Ive had the hubs off Renault 5`s in the past, so didnt expect it to be much hassle, but with the car having sat for a while, this is what it looked like with the wheel off..
As you can see, pretty grotty & rusty. First problem I had was the wheel hub nut. God knows what socket I used last time but i couldnt find the right one anywhere, so out to the shop to buy a 30mm deep impact socket. Normally I just use a breaker bar and a length of scaffolding pipe, but that wouldnt shift it. So out comes the impact wrench and the nut comes off easily enough.
Once the nut is off, I found the 2 bolts which hold the wishbone to the chasis came undone really easily. Probably cos they were covered in grease and muck which stopped them rusting. The bolt nearest to the front of the car actually has a small brace bit attaching to the inner wing which had a 13mm bolt to undo too, this revealed there was a 2nd nut on the wishbone bolt behind it.
The track rod end nut came undone easily and i didnt even have to break the taper on it to free it from the hub, as all the banging about on the hub soon made it drop.
The lower ball joint bolt was a bit of a pain, so in the end I managed to push the drive shaft out of the hub, and after disconnecting the 2 top bolts holding the hub to the shock I managed to pull the hub down which gave me better access to the ball joint bolt. A chisel hammered a bit into the gap where the bolt grips to the ball joint helped and the bolt soon came out. A ball joint splitter on the ball joint let that pop out too.
The main 2 bolts holding the calipers to the hubs really would not undo at all. And so as im going to fit new brake hoses I ended up just cutting through the old one. This now meant the hub/caliper/brake disc assembly could all come off the car. Once off the car, the caliper bolts came undone with a bit of persuasion and some penetrating oil.
The wishbone now came straight off the car, leaving the anti roll bar which just pushes into the wishbone.
Heres the bits.
The ball joint has 2 bolts holding it to the wishbone, one of them came undone, the other sheered off. The outer anti-roll bar bush is held in by a small bracket and 1 nut/bolt. 13mm if i remember rightly.
Now to get the old wishbone bushes out. I tried pressing and hitting, no luck, in the end I burnt one out with a blow torch..
Unfortunately the blow torch ran out of gas before I could do the other one. On the plus side though, id just had a nice BBQ for lunch, so i dumped the wishbone in the coals and left it for 5 mins. The old bush just melted straight out.
Once the rubber bits are out you can see a metal sleeve is pushed into the wishbone in which the stock bushes go. This needed to be pressed out. I use just a normal vice, and a 5ft bit of scaffolding on the vice handle to give me extra leverage. A 22mm impact socket matched the size of the bush perfectly and a bigger one helped sandwich it in like this..
You can see the bush pressed out here next to my sockets.
Once all out, I gave the wishbone a good wirebrush and clean up using a wire brush attachment on a drill and by hand. A few coats of etch primer, then a few coats of some industrial satin black paint to finish off.
I then pushed the new polly bushes in using the vice. They slipped in easy enough with a bit of vice pressure and a wiggle of the wishbone. I then put a spot of oil on the metal guide tubes and pressed them in too. All nice & easy.
Finished off with fitting the outer anti roll polly bush too, but i think I may have to clamp it up after fitting to the car as I dont see the anti roll bar easily sliding into the bush.
The finished wishbone looks like this...
New ball joints have arrived today, so the next step will be fitting them to the wishbones and then cleaning up under the wheel arch. It doesnt look too bad, but just needs a good clean up & probably a repaint of the chasis there...
It looks like you get good access to the clutch cable here as well so I may take the opportunity to start to fit the new uprated cable ive got. I also need to workout best way to remove the anti roll bar so I can fit the inner bushes. Its looking like that might be quite fiddly and working under the car, but we shall see.
Here`s a pic of some of the bits which arrived this week, mainly engine stuff like high capacity intercooler & radiator, an external oil cooler, hoses, service items like oil filter, fuel filter, plus a high flow fuel pump..
Should keep me busy for a while yet!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment