Funny this thread should come up...
I just changed that whole assembly yesterday! My driver's side arm had rusted to the point the spring had come through the bottom of the arm.
I made a temporary welding-job to it a few weeks ago, to give me time to find a good donor set-up
The donor was a 200 gasser saloon car. I obtained the whole lot plus some other trim-parts, bumper, lights and stuff for the pricely sum of £50--Well happy.
I fitted the subframe, trailing-arms, park-brake etc and cables from the saloon car to my wagon.--These parts are the same.
This is the way I did it--which seemed the easiest....
I first removed the arms and subframe from donor, cleaned up and rust-proofed, repainted blue the three major parts, fitted new bushes to the arms and subframe.
--Everyone paints these things black--I gotta be different--Mine are bright blue!
Built up the arms to the subframe and renewed the brake-components. The cables from the donor were re-used as they were in near perfect condition.
--Those park-brake springs are a fiddle aint they!
--So, now we had the subframe with arms attached and all the brake parts fitted.
(The wheel-bearings were not replaced as the old donor hadn't done many miles and were smooth)
The whole diff, subframe, arms and brake-cables were removed from the wagon and the diff changed over to the 'new' assembly. The low-mileage donor diff wasn't suitable to fit the 300D--which was a shame--wrong ratio.
--There is no need to remove the half-shafts from the diff, as the outer splined ends will slide out of the hubs--but only when the arms are at their lowest position and resting on their stops--Without the shocks/actuators attached--They will not come out if the shocks and subframe are still attached to car....
The flex-disc was changed over at the same time, and I did some waxproofing of the underside while the assembly was out.
I made one mistake during re-fitting.....
I didn't re-locate the drive-shaft into the flex-disc before the assembly was bolted up, so had to drop the centre-bearing to allow enough forward movement to re-locate the centre of the coupling....
The job is relatively easy, although strenuous doing it solo, and not used to 'wrenching' daily. Ive aches and pains today in muscles I didn't know I had!
--Definitely would recommend a helper!
I used three jacks and two tall and very robust axle-stands to do the job, the stands located on the rear chassis, as I have deleted the factory jack-points two years ago when I re-constructed the sills in that area.
--I had the car almost resting on a solid brick wall at the front end and had it raised up about 1.5-2 foot off the ground.
I think that the job would have been very difficult without having the three jacks to carefully lift the assembly into position in the right place, more or less level...
The job took me 8 hours with a couple of breaks here and there--probably an hour or so.....
I should have taken some pictures--but didn't...
