Thought i would put a little thread up after my rather exciting day underneath the car yesterday.

As im sure most of you are aware ive got a MK3 cabby, ive been concerned ever since i fitted my 17's as i noticed the front drivers side wheel was too far forward I know the car had taken a hit on this side at the front in its past as the wing has been changed (very poorly i might add), so i was getting worried maybe the car was damaged, but decided if it was the car the wheel would be too far back if anything, and i wanted a S1 roll bar so i tried it out.

Removal of the standard roll bar went surprisingly easy, nuts came straight off the roll bar and everything, until the last job of removing the pin from the front gearbox mount to drop the corner plate off, seized solid I removed the mount with the arm off the gearbox as one:





Armed with a can of WD40 and a rather large lump hammer, abour 20 minutes later i was left with:



Only thing fucked up was the nut



So, all removed, whats wrong in these pictures.......





(Bottom TCA is the drivers side one...)

I seriously would love to know what has hit this car to bend the roll bar AND the TCA and even more so which f*cking c*nt left them on the car......how dangerous is that!!! The suspension geometry was well out

So.....thats that off, i fitted up this:



Note the slight bend in the one tension arm, and as luck would have it this was also the one on the drivers side i will be replacing that ASAP

Also had these ready:



I can't stand rusty bolts and the work involved removing them when they have rusted, and the main bolts to hold the corner plates on needed to be a little longer anyway

Only just noticed i wasn't given the plate to bolt the engine mount too. I'm not best chuffed cos that tie bar was bent and i didnt notice it until i had it back home aswell as the bracket

So anyway, that didn't stop me:





One less thing to go rusty i suppose.

Also bought these back before Xmas off eBay, i wasn't aware of MEF's ones at the time



Re-fit was all good, straight forward, no hassle, and most importantly, the wheel now sits perfectly, and the car drives MUCH better







I didn't actually fit the roll bar itself at this stage (before someone points it out ), it will be coming back off when the car goes in for spraying, and i will clean up all the corner plates etc and spray them as they look awful at the moment, i just wanted to prove what was wrong.

Pretty much every bolt removed got replaced with stainless with the excpetion of the high tensile ones for obvious reasons The main bolts for the plates were a bit too long though



I asked for 10mm longer, these are about 25mm longer....... Still, better too long than too short, i can trim them down before refitting

Thats it, end of.......(as you can see in the pics it was getting dark, finished about 9pm )

 

well done andy, give yourself a punch on the nuts

 

Im very pleased so im going to give myself two

unchballs: unchballs:

 

So now you know what the problem is you can take it all off and just replace the 1 bent TCA I guess

 

TCA?? I replaced the TCA's with the adjustable ones??

 

The adjustable tie bars look Foooooked..


Always happens tho as they are like toffee.

 

Yeah the one is fooked, common thing for them to bend then? Hollow tubes at the end of the day so im not surprised.

Seriously considering the MEF ones, the TCA's already have made a drastic improvement, the car drives in a straight line over uneven roads now

 

Fair dooz