painting finnished!

finally finnished the painting, which all was left was the underside. so glad thats over with.

Fitted the wishbones and wheel hubs. No major problems here, i just made sure from removal to re-fitting both sides of the car remained seperate to ensure the right parts were on the right side.

Fitted the pedal box ready for bleeding the brakes and ran the brake lines in and fixed. all thats left is to do is fit the front calipers after i get some new bleed nuts which i overlooked when ordering the seal kit.

The calipers went together realy well like the rears, i also added some locktite to the 4 bolts on each caliper that keep the two sides together. (pics of the calipers to follow before fitting).

As soon as the coilovers get here i will be fitting the shocks and then the calipers on the front, then the engine and gearbox back in. I am really glad to be starting to put the car back together finally!

update 3

Started to re-build the front hubs, re-bush wishbones and fit the new ball joints ( pivot joints ) . I have to say that i thought i had taken plenty of photos for info and reference but i should have doubled what i did take as I'm still getting caught out! So remember if anyone is following this blog, take tons of photos even if you think it's not significant , it probably is! Because I'm replacing the old jag bushes with poly bushes i don't know if the washers on the upper wishbone are supposed to be there. I will call Ward's again , ( poor bloke ), who have been a massive help and never once complained with all my questions .

pics to follow and a more detailed write up on the hubs and wishbone saga!

update 2

Finnished sanding the engine bay section of the chassis. Once it had been de-greased we painted it like the rest of the chassis 2 coats of hammerite smooth. I removed pretty much all of the powder coating as i have realised you get a much better finnish on clean metal as opposed to sanded paint. All thats left to do is the underside of the chassis which will take about 1 day for the 2 coats ( allowing the paint to dry ).

update 1

it's been a long time since i updated so i thought i would put a couple more entries in. The rear assembly has now been put back on the chassis. The 2 bolt that fix the lower part of the diff assembly to the chassis needed fixing. One of the bolts was cone shaped , the reason for this was the holes didnt line up quite right and can only guess that it was bodged. Luckily only the bolt was knackered and we managed to repair the thread on the chassis.

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.