MOT and A-FRAME ball joint replacement project.

by sf Email

Defender recently passed its MOT so happy with that. Even so I am going to remove the defunct BOGE unit from the rear suspension. I replaced the soft 110 CSW spring for heavy duty ones many moons ago but never got around to removing the BOGE unit mostly because I didn't have a replacement A frame from a non BOGE landrover to swap it with. The ball joint bracket on the Aframe with the BOGE unit fitted has an extra appendage for the BOGE mounting so woud need cutting off or it should fail an MOT for a missing suspension component (I never fancied cutting it off like some do).
The white whale donor vehicle has supplied me with a standard A frame ball joint bracket. Once I removed that from the whale it was much fun with help of neighbour to extract the old ball joint from its bracket housing. 6 tonne press and a wee bit of heat (and drama) and it was out.

From a-frame project

I purchased rather cheaply a new ball joint from xmod and it turned out to be a genuine landrover part at a quarter of the price. I actually ordered ANR1799 but got sent the older superseded part number version (NTC9932) which is just the same except it has the addition of rubber boot retainer plate it seems. I guess they changed to sprung ring retained boot as part of a cost cutting.
Fitting it into the bracket was rather a lot easier with just needing the use of the vice and tighten the flange bolts to pull the joint home fully. Lots of anti-seize copper grease was used to hopefully help any future replacement.

From a-frame project
From a-frame project

The Defender 110 County Station Wagon is often fitted with softer rear springs and a Boge self levelling unit fitted between the A-frame ball joint bracket and the chassis.
The idea was to give a softer more comfortable ride to the 12 seater vehicle. When loaded the Boge unit 'pumps up' itself increase the ride height, the pump action is fed from driving the vehicle and bumps in road surface create the pumping action. Often you will see a 110 county looking low and saggy at the rear whilst stationary and after a few miles driving the rear end would have risen to a more acceptable height. That's the theory but the boge SLU fail and then the softer than normal rear springs suffer the full abuse ending up with a wallowing saggy bummed truck.
Because a new SLU is pretty pricey the common solution is to instead remove it and replace the rear springs with those from a 110 commercial either standard or heavy duty variety. With the SLU removed it leaves a mounting horn on the A-frame ball joint bracket which should incur an MOT failure due to a missing suspension component that was factory fitted. So the modification involves either cutting off that part of the bracket or replacing the bracket from a non boge a-frame.

From a-frame project