced the bearing driver with an inverted socket that is larger than the outer race of the bushing. This successfully pressed the bushing until it was seated properly.

Once these are pressed in the lower control arm may be replaced, and careful attention to the previously made marks in both sides of each elliptical bolt/washer combination should return the car to the previous alignment (Photo 3). I replaced the nylock nuts and torqued the lower control arm chassis mount to 98Nm.
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Next up was to replace the upper ball joint with the new one from Superformance and then reinstall the upper control arm. (Photo 1) It is recommended by the WSM to coat the bolt surface of the ball joint with Molykote BR2. Notice that the new upper ball joint comes with a new nut and washer, which is nice, but the washer they include does not fit the recess in the spindle (not so nice). Therefore I used the old washer, new nut, and torqued the ball joint shaft to 63Nm (approximately because there's no getting a torque wrench in there).

Photo 2 shows the upper control arm now back in place, with both of its mounting points torqued to 78Nm. CribbJ, there is your detail photo of the upper shock mount location, which is not actually countersunk in the curvilinear pattern of the shock assembly. I don't know why it was designed with that unique shape on the top.

Once the upper control arm is in place, I replaced the original M8-1.25 25mm bolts with new ones made of 10.9 steel. These two bolts that connect the upper control arm to the upper ball joint should be torqued to 20Nm. (Photo 3).

One thing that I do notice now is that the suspension no longer "hangs down" like it did with the old bushings. It is much stiffer and less moveable than before. I presume those old bushings were starting to go bad even though they didn't look bad.
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I now turned my attention to the rear suspension assembly, which differs from the front in the fact that there are no ball joints (no steering) and therefore more bushings to press.

Photo 1 shows the lower rear control arm bushings being pressed out.
Photo 2 shows the lower rear control arm bushings being pressed back in again. The same process is required here as described in the previous post about using a socket to allow the bushing to peek out of the opposite side of the control arm barrel.

I flew through this control arm and then went to replace it. On replacing it, I made a horrible discovery: The bushings that were sent from Superformance for the lower control arm chassis mounts were 5mm shorter than the bushings that I removed from the control arm.

Photo 3 shows the original Ferrari (has a 1997 date on it) lower control arm chassis bushing, and on the right is the replacement sent from Superformance. So....I had to press the two bushings BACK OUT and email Superformance. This will likely mean another 6 day wait for shipping. Boo.
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Thank you very much for the tip. As it seems like it would be nearly impossible to torque the bolts with the tires on, and the suspension loaded, I will jack up each assembly once the shocks are back in place. Loose until then!

 

What can I say Carl, thanks again! I had thought about this problem prior to you guys mentioning it, As with the prior bushings on the front end, I was able to lift those arms all the way up and down while they were disconnected from the ball joint without any real effort. I wonder if the inner race of the bushing had become dislodged from the rubber?

 

So over the last two weeks or so I have been waiting for the parts supplier to make me whole with a proper set of bushings for my vehicle. I am still awaiting the shipment of the correct bushings for my rear suspension.

In the meantime, I completed the front suspension. I took the kind advice from 166 and fatbillybob about torquing the control arms and suspension parts with the car at ride height.
It appears to me that the best way to get the suspension to ride height and still be able to access all of the bolts is to use a scissor jack (Photo 1).

Once the spindles were correct height I was able to torque the lower control arms in place using my previously made reference marks (Photo 2).

Once those were completed I added the replacement front tie rods, which I had found on Ebay new for about $150 each (versus $350 each new). I bought two "right" sided tie rods but discovered that both the right and left lower tie rods are exactly identical parts, but each is rotated a certain number of degrees off axis. The right already matched the old one, and it only took loosening the other new one and rotating it to match the old left tie rod. Presto. (Photo 3)

Lastly, I added Superformance's new stabilizer bar bushing and cap, which they claim is uprated. We will see (Photo 4)
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In the meantime also, I have received back my shocks from FerrariDriver Dave and can't wait to try them out. Superformance offers a replacement bush for the rear shocks only, which I am trying out. Photo 1 shows the old bush on the left, which is a metal ball joint, and the new rubberized bush on the right.

I was able to isolate and verify that my fuel leak was caused by a crack in the fuel pump assembly cap. Photo 2 shows the original 1997 fuel pump cap, and if you notice that at about 11pm on the right hand fuel connector there is a small crack in the plastic. I don't believe this was the source.

Photo 3 shows what I believe the source was, a crack in the housing of the screw that holds the two fuel lines in place. This metal screw goes all the way through to the backside of the cap, which means that any violation in its integrity would easily cause fuel to leak.

I fired the car up today after all the services were complete to check fluid levels, etc. The car took 13 qts of oil during this change. The other thing I did differently this time was during my coolant flush I opened the passenger side block drain, expecting a small amount of extra coolant to come out. I was met with an enormous volume of coolant, with some residual "blue" coolant that I'm sure Bradan put in there during the last flush they did in 2009. When I drained and refilled the coolant last year during my first service I did not touch the block drains. I will not make that mistake again. It seems to be further evidence that opening the block drains is a major part of the coolant change. I had received opinions that only a limited amount of coolant would come from there, which after taking a complete bath in the coolant that gushed out of the block drain I would assert is not true.
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Sark I don't want to even know how you calculated that but i'm glad you did! I did not access the drivers side block drain as it is a major pita to get to; I suspect that both sides communicate but will have to look at the WSM on that one. I got at least as much coolant out of the block drain as I did from the radiatore, if not more.

 

Sark,
According to the WSM the total system capacity is 4.18 gallons of coolant. I am guessing when you drained the right handed block drain you got nearly everything that was in the block, minus a small amount on the left side of the block. The WSM doesn't have a specific diagram of the head water system but I am guessing it is all one container rather than two separate containers.

 

ahhhh....Sark we now have our answer!