Right then - determined not to waste a day off work, I hit the spanners and decided to take a look at the front end - mainly the suspension and brakes.
I didn't have a specific plan, so stripped the front brakes down first.
Off with the wheels...
First off is the bearing cap. This is just a press fit and will either pry off with a large screw driver, or if you de-grease it and then grip it with rubber gloves, it can be pulled of with a little force. Note, the circlip and square section device protruding through the left hand side is the speedo cable and must be removed before pulling the cap of.
Which once removed will reveal the two 27mm bearing adjustment nuts which on the front left are a left hand thread.
If you slacken the brass star adjusters from the hole in the drum face, the drum will then slide off easily.
Front shoes look very nice indeed...
The entire brake assembly can be removed as one unit by undoing the three 17mm bolts that hold the back plate to the hub assembly, but if your car is really original, there still might be a security wire linking the bolts to each other to prevent them coming too far undone. I decided to undo this carefully as I might reuse it if it's not too brittle.
This will allow you to remove the brake assembly and flexi hoses if still attached to the back plate.
I noticed that the front brake hoses were actually still in really good condition, so just for fun, I cleaned one up to see what was under all the crud - nice original ATE hoses!
Irrespective of their condition, I'll replace them with the NOS ones I've got as it'd be rude not to.
So, all the brakes are now off and ready to be cleaned as per the rears.
Next up was to remove the original front BOGE shocks, which actually didn't feel too bad, but as I have some OEM new BOGE ones, I'll retire these in the name of safety.
How cool is this sticker!
The inner bearing race and spacer are still pressed on to the spindle and there isn't enough gap behind them to get a normal set of pullers. What is the accepted method of removal for these please? I take it I should remove them and not just reassemble?
As I want to clean up the font beam to match everything else, I thought I'd start to remove it... Firstly by undoing the steering coupling at the flexi joint with the two 14mm castle nuts. This just seemed the path of least resistance in the steering assembly.
Then I undid the front body/beam mount bolts. The original rubber pads are perfect!
At this point I realised that I'd need to remove the steering arm ball joints in order to remove the beam and as time was getting on, I thought I'd quit whilst I was ahead and ask the good people of the internet what the best method / tool is to use to split the ball joints, as whatever it is you suggest, I'll have to go and buy tomorrow as I don't have any ball joint tools yet and want to get the most suitable one....
Oh, and just when you thought it was safe - here's a little LT-TV which will be self explanatory when you watch it!
That's all folks!
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25/36hp Crank-Flywheel shims - 3 sizes
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