As Dave said the other week i have now bought back the rst popouts that i sold too him ever so long ago. (i like to think he was storing them for me whilst i had a mk5 moment)
Anyhow as in my last update i never really said what i have actually been up to i thought i would continue on a bit.
On the mods front I have replaced the ye olde mk3 2i beam with a mk5 zs item which is practically brand new coming from a w reg car compared to it's 20 year old counterpart. Parts replaced when fitting the new beam: Rear brake flexi hoses, wheel cylinders, handbrake cable and the axle bushes were hacked out and replaced with powerflex versions. Still too be replaced are the wheel bearings and brake shoes.
Then i moved onto the front and went a bit mad As the car is far too low It looks great but as we all know it kills mk3 fiesta suspension arm bushes. In my case the bushes had been nuked, they were pretty much twisted 45 degrees out of the arm. Removal of the old arms led too one of the suspension arm bolts shearing off (i dont half miss the oxy acetylene bottles when working at home
). So Ringing around the local motor factors it seemed to be that the bolts i needed were unavailable. After getting many responses along the lines of "sorry mate your going to have to go to ford I'm afraid". i managed to locate a suspension arm fitting kit that contained every pinch bolt for fitting all 90's fords i could crack on.
Next on the list was the nearside track rod end boot had all cracked away and was in a bad way. As the suspension arms had been fitted and i needed to free off the track rods on both sides anyway to track it again i thought i may as well replace both track rot ends while i'm at it.
The front anti roll bar mounting bush on the ns had about 6-7 mm of play in it so a set of standard rubber bushes were fitted to replace the old standard original ford items. The drop links were replaced on both sides too as these had been bent. my theory on this is that because the car has been lowered the arb is running out of travel and the drop links are taking the impact.
So after all this lot the car should be really tight and be like a tram on rails right? NO, It's bloody awful!
The tracking is so far out if you let go of the steering wheel you spear across the road and it scrubs on every arch. i think there is even more camber too now. The plan now is to replace the aged dampers with some oe spec ones and the massive drop springs with some more subtle high quality ones which should raise the car a good 20 mm all around as it is now. then i need too remove the Ashley 4 branch for the mot and i will have a go at tweaking the tracking a little more on the drive so its safer to drive to work for the mot.
Also this evening i was having a play around in my tailgate until it went dark trying to make the bootpop work properly so it has the power to undo the latch, At the moment my list of possibilities are, bad positive feed, bad earth as the tailgate is as rotten as a pear or even though the solenoid works on the bench (in the engine bay across battery terminals) it might be just too weak when it actually has to do work ie pull a latch.
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