FAILED TO PASS MOT

It has been rather quiet blog wise, as Stella has performed faultlessly since the new coil and ignitior was fitted. Drive it day, or more precisely, Drive it Weekend, to Portsmouth was a great success with six Stags and a TR4 IRS courtesy of the South East London Stag Owners Club, but when nothing goes wrong there is not much to write about. Sadly HMS Victoria looks a bit sad with most of her masts missing, but the signs say that the mast and yards will return.

Picture below, show the last four Stags to leave the car park, after we had visited the Mary Rose on the Sunday. What an exhibition that is, it took the whole morning to take it in! well worth the money.

However it was MOT time and with great confidence, having at last got the hand brake to work efficiently, (the only thing she failed on last year) I took Stella to my specialist MOT tester and relaxed for the 45 minutes or so, for the Pass Certificate. Imagine my shock when I was told that both front wheel bearings were dangerously loose, to the point of disintegration,. The boot dust covers on the track control arm ball joints were split and the offside front track control arm ball joint was excessively worn. All the ball joints and obviously their covers had only been fitted a couple of years ago, so that did surprise me. Finally the hand brake cable was frayed, that didn't surprise and I should have replaced it last year.

All of the parts have now arrived and I can get on with the repairs. I started with the near side, removing the hub after lifting the brake calliper out of the way and then the track control arm.

Actually before I removed the hub, I tightened the castellated nut to remove all play in the bearings and it felt fine, rotated freely with no rumbling, but I had decided to replace them anyway. I used a selection of punches to drive out the outer races from the hub.

I cleaned it all up with brake cleaner and and gently and squarely drove the new outer races back into the hub. With the new roller bearings generously lubed up and in place I pushed in the new grease seal, all was now ready to fit back onto the car and then reattach the brake calliper, that bit was easy peasy.

A new dust cover was fitted to the track arm ball joint and it was time to connect everything up, only I couldn't. With the track arm located on the cross beam and connected to the drag strut, the ball joint was way above its location point on the vertical link and try as I might I hadn't the strength to depress the assembly far enough to get it to locate.

After some head scratching, I decided I needed to compress the main coil spring which would, in turn raise the vertical link. A quick visit to Machine Mart and I returned with a set of coil spring compressors. I only needed one of the three clamps, even then it was difficult to locate, but I did eventually and then slowly tightened it up

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 Firstly I disconnected the track arm from the crossbeam  then it was easy to fit it's ball joint to the vertical link, with some downward pressure on the drag arm I got it to connect to the track arm and finally the track arm to the hip joint, no no,  don't be silly, back to the cross beam. All bolted up, just got to tighten to the correct torque and put the wheel back on Wow! got there in the end, but it certainly was a bit of a struggle, got to do the offside now, but hopefully getting all connected should be easier the second time round.