NATIONAL RESTORATION SHOW, STONELEIGH - SUNDAY 26th MARCH 2006
It was an early start for all of us, not helped by the clocks going forward 1 hour, but at
least the roads were clear. When I
arrived at Stoneleigh at about 8am, the stands were already up. Jo very
efficiently gave us jobs to do, putting up banners, posters, plus pictures and
information on the two project cars. The two project cars were manoeuvred into
position, with the club table in the middle of the stand supporting two laptop
computers, Jinxy’s shop and Kev’s cylinder head.
Chris Chambers’ MK1 was a nice clean example, and was there to have the rear bushes
and ball joints replaced. With the
rear end jacked up, Chris got to work removing the suspension arms. As anyone who has tackled this job knows, it’s not quite that easy as
things tend to seize up. The lower arm with ball joint was removed relatively
easily, but the bolt that goes through the bushing on the long trailing arm
didn’t want to come out. As often
happens, the bolt had seized inside the metal insert of the bushing, and the
whole lot was turning inside the rubber. Several
people had a go at removing it, but in the end it was Tom who put in a
superhuman feat of endurance working the bolt backwards and forwards, spraying
it with oil, until it came out.
With the
chassis arms out, Chris used his homemade bush removal tool (a threaded bar,
nuts, washers and various size sockets) to remove the bushes. This worked really well once we had found just the correct size of
socket. When most of the way out,
the final bit was persuaded with a hammer and socket.
The ball joint was then removed easily with help from the trusty hammer.
Fitting the new poly bushes was the easy bit, greased up and assembled, ready to fit
back on the car, complete with new ball joint. The suspension arms were then refitted, and torqued up.
The other
side was exactly the same, with the same problems. Again Tom fought valiantly against the trailing arm/chassis bolt until it
was out. The bushings and ball joint
changed, the drivers side was re-assembled about 5 minutes before the end of the
show.
The backup
plan for bush removal was burning them out with a blowtorch.
Garrick’s
car was clearly a track car, complete with nice bucket seats and harnesses and a
surprisingly clean engine bay. Garrick’s
car was to have new rear discs, pads and braided hoses. Garrick, Chris Worral and John got stuck into this, with the brakes
dismantled quickly. Caliper brackets, clips, slider pins and boots were cleaned up and re-greased as
required. A caliper winding tool
was used to push the piston back in, and the brakes re-assembled.
The handbrake cables proved troublesome due to corrosion on the aluminium
section where they’re clamped to the calliper, and the usual problem with the
swollen ‘pin’ that attaches the cable to the lever was overcome with a bit
of work. The new discs and pads were fitted and the brakes rebuilt.
The hoses
were removed, to be replaced with Black Diamond braided hoses. Trying to remove the ‘E’ clip from the old hose, Garrick stabbed his
finger with the screwdriver. This was quickly fixed by Jo who wrapped his finger
in gaffa tape! Giving up on the
re-use option, new ‘E’ clips were bought from the show. The new hoses were fitted and the brakes bled.
Kev had brought along his shiny clean cylinder head complete with TED cams.
The cam brackets were torqued up, some (very nice) cam pulleys attached,
and the valve clearances checked. Most
were about double the recommended value which was expected due to the cams being
non-standard. These will be swapped once Kev can source the required replacement
shims.
The stand had a good number of visitors, including quite a few fellow MK1 owners.
We won 2nd prize for best stand, a nice trophy and a cheque for £150 for
the club event funds! A big thanks
to Jo for organising it, and to everyone else that came and made it a great
event. It was good to put some more
faces to names. If you missed out on
the show, the club aims to have a similar stand at the Stoneleigh Autumn
Restoration Show, so see you there!!
Chris Chambers (Unleash), Jon Leech (jrleech), Chris Worral (LimeyMk1), Jo
(MR2Mk1Chick), Kev (crazylegs),
Garrick (SystemG), Tom ("I-can't-buy-a-nova"), Tony (tony jinxy froude) and John Redmond
(JohnR)
REPORT BY JON LEACH
