I had noticed that when I accelerated hard the car pulled to the right, so I popped it down to the tyre place down the road and asked them to check the tracking. They looked for 2 minutes and said that they couldn't do anything as the rear wishbone bush on the drivers side was knackered.

They were correct the bush was knackered, it had detached on the outer and just spins freely, it also had a lot of play forward and backward.

So I ordered a pair of new wishbones and kept this weekend free to fit them. It was nice weather after work, so I spent the 3 hours of daylight changing them. Everything went well and I was quite pleased to be backing up as it was going dark.

Took it for as test drive and it just doesn't feel right. I started just round the block and it generally felt fine but the steering felt too light when turning sharply.

I went down the main road which felt ok, but then went to full lock at the bottom to come back and heard the left the screeching as I turned. Headed back and the tyres sounded to be screeching if they went over anything like a man hole cover. Front tyres both warm when I got back, rears were cold.

I did this same job 3 years ago.

Any ideas on what I can have got wrong?

My process was...

Loosen 2 bolts/nuts on rear mounting.
Loosen front bolt
Undo nut on ball joint
Use ball joint separator (the type that looks like a tuning fork)
Undo track road end nut and revive tie rod end so it would give me a little more room to work.
Remove bolts
Pull out wishbone
Put new wishbone in place, loosely put bolts through.
Get wife to stand on the end of the wishbone to lever it down whilst I move the hub into position.
Tighten nut onto ball joint
Put track road end back into hub and tighten.
Tighten the other bolts most of the way.
Put wheels back on
Finish tightening 3 bolts.

Pretty sure it is just that the tracking is now really far out.

I took it for 4 when alignment this morning, but they failed to do it, due to not being able to undo the lock nuts on the TREs. After 2 of them trying, they gave up and sent me home to undo them for them 😔

Half an hour in the rain on the drive and they were both undone, so why they couldn't shift them I have no idea. I didn't need heat, just used a pair of stilsons and a length of scaffolding tube. The hardest bit was getting a good angle.

Alignment place is shut now though, so will have to go back on Monday

Id have thought seized TRE nuts was bread and butter work for a tracking busines and that they would know what to do.

I hope they are offering a discount now that youve done the hard part for them. Jules

If you tighten wishbones (or say track control arms on other vehicles)while they are hanging down on the jack,then when you drop the car down the bushes will be twisted causing the suspension to sit high.so all suspension arms with bushes on the freelander, front and back, should be finally tightened when on the floor.

I did this as best as I could. Dropping the front wheels down onto blocks so I could do the final few turns to tighten.

However, I did wonder if it is actually necessary with these. I couldn't get my head round how it would actually make a difference.

The ball joint nut isn't going to make any difference whatsoever, and I did tighten that before lowering.

For the other three, the rubber is fixed in place, so when the car is in the air the weight of the hub and wheel etc will be putting a downward twisting force in the rubber, but once lowered this would just return to the normal point.

As I say, can't really get my head around went out how it could make a difference. Happy to be corrected.

jules wrote:

Id have thought seized TRE nuts was bread and butter work for a tracking busines and that they would know what to do.

I hope they are offering a discount now that youve done the hard part for them.

I decided to have a go at the tracking myself.

I used the string method, and found the fronts to be well out (as expected) the rear of each front tyre was out too far. So the fronts were both pointing in. I adjusted them until they were both pointing straight ahead.

Once this was done, the car again drives perfectly well and now doesn't pull to the right when accelerating.

I'll probably drop it in for a check of the alignment but to be honest it seems pretty good.

Are they supposed to be perfectly straight though, or are they supposed to go in out slightly?