My first job was to tackle the wheel bearing. I decided to try to make up a tool to let me push the inner hub out and so wasted about an hour doing this, and the tool ended up not working. So I resorted to my normal way of getting wheel bearings out which involves a lump hammer, a cold chisel, a couple of impact sockets, a vice, a 4ft bit of scaffolding pole and a lot of violence.
First I used the cold chisel and drove that in between the inner & outer hub. This got things moving. I then used an impact socket and the lump hammer to drive the inner hub straight out.
I then used a larger impact socket in the vice to press the remaining bearing out of the outer hub.This is wear the scaffolding pole comes in to give me a bit more leverage. It soon came out.
The remaining bit of bearing on the inner hub, I took the cold chisel & lump hammer to it and drove it off.
The old bit of outer bearing doubled as a perfect size tool to use the vice to push the new bearing into the hub.
Whole job only took about an hour.
I then rethreaded the top plates on the shock to ensure the new high tensile bolts i had would screw in lovely. Then it was time to refit the hub on the car. I refitted the shock, a new ball joint and new tie rod end at the same time.
Then onto the brakes....
I was initially going to referbish it with new seals and piston, but price wise it worked out cheaper to just buy a brand new reconditioned caliper which is what I did. I painted the caliper up with some nice blue caliper paint from halfords and fitted EBC groved/dimpled discs. Pad wise, a lot of people recommended the EBC greenstuff pads so thats what I went for. Another popular choice would have been the Ferrodo DS2500`s. I also chucked the old brake hoses in the bin and replaced them with some braided HEL lines. Ive also got a full set of copper nickel brake pipes I need to fit too, and a new master cylinder, so they will all be done at some point!
It was really satisfying actually bolting on some new parts and making the big pile of new bits in the corner of the garage get a little smaller. So far I had mainly just been fixing rust and stripping bits off.
Heres the finished corner..
It was quite satisfying putting the wheel back on and lowering the car off the axle stands. Which then reminded me that i need to get the alloys refurbed. If I remember rightly the back two are buckled and the tyre fitter had fun balancing them and the front two are all scuffed - not me I hasten to add, but the previous owner.
Looking at the watch it was now only lunchtime! So, what's next? Time to look at the cooling system. Id replaced the OEM radiator with a copper cored one many years back and that had long since corroded and fell apart. So a new double capacity alloy rad was bought, with a high powered fan. You can see them compared below...
The new one ditches the build in oil cooler, so ive a separate mocal one. This afternooon I stripped out the old radiator, oil pipes and took the OEM sandwich plate off ready to replace it with the mocal one. Im replacing all the pipes with silicone ones, so rather than mess about undoing the old ones I took an angle grinder & a hack saw to them to let me quickly remove them.
It was here that I noticed that someone had redone the fan wiring by wiring a different solenoid in. It looks like the original bit of the wiring loom where the original solenoid plugs in is badly corroded which is why someone has rewired it a bit. I might be able to re-use the perc fan solenoid wiring/plugs as I will be ditching that.
Heres the front. Ive got to wedge the bigger radiator, the oil cooler and a big alloy intercooler in here. You can see the alternator to the LH side of the pic. (ive a brand new alternator in my pile of new bits!). As ive removed the stock intercooler, I can now move the radiator over the right a bit into the space the original intercooler used to sit. I`ll have to extend the coolant pipes, and drill a new mounting hole in the cross member, but it looks really easy. This will let me feed the boost pipe straight from the top of the carb and down to the intercooler.
The intercooler itself is an aftermarket one which I originally bought for a Golf TDI. Here you can see it and the new oil cooler..
Upon offering it up it will sit nicely under the lower cross member you can see in the front shot of the car. My main concern is that this intercooler has the inlet pipes coming out each side, which means I have to have a 90 degree bend to route them vertically. Unfortunately, it looks like the front subframe rails are right where this 90 degree bend needs to be. So I will either have to some how route them around this, or look for an alternative mounting spot or even a different intercooler..... time will tell!
Whilst the old rad was out, it let me get to the front of the block better. I can see that the block & sump are covered in gunk/oil so it took me longer than expected but I managed to clean that up a bit. That way if theres any oil leaks I can see them easier! I did offer the new radiator up and it will need to do some fettling before it will fit. So next on the list is to move the rad fan up an inch or so so it clears some pipe which comes out of the bottom of the engine, drill the new RH mounting hole for the new rad and trial fit that! Then I can see what space I have for pipe work and mounting the other bits.
All in all quite a productive day!!!! If I had 1 day a week like this every week, the car would be finished very quickly!
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