Day 7 - 11/1/11

I took the day off mid week to get some work done on the car.  Kim was supposed to join me but she was delayed until the early afternoon.  I took the car off the axle stands and freed up the rear brakes seized by the handbrake.  I had to attach a tow rope to my other Impreza and pull the car to free the brakes. 

I made a puller for the steering wheel out of a piece of steel I found in the server room at work and 3 M8x50 bolts equally spaced in a line 27.5mm between each hole (measure twice, drill once).  The outside holes line up with threaded holes in the steering wheel while the middle hole lines up on the end of the steering shaft.  I should have tapped the middle hole for an M8 thread but had no tap to cut the thread so I placed a nut in a ring spanner and positioned it on the middle bolt under the metal plate then with another spanner applied pressure.  Simple, the steering then popped of the shaft after barely half a turn - almost too easy.  Removing the rest of the steering switchgear I could now remove the cross support beam that held the column in place.

All that remains in the cabin now was the air con/heater/blower assembly, pedal box assembly, steering shaft and the wiring harness. Kim turned up and we set about under the bonnet.  To remove the air con meant we would have to disconnect the air con and heater connections in the engine bay.  Kim was in the process of doing her college assignment on air conditioning so I let her at it, after a few pointers she got to work with the spanners.  I left her to it and started work on removing the accelerator cable, labelling wiring and the coolant system.

We removed the blower and air con units.  The heater pipes were underneath the intercooler and I still had some labelling to do on the intake sensors so we emptied the coolant system and removed the radiator.  Time wasn’t in our favour and the light was failing.  So we called it a day.  Looking forward to the weekend to crack on with the power steering, air intake/intercooler, heater and eventually completing the cabling.