After all the work getting the cables and pedals installed yesterday I realised we had not greased the throttle cable, so I took this out and gave it a good greasing, lucky its not the cable that is inside the center tunnel or it would probably have remained not greased. While i had the grease out I removed the bar that runs through the pedals that operates the accelerator and greased this too, this has made the pedal movement a lot smoother and easier.
Well the time came to do one of the jobs I really had not been looking forward too, but for a lot of things the hardest looking jobs turn out to be fairly easy and the simple stuff takes forever. With that thought in mind I set about removing the wheels and hubs to change the wishbone arm ball joint covers.
My previous thought proved not to be the case, It looked like a hard and annoying job and was both hard and annoying. It probably took a good 1/2 day to change these while doing other stuff and working out how and where things go.
3 Legged Puller and Blow Torch
Getting the bolts undone was a lot easier then expected and removing them was not too hard with the aid of a long bar to leaver them out.
Once the wheels and hubs where out of the way the real fun started, the top ball joints looked like they would be harder but proved to be easy by comparison, once with got the eccentric camber adjustment things off, these where seized onto the ball joints and needed to be removed to get the new covers in place. Removing these required a 3 leg puller and a large dose of flame, but once off the new covers where not to hard to grease and refit.
The bottom ones that started out the day looking easy turned out to take more time then anything else, getting the new covers into the correct place and seated was just so much harder than it should have been.
Now the bigest problem stopping us reassemble the font end and being able to put the car back down on its wheels is the stuck bolt that sheared off in the steering arm yesterday.
Spot the new part?
The last part of the brake system that needed to be replaced was the drivers side flexible brake line as this was leaking when we got the car. This line was also compleatly coroded onto the old solid line and the brake drum, the heads on both ends just disintergrated when we tried to undo them, this was quite easy to fix as the line fits into the back of the piston which can be removed from the hub. We took the pair out as one and replaced the piston, a new line is on order and will be with us tomorrow morning. Once we had the new brake parts in place inside the wheel hub we hooked up the last of our new solid lines and as soon as the flexy line is connected tomorrow that will have ticked another job off the list.
Simon has gone to Phil’s (The Phil that helped us with the welding) to try and fix the current arm, he will post an update when he is back with the freshly fixed part.
The next really major task to come is to build the new wireing loom, this is going to be a whole different set of challenges.
– Simon).
