Ok nearly 8months without update so better go into some explaining here seeing the cars ready for spraying. Basically my mates not ready for spraying it, Was held up moving into his new unit by the building of a wall (previous owner rented out 2 units and knocked dividing wall down) Followed by time to set up everything and money required and because my car isnt an in and out job its waiting for him to have time, was hoping over xmas would be done but due to backlog of work that ended up out aswell. Still nevermind been plenty to be getting on with but was hoping with this update could bring you one newly sprayed car.
Anyway, work between on the car itself has basically consisted of any areas we couldnt get at (like behind the bumpers) while the car was on jig, sand back and give it the por-15 treatment to help protect it, after the car was more or less done decided to work on the running gear, more products bought



And so to get cracking, the whole rear was again taken off the car minus wheels and stripped down into individual parts for ease of cleaning





Can see how rusty it is and I refuse to take chances again while the car is in this state so time to clean these bits up. My mate invested in a sandblaster and first honours went to the swinging arms which you can see being blasted on table behind



Though it makes life a lot easier I wouldnt say its easy, Needs to be refilled 4 times per swinging arm which is case of stopping, brushing up all the sand, siving it 3 times to make sure any larger bits dont clog the nozzle and starting again. After bit of hard work swinging arm came up as so which is mile better to how it had begun





The bushes in each had perished to, so a full set of powerflex bushes was ordered to kit the rear end out



Removing the existing bushes was case of melting the existing ones out the holes



And heres my Ed (ie - Ross) smaking the bushes out the holes and the remains of them





After this my mate just had to do a tiny bit of welding on the inside where rust had taken hold then was case of painting in a rust protective primer until ready to topcoat, note on first picture the link bar which holds the anti roll bar in place in the top right corner of the picture





These links were removed next and new shackles bought to replace the worn ones







Its the bottom link which has had the shackles replaced, note much smaller hole in centre now



The main beam across the back had seen better days, luckily mate kindly donated one in much better condition, still had to be treated the same, instead of using just sandblaster though used a sanding disc to remove the majority of the old paint and rust, just sandblasted the difficult ends





Everything else was blasted rust free







Finally the wheel bearing hubs were done, first job remove existing wheel bearings which had again seen better days then give the carriers a good clean





Carriers where then protected with coat of por-15 and primer and new wheel bearings bought





A quick work with mechanic next door to mates unit and we had permission to use his press to get the bearings in, always remember to use plenty of grease and make sure the bearing is locating square otherwise you run risk of it getting stuck halfway in







And this concludes the first update, shall get some more progress reports on when computer isnt running so slow ;D