Back from the dead? Well at least for now...
After over a three year break from my poor Skoda, I decided it was time I pulled my figure out of by backside and did some more work on her.
Firstly, she has still been living under some gazebos (mostly) so I don't think the last three years of neglect have taken too much of a toll other than needing a damn good wash. The paint is still as bad as ever. I had been keeping the battery charged so checked all the fluids and started her up. She sprung, lumpily, into life. Cylinder two has been giving me some jip and not always firing, so I checked the HT leads and found that the lead for two was not great so I will need to replace that.
Onto recent work. I had obtained a set of 'poly bushes' a few years back. They aren't actually poly bushes, just normal rubber ones, but with a much harder rated rubber so I decided to pull the front subframe and swap them over. At the same time I could check all the other rubbers, rack, wheel bearings etc.
I started by pulling the callipers. I will probably pull these off and check and lubricate the pistons.
Got it up on stands. You can see the silver paint I put on four or five years ago hasn't faired that well. I did a half arsed job last time so I decided I should do a better job this time.
Getting the hang of getting pulling the old girl apart now - out in a jiffy.
In the workshop. My nice clean space reserved these days for model making and laser cutting duties (part of the reason the car was left for so long).
Rusty, but still in reasonable condition. 28 years old now.
Eyeing up the new bushes in the old wishbones.
Here is the full compliment of wishbone mounting bushes, rack mounting bushes and ARB bushes.
Subframe blown apart...
Wishbone number one on the bench and ready for surgery.
Now, how the hell to these come apart. Lets check the Haynes book of lies (it didn't disappoint).
HBoL says 'remove circlip'. How in gods name do I do this when the mounting brackets are held hard up against the bushes.
I undid all the various nuts and used a speed clamp to press the bracket into the existing rubber bush to create clearance to pick out the circlip. NOT easy.
With that removed I could pull all the bits off the wishbone.
Next job was to remove the existing bushes. There is a metal sleeved insert in the bushes I needed to remove and re-use.
The bench vice and some sockets allowed me to press out the insert.
At this point I held the old bush up against the new two part bush and panicked. If it was that hard getting the circlip out, how the hell would I get it back together when the new bushes were wider?!?
Oh well, time to clean up the old paint and get them rust free and back to bare metal.
I used a wire wheel on a grinder to clean most of the paint and rust off then used some rust remover to get the rest off.
On with some zinc primer.
Rust remover on the brackets
Wishbone mounting parts and brackets all cleaned up.
Lower wishbones also being stripped.
Main subframe being cleaned up with the grinder.
Rust remover on the hard to reach bits.
Extra attention to a heavily pitted area.
New paint on the wishbones. I tossed up spraying versus brushing, but I went brush in the end to get a decent thickness of paint on them.
New bushes in with old inserts pressed in
Yeah... here is that problem. How am I going to compress the bushes enough to get that circlip back on?
In the end I used a combination of clamps, nuts and brute force to get everything back together.
Previously I didn't bother cleaning up the uprights, so they were in a mess.
This time I decided I should do it properly.
I decided to pull the whole assemblies apart and check and service the bearings. In good nick for 28 years!
Front rotating hubs - bearing surfaces still in really good condition
Disk covers cleaned and painted
Re-assembly
New grease
Bolting bits back together
Front bearing in
All packed with grease and cover back on
Done - all bearing and rotating surfaces were in great condition so cleaned and new quality grease applied.
That is all for now. Just finishing painting the last parts. I also need to check, clean and service the shock absorbers.
Lewis
