Shall I guess?
Depending on the design on the Vectra, the bushes will be part of the 'arm' (trailing arm) that hold the wheel assembly in place. The bushes are dense rubber moulded usually onto metal, such that they can be bolted into place yet will provide a dampened join. On older vehicles the bushes could be seperated from the other parts and replaced singly ( there may be inner and outer bushes), but on newer cars - and I suspect yours may be in this group, the bushes are assembled into a larger arm unit - so you may have to buy the full thing. Now, fitting these units can be easy or tricky - much depends on the model and on the gear you have to do the job. You may need to borrow spring compressors and will likely need ball-joint splitters - and unless you are confident you know what you are doing (and have the book to give you torque settings etc) you may be best getting the job done 'professionally'.
Sometimes you have to be fairly 'rough' to identify if the bushes are split or worn (or have seperated from the metal) - this can mean prising the join with a metal bar to see if there is 'wobble' or excessive movement. Sometimes this is easiest with the wheel jacked up.
If you have a good MOT garage, they should be able to tell you right away whether the bushes are going / gone or not and show you which exactly is at fault.
Knocking noises can be horrible to trace and there is little worse than going to the effort and expense of changing things and then finding that the knocking is still there - so try to be certain of the problem. p.s. Are you getting excessive tyre wear or are you getting wobble when driving, is the noise worse when cornering in a certain direction, does it knock when coasting, have you locked the missus in the boot? (Check to see if you can eliminate some of the alternative causes of knocking)
J, January 2005
