The first thing I want to show you though was what I spent 8 days doing from a couple of weeks ago to a few days ago, and that was the refurbishment of the garage. Me and my Dad spent about 2 days stripping everything out, throwing away half the stuff we went through, and cleaning the walls and floor ready for the new paint job. A long time ago, my Mum painted the floor with ordinary floor paint (as opposed to garage floor paint) which can't cope with the heat from car tires, so half the old paint had peeled away and it looked utterly terrible. I did all the re-painting myself, two coats on the walls, two coats of concrete sealer and two coats of paint on the floor.
The walls were unpainted brick and looked a bit drab and depressing, so they were painted in ivory white, an off-white creamy colour.
The floor was re done with concrete sealer on the bare concrete, and then tile red on top.
After all the paint was dry it was time to put everything back in, and again we threw away half of what we were going to put back in and I spent a whole day organising all the loose boxes of screws and nails and bolts and brackets and old tools - it was a damn boring job but it's so much easier to find what you want now. I also decided to go crazy with the organisation and decided to hang as much as I could from the walls, so the car ramps, garden tools, etc. are all hanging next a shelving unit, and all my tools are organised much nicer on the work bench.
So, that's enough about the garage, but it took a hell of a lot of time and effort to get it looking like it does now!
First job on the car was to sort out the fog light and reversing light that I'd taken off a while back. I had them on the very corners of the valance, which I preferred lookswise but it meant that when driving in rain it sprayed dirty water and muck up on to the lights, which led to an amusing discovery at BMD that my reverse light was full of water! So I just repositioned them somewhere sensible and neat, and I'm happy with them for now.
Then I decided to replace the rear brake shoes, not a big job but one that needed doing as the old shoes were getting a little on the thin side:
This was one of the better shoes, the others were worn thinner than this:
All new shoes and springs:
Then on to the bigger job, it was time to replace the old rubber suspension cone springs all round with Minispares Red Dot cones. I'd fitted HiLos last year sometime, which made the job a little easier for me, and the rears were no trouble at all. New cone against old rear cone:
The fronts however were a little trickier, the top arm pin on the passenger had a seized bearing that had rusted solid, so it took some ingenuity to work out how to remove a rusted solid pin that should have slid out no problem - like the drivers side did. This picture shows the pin after I got it loose, by using a bracket I'd found whilst clearing through the garage (and a couple of old nuts) I'd managed to make a tool that pulled the pin out when tightening the nut on the pin, if that makes sense... I'm sure you'll work it out from the picture, but basically I just tightened the nut on the pin and it pulled the pin out of the arm.
I then spent about an hour with a lot of WD40 and a blow torch and carb cleaner and WD40 and a wire brush and WD40 to get the rust out and get the seized bearing moving again. For some reason one of the needle rollers seemed to be missing, so the other fells out about three times, but I got them back in fine, cleaned thoroughly and then greased up again. I know I should have replaced it but I didn't have the time to order a new bearing and do it properly. Cleaning up the top arm components:
By this time it was about 1 in the morning, so I thought I should let my neighbours get some sleep and put my tools down and go to bed. Unfortunately however, I'd parked the car a little too close the garage door to be able to close it!
So the car spent the night looking like this:
So that there was enough clearance for the door:
So the next morning, I fitted everything back together and it all went back in fine. New cone against old front cones - no idea how one of the old ones got so mangled
:
Oh yeah, I got a bit annoyed with the lack of access on the drivers side, so I got a bit brutal with the inner wing
:
All back together and sitting a little high at the moment before the cones settle, even on the lowest HiLo settings all round:
And that's everything up to date now, I'll be doing the CV joints in the next few days, and there's a few other little jobs to get done before MITP, so there's probably going to be a few more updates in the next two weeks.
Thanks very much for reading, hope you enjoyed it!
Sven.
