Day 12 – 29/1/11 Trestles and Parts to be modified

Freezing this morning so a late start, -4deg C, cold enough to freeze the car cover to the car and create ice in my can of drink.  So I had to wait for the sun to defrost the cover.  To start with I finished constructing the trestles and boxed up some of the more recent parts I had removed from the donor car. The pic below shows my build area with the trestles.

With everything squared away I went to work on getting the pieces that need modifying.  There are four pieces that require modifying.  The rear prop shaft needs to be shortened.  The steering knuckle requires extending as do the Gear box linkages.  Basically the rear axle assembly is moved to shorten the wheelbase and the driving position is moved back.  This is done by sending the parts to MSC who get them modified and send them back to you.  According to Graham the turnaround should be about a week.  I want to get the parts out and sent overnight to Graham and all being well he will have them back to bring up with the Kit on the 8^th Feb.

First the steering knuckle not a problem. First I took the exhaust downpipe off then loosened the lower steering shaft fixing.  I managed to loosen the knuckle but had to remove the fastening bolt before I was able to slip it off shaft.  Next it was on to the gearbox linkages.  I had looked at this last weekend but couldn’t see how to get at the fixings. The ball joint rod is the lower and appears to fasten to the gearbox by a plate with a welded shaft.  I tried to remove the plate from the gearbox but access to the nuts was difficult.  For the first time I found I was frustrated.  From Graham’s email I got the impression it was a simple procedure but at this rate I was going to have to remove the sub-frame holding the gearbox to the body.

I kept looking and the more I looked the more frustrated I became.  I kept going over in my head “this should be easy”.  Then I noticed the nut on the side of the shaft.  I removed the nut and tugged on the shaft and the on the side of the shaft plate fell to the floor. It was that simple. Two more bolts on the other end and the ball joint shaft comes free, finally.

 The gear selector shaft was one nut and bolt away. It took a while to finally get the nut off but eventually it was free.  I came out from under the car. Where’d the day light go? It was half past five -  Time to pack up for the day.