Running out of time…

 

We brought the frame back to Sean's garage as there was more room to work on it there. I got to work cleaning out all the threaded areas of the frame using a tap set, which took only a few hours. I left 2 bolts in place during the galvanising, as I was worried that they would be difficult to retap - these are the bolts that hold the upper rear suspension arms to the frame. The bolts came out easily after galvanising, leaving the threads undamaged.

Sean welded reinforcement plates onto my front suspension control arms. This is called "boxing" and it adds significant strength to them, which aids in cornering and braking. Because the arms are now boxed, they are less prone to flexing, giving the car greater stability during hard cornering and braking, so in theory it should make the car safer!

I brought the front control arms and the rear trailing arms to Galco steel, to get them galvanised. When I got them back, Sean installed the new lower ball joints, and a whole new set of polyurethane suspension bushings which I bought from Ed Uding in the Netherlands. I also installed new upper ball joints, so this car should be much nicer to drive after all this work!

Anyway, talk about bad timing, but I had to travel to India with work, so this put the restoration on hold again! It seemed extremely unlikely that the car would be ready in time for the 25th Anniversary show in Belfast...