Helping a friend next weekend with front strut replacement on his 1988 528e. I have an E12-based E24 and have completely rebuilt the suspension on that. The E28 is a little more involved but my main question is - is there enough clearance to pull the strut housing out from under the fender by disconnecting only a few items (tie rods, control arms)?

We replaced the lower control arms and tension struts a few years ago and it was a real bear using pickle forks. I'd like to avoid a repeat of that. I'd like to leave as much as possible connected and just pull the housing away and pop the new insert in place.

Thanks.

I don't believe you can get enough droop to perform the work you're describing.

How I do it is:

remove caliper

undo sway bar link

remove abs sensor

remove rubber brake hose and abs wire from the strut

remove the 3 bolts from the bottom of the strut

seperate the strut from the lower assembly

remove 3 upper nuts


Cris

Cool.

My 633 has 3 bolts on the bottom of the strut housing and I was wondering if I could remove them on the 528e for the same effect. Sounds like I can from your description. Sway bar links and calipers are easy. I just did not look forward to dealing with ball joints and not having the proper removal tool(s).

Thanks.

This is from distant memory, so I apologize if it's not actually possible, but I imagine that if you don't want to mess with the ball joints you could just pull the bolts at the bushing ends of the control arms and drop them that way.

It's not that hard, the three bolts at the bottom of the strut will allow the control arms to remain attached to the car.

Thanks for the info. I'll start with the bolts at the bottom of the strut housing and go from there.

now might be a good time to replace those bolts too.
especially since the factory bolt is just short of going all the way through the hole and is upside down, making a nice little pocket for water to collect.
grade 10.9 metric about 10 mm longer does great.
I snapped two of them torquing them down this last month.

and

The thin factory 17mm/19 mm open end wrench works great for holding the upper swaybar arm mount works great for holding it when pullin off the nut.