The roll pin is a tapered pin that secures the control arm to the gearbox. It fixes to a spindle that goes into the gearbox and then conducts some kind of voodoo magic that makes your gears work. (or so the Haynes manual says) and quite often can wear and lead to play in your gearstick. It is an interference fit which means it must be knocked in and out with a hammer and punch, simple enough as it only needs a short sharp shock to slide it out but as it’s down the back of the gearbox it’s a bit more tricky.
Probably a hundred and one ways to do it but I used a 5mm allen key bit on a long extension to begin removing it:
Through the gap in the passenger side wing underneath the track rod you can just about get a straight enough line to line up with the pin:
Make sure it’s properly lined up before you give it a twat and you should get this, the old pin is ¾ of the way out in this picture:
Once it’s completely out the arm can be slid off completely, here with the old and new pins:
It was at this point I discovered a problem. My roll pin didn’t actually look that bad, I was expecting it to have a big groove in the middle where it had worn and allowed the arm to move, but it was actually alright. I checked again and it turned out the spindle the arm sits on was moving in and out, not the arm itself. This is a bit of a bugger as it means the main cause of the play is in the gearbox itself, not something I fancy trying to fix because of the voodoo magic I mentioned earlier.
As I didn’t want to try taking the box apart and fixing all the clockwork inside just to get rid of a little bit of play in the gearstick I had another idea. If I could make sure the spindle didn’t have room to slide in it would take out the play almost completely and ‘fix’ the problem.
A bit of a bodge may be, but I drilled out a thick M12 repair washer to the diameter of the spindle. If you need to do this it would be worth using a good quality washer to avoid it wearing down quickly, and you’ll need a HSS step or cone drill to do it like mine:
The new spacer on the arm:
The spacer slid over the spindle perfectly and it was the right size to sit in the recess the arm was sliding into to stop it moving:
Then the arm on, the spacer was just the right thickness, you don’t want a washer too thick as you won’t get the holes to line up, and if you need to force the roll pin in the arm will lock and won’t rotate smoothly.
The new roll pin inserted into the hole:
And now I needed to do the same trick, a longer extension from the other side with a socket on was enough to knock the new pin into the arm:
And it’s in! There’s a tiny bit of in and out movement but that’s only because I wanted to leave a bit of room so it could turn, it’s miles better than the good few mm it could move beforehand.
So the worst of my problems fixed, a simple solution and a bit fiddly to do but it does the job fine.