Volkswagen Beetle top strut mount fix

In theory, renewing the front strut top mounts on a VW Beetle is a quick and easy job. Rob Hawkins discovers what can go wrong.

A worrying grinding sound when the steering wheel is turned on a VW Beetle is often due to a worn bearing at the top of the front suspension struts. This bearing is designed to rotate to allow the steering to be turned along with the suspension strut. If worn, it can become noisy and may also result in the coil spring becoming unnecessarily twisted. The best solution when this happens is to remove the suspension strut and renew the bearing, top mount and any other components (eg, dust boots) that are worn or damaged.

Removing a front suspension strut usually involves several suspension components being detached along with the driveshaft to pull the wheel hub away and make enough space to manoeuvre the strut out of the wheelarch. In the case of a Beetle, no suspension components need to be detached. There’s enough room to pull down on the hub assembly to separate the bottom of the strut from the hub, once the pinch bolt has been removed, and extract it from the wheelarch.

CM editor Martyn Knowles’s 55-plate Beetle 1.6 recently needed its strut top mounts renewing, so we visited Fengate MOT Centre in Peterborough to complete the job. Apprentice Callum Winterman had the nearside front suspension strut detached in under 20 minutes, but the offside proved more difficult, helping to illustrate many of the problems that can arise. The following steps reveal all.

We used a two-post ramp, but the job can be completed using just a trolley jack and axle stands.