Harrier MOT advisories, suspension components

[m4rkw]

Hello

My 2006 Harrier just passed its MOT but has some advisories:

- anti-roll bar linkage ball joint dust cover severely deteriorated (offside front)

- suspension arm pin or bush worn but not resulting in excessive movement (nearside front)

- suspension arm pin or bush worn but not resulting in excessive movement (offside front)

 

My local garage quoted £1500 to fix these issues, I got a second quote from a toyota specialist that came in around £1120 and included geometry. Not sure why such a big discrepancy. Is this second quote roughly in line with what it should be? it's for both anti-roll bar droplinks which I'm guessing is sensible because if one went the other one likely isn't far behind. Is it really necessary to replace the entire link just because of the dust cover though?

[Delphius1]

Hi, It's those front suspension arms and bushes... they are an absolute pig to change. Even if you go for replacement arms (the easy option because the bushes need a hefty press to press them in),.... to remove the arm mounts you have to prop the engine up and drop the subframe.

I've had polyurethane bushes fitted on my front arms and my mechanic said it was one of the worst jobs he's done. He propped the engine up as far as the engine mounts would allow and then undid the subframe mounting bolts until they were on their last few mm of thread. At that point he could just about remove the side engine mounts which cover the bolts holding the front arm mounts. to the subframe.

The discrepancy could be due to one garage knowing you can just about get away with the skin of your teeth by doing what my mechanic did and the other garage going the whole hog and pulling the engine and/or subframe from the car and making an even bigger job of it. i.e. quoting for worst case scenario.

Even doing what my mechanic did, it was the best part of a two-day job to get everything into the position he could remove the arms, remove the old bushes from the arms and fit the new ones in and then re-fit the arms. Luckily I got mates rates. :-)

 

[m4rkw]

Hey thanks. Sounds like the second quote might be fairly reasonable then given that the arms alone cost over £500 and it includes geometry.

[welland]

i needed my front suspension arms to be replaced recently too for the same reason.  I think the lower of your two quotes is in a reasonable ball park.  I later discovered that replacement arms can be found on eBay around £100 each, but I don't know if they are false economy.  

As Delphius said, the antiroll bar link is a minor job and won't be a big factor in your overall quote.  I'm surprised that the antiroll bar link issue was only an advisory, as I've had a fail on this point before.  

What's clear is that front suspension arm replacement on this car is certainly a major expense.   Would be interested to learn if there are other similarly expensive maintenance jobs, or if this is as bad as it gets.