Refreshing Volvo XC70 (P3) Front Suspension -Tips

[burritoh]

Just did the front struts on my wife's XC70 following your write up. It was super helpful, thanks!

I also had a hard time getting the LCA ball joint in the knuckle. Even when aligned, the chamfered end of the ball joint would get caught in the knuckle opening. It took a bit of wiggling, but I found that putting the brake disc on (temporarily) made it easier. The added downward pressure from the weight of the disc seemed to have helped.

[rollin_home]

I followed this process but think it could benefit by two points:

- more emphasis is needed on the specific alignment requirements of the strut bearing as indicated in the Volvo document below . If this alignment isn’t done a tapping noise will be heard on every little bump in the road

IMG_2185.jpeg (15.67 KiB) Viewed 2850 times

- the instructions say the best way to remove the strut, is to first remove control arm bolts and remove the CA with the steering knuckle attached, then tap out the ball joint and separate the CA and steering knuckle. I agree , so far. But, reassembly is said to be the reverse which would mean joining the control arm and knuckle first then installing this in the same order it was removed but I found this very difficult. The only way I could do the reassembly was: install CA , then knuckle onto strut tube, finally use a steel bar to pull down the CA and coax the ball joint stud into the knuckle.