rear end done except shocks

well it's been a while but finally manged to get a day in the garage !

Got some bits from Ward Engineering ( many thanks ), and like usual forgot to order new nyloc nuts for the drive shaft output flanges and inner pivot pins for the wishbones! D'oh!

After a quick scout round and having no joy managed to get some on flea-bay! phew!

I decided to change the discs and keep the old ones as spares, ( gonna get them refaced to take of the slight pitting ). I have to say at this point that if i had to do more work on the rear diff and suspension i would advise a recon replacement on an exchange basis. The boys on the cobra club forums advised this when i told them my intentions but as usual i had to do it my way! he he. It is a real pain to get the lower wishbones in with the oil seals and thrust washers ( the air turned blue for a couple of hours! ). Once those are in it is then a fight to get the discs in as the lower wishbone gets in the way, all the methods that i could find didn't seem to help much either but got there in the end. Once they were on and torqued up it was the calipers turn. I followed my brief instructions from Ward's and they went together quite well, the only problem being i shouldn't have separated the two sides of the caliper as there are no torque setting for these 4 bolts anywhere, even Ward's couldn't help me as they don't go that far. I tightened them up as tight as i could to ensure they were at least the same as when i removed them. Fitting them to the bracket on the diff was another time consuming and frustrating event as there was virtually no room to get to the bolts, but it is possible and manged it just about. new pads fitted after that and then i cleaned and fitted the handbrake calipers complete with new pads also. All that is left is to re-fit the rear end back onto the chassis with the assistance of my good friend the neighbour.

I will fit the coil-over shocks later as i want to double check these, when i removed the coil on the first shock i lost fluid out of the shock and therefore decided it wasn't worth the risk of doing any others until i get that one checked. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

progress update

not much to report - rear half of chassis stripped, cleaned and painted. Half way through stripping cleaning and painting rear end, one wishbone down one to go! Will post more pics when rear end finnished before re-fit.

Removed the rear end

Well after admiring our handiwork the previous day , looking at the chassis i decided that the rear end would have to come out, after all if i do it right now then there would be less to worry about later ;) . So , with some head scratching , i sussed out how i was gonna take out the rear end and did so on my own ( would be much easier with two people ). It came out without incident and i moved it out of the way so i could start on the chassis.

After a couple of hours cleaning, wire brushing and some more cleaning i applied the first coat of paint to the rear section of the chassis. It will need one more coat which i will hopefully do today, ( if the wife allows ;) )

The paint was taking a while to dry so i thought i would have a go at the rear calipers. They are a real pain to get to especially the two bolts . I eventually got them out and they will need refurbishing like the fronts , not quite as poor condition but close! I realised i may as well strip the rear end to get better access to everything to check , clean and re-paint if necessary, but that will have to wait for now as i want to get as much of the chassis done as i can till the engine comes out.

and the body is off!

well Friday was a day i had been looking forward to pre-booked my 3 other helpers and at 5pm we got ourselves organised! I had studied the fitting of the body from the manual and just planned to reverse the procedure. the first attempt saw some movement but not much then i realised my front two helpers were holding the nose up a bit too high ( i thought ), so with that lower we tried again still no movement. I then suggested we all push back not realising what i was saying due to my excitement, naturally the obvious happened and we ended up pushing the whole car off its axle stands! I could have nearly cried! Luckily there were no missing toes and the car landed reasonably well. After that the body came off pretty easy. With the body out of the way we put the chassis back on axle stands and all was back to normal :D

Later on i realised i missed something in the procedure which would have made it so much easier, the rear fixing tube that lock into the body frame should be removed before the body is taken off. So in the end i could only blame myself! We live and learn!

water pump

removed the water pump today. I'm a bit concerned about what i saw. Hopefully it will clean up ok and i'll have to flush the entire engine block to clear out all that debris! It looks and feels like a mixture of scale and maybe that leak sealer was used to repair a leak, we shall see in any case ;)

All bolts loosened in readiness for the body removal, cant wait!

update

It's been a while since my last post. Not been able to do much due to the ill family (still! ). Just had a tidy in the garage , removed the radiator and drained and removed the oil cooler. I will add some more when i get the chance :D

calipers

Just a little message to say i managed to get both calipers un-seized and looks like they may be ok for a refurb. Will keep you posted :)