lucisDad

@spartacus 68 thanks for that - all very helpful. Well, believe it or not, I just checked her MOT online to check that it was definitely the N/S, and would you believe it, it's her REAR shock that has failed :-/. My daughter is 'quite' apologetic after I've wasted god knows how much time :-). So from a potential nightmare job to one that looks like a straightforward 30-minute task - no spring compressors, no pinchbolt. Thanks to everybody who replied - including the posters with whom I was short yesterday (sorry about that). Both front shocks are advisories, so the all the above help will be helpful at some point before next MOT.

@cliffcoggin no, I'm sorry - a lousy morning and my patience had disappeared. Thanks for your time.

Ouch! Those quotes seem brutal even allowing for the most awkward case. Especially as they probably have the specialist removal tools already. Unless they were just trying to use you to pay for them... Can you remember roughly how long you spent playing the heat onto the joint?

That's helpful, Mark - thanks. I'm not sure that I trust myself to apply the heat using a torch without breaking something, but that gun looks much more manageable and definitely gives food for thought.

Thank you both, but YES, it is a pinchbolt (surely it looks exactly like one?) unless every dealer is selling imaginary components and several third parties have spent time and money developing removal tools for the same imaginary component? And the ball joints are anchored, or 'pinched' , by the very pinchbolt I've arrowed. This video shows a cheap type of removal tool, there are also others costing upwards of £500. I'm not asking for advice on how to do the job, I just thought that there might be somebody who has themselves carried out the same work (in other words, every single person who has replaced either the UCA or the shock absorber/bearing), in my area, who could help out in the way that I've previously assisted people with my VCDS software. Apologies if I sound frustrated, but my question was pretty clear. If you have any of the pinchbolt removal tools you'll know what I mean. I expect that I'll be flamed now for venting my frustration, but it does really bloat threads when people try to play 'catch up' on a topic that you've spent two days researching.

Hi Gareth - thanks for the quick reply. It's the lateral bolt highlighted here (not the actual car, a YouTube screen grab). I'd assumed that anybody with the tool would know about the bolt, and the mass of YouTube videos knowing what a pig of a job it can be to remove it, hence the lack of a photo initially. My mistake.

Hi all - first time on here and surprised to find no search results for 'pinch' or 'pinchbolt'. I thought there'd be pages of them? My daughter's car, an A4 Avant B8 2.0Tdi 2012 - front upper pinchbolt to be removed. We live in Southampton and I'm wondering whether anybody local has a pinchbolt removal tool that we could hire from them? Salty roads down here so I'm expecting it to be a tricky one. Thanks for your time.