Steering and Suspension

In terms of steering and suspension we identified two problems. The rear shocks were, frankly, shocking and the steering had excessive play at the wheel and a nasty "clonk" sound sometimes.

The shocks were replaced with a second hand set from Holland (reported on the "current state" pages) but the steering needed a little more effort. There are nylon bushes in the steering rack that disintegrate over time. The top one was completely gone so there was no option but to replace them. They are available from Holland at about £20 a set, but it seemed more fun to make some up.

First, the rack had to be removed. Not a bad job on one of these - it comes out with the track rods attached by undoing a total of 6 bolts and two balljoints.

The first thing once it was out is to mark the inner balljoints to ensure that the trackrods go back on the right sides and the right way round. In this case, the Nearside Inner joint is marked with N and I.

After a light cleanup, the play in the top of the pinion shaft can be seen in the following two photos - note the difference in the gap on the left side of the shaft!

The retaining plate bolts for the pinion are wirelocked but whoever did this one didn't have much idea - if you look carefully, you'll see that the wire over the top of the left bolt won't stop it turning anti-clockwise (undoing) a little. Once that happens, the right hand bolt can also turn, which will give slack in the wire for them to both turn a little more. They could only undo about 1/2 turn, but this plate holds an adjustment in place and even that much loosening could be enough to lose steering completely. We'll come back to how to do it properly later on!

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