January 2011

I strip the front wishbones, cleaning the uprights and wishbones with WD40 and a clean rag. The disks I clean with a scotch pad and elbow grease. Once the surface rust was removed I blew the disks down with the airline and wiped them over with Isopropanol. Reassembling the wishbones using Castrol MS3 grease for the bushes and a smear of copper grease for the bolts.

 The steering rack gaiters have started to perish and split, also the track rod ends have some signs of early cracks forming on the rubber seals, I will replace these. Interestingly the ball joint rubbers are fine.

 I also remove the radiator to replace the bobbins and sort out the alignment. My order list is getting bigger, I will also replace the nylock nuts on the ball joints - they have become marked by the ball joint splitter.

 Whilst working in this area I notice that one of the steering rack clamp nuts is not a nylock – this will have to be changed.

 The uprights are handed due to the thread direction of the hub nuts ( Right hand thread goes on the front left and Left hand thread goes on the front right).

The front hubs are stamped L and R in my case the L is on the RHS side and vice versa.  I check with the build manual and double check with the factory, mine are incorrectly installed. I will need to swap them over.  

Moving to the back of the car I check the uprights, these are on the correct way around (green insert in the hub nylock goes to the LHS and the black insert for the RHS), although I do notice that one rear upright has both of the fat washers either side of the rear outer wishbone bush, the other has a thin washer either side. The manual clearly states that one fat washer should be on the outside with the thinner washer between the upright and wishbone bush. It is now clear I will have to check the assembly of every component very carefully.

 I strip and clean the rear wishbones, disks etc the same as the front, lubing the bushes and correctly installing the washers, again the results are very good.