Rear suspension

 It's been a very busy week and weekend, so I think it's time for 'updates' rather than 'update'. first off, rear suspension. The driveshafts were a bit more of a headache than I thought.

I have the original driveshafts from the donor, but removing them from the uprights killed the ends. Even if I could have got a nut back on, god knows how long they'd have survived. So I bought some new CV joints, not a big deal and not that expensive (£13 each plus postage). Then a fellow builder passed me an entire drivetrain, so shortened propshaft, a diff and two driveshafts. To make it easy on myself I decided to use the entire driveshafts as is, and keep the new joints for later servicing.

Unfortunately that's where I came unstuck. Turns out the CV joints I had use a larger nut which doesn't fit the donated driveshafts. And of course there's no way of me finding a replacement nut. So it was back to the original plan, reassembling the donor driveshafts with new CV joints. And of course, just as I was mid-job, I realised I had no CV grease...because I wasn't going to need it, because I would use the complete driveshafts!!

Anyway, long story short the driveshafts went in perfectly, and that meant I could tighten up all the bolts on the rear suspension. That took about an hour and absolutely killed my shoulders, but at least it was a job done.

That's when I realised my brake cables were not good. I'd fitted them as I had planned, and it looked to be nice and clear. But it turned out it was a bit too close for comfort, for no real reason. Routing them above the wishbones left them much more in free space and better for inspection. Of course, rerouting them required another caliper removal and bleed, but I'm much happier with the routing now. As it turns out the brake pipe and the handbrake cable follow a very similar route from start to finish, so I'm going to clip them together. Hopefully it won't cause an IVA issue, if anything having both cables support each other and stay clear of moving parts should work in my favour.

Oh, and the last snag for the day. The roll bar screws that go into the top suspension mount were too long. So I came to tighten up the suspension mount and found I couldn't get the nut in there! So I've had to shorten the roll bar bolts, and now everything can exist in the same space in time. 

And now, it's on to the snag list... all the big jobs are done, it's time to go over everything with a fine tooth comb and get it ready for testing. Cue next blog post...