Dave F's build thread

[dave]

So I ended up with the skate all exposed and in not too bad condition, mainly surface rust.

[dave]

From here I gave the skate a good degrease and jetwash to make things easier for disassembly. After It was all dry I sprayed all nuts and bolts with Plusgas and left it for a few days, not sure if you have to but I did anyway.

I started on the rear end by giving it another spray of Plusgas and removed the wheels, hubs, wishbones, shocks, ARB, And put all nuts and bolts into sandwich bags with numbers on and recorded where they came from for the rebuild.

I found the best way was to take my time and if a bolt was being stubborn spray some more Plusgas and walk away for ten minutes.
The impact driver really came into it's own on this part.

I realised that I should have loosened the hub nuts with the body on after reading other advice but luckily they all came off with the impact wrench and somebody pushing against the skate.





I must admit I really enjoyed stripping the car down

[mikeeyboy]

Just a little ahead of me in progress. I am also enjoying stripping the car, looking forward to getting things powder coated now

[dave]

Feb 6, 2016 0:22:11 GMT mikeeyboy said:

Just a little ahead of me in progress. I am also enjoying stripping the car, looking forward to getting things powder coated now

I'm a bit further on myself but wanted to make sure I updated my build thread as it may help people in the future as I get a lot my problems sorted by looking back through other peoples.

The next step for me was to get the old bushes out as they are all being replaced. My method was using a few portable barbecues to heat up the bushes which after a while push themselves out with a little persuasion.

They do leave a tar like residue that can go everywhere, so be careful and also be careful of the fumes as they are pretty bad for you.

[dave]

Once the bushes are all out you should end up with this.

[dave]

I sent all of the above parts off to be powdercoated apart from the hub carriers which I decided to paint by hand. I also had the old front upper balljoints pressed out as they were being replaced.

[dave]

About time I updated this I think,
The next stage for me was the cleaning up of parts that didn't go off to powder coating, which started off with then PPF which was degreased and cleaned up with wire drill attachments.

[dave]

Next came the diff which got the same treatment. Firstly I removed the mounts, which took an absolute age, by burning out the rubber and cutting slots in the metal part and carefully chiseling away until they popped out.



And the attacked with the wire drill attachments.

[dave]

In the mean time the powdercoaters called to collect the parts, I went for a dark matt graphite grey in the end and ordered Energy Suspension bushes and got straight into installing them.

[dave]

So next I went on to depower the steering rack which was all going well



Until this happened



I managed to source a manual rack and decided to go for it, I gave it a good clean up and paint and added new track rod ends painted the ppf