The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

matienzo wrote:Just remember to not fully tighten the bolts up until you have the car weight back on the suspension. I do this but using two trolley jacks under the wishbones to just lift the car off the axlestands. This saves nipping the bushes at the unloaded position and then twisting them under load.
Use Copperslip (liberally) on the bolts and make sure there's loads in the metal sleeves and they'll never seize. Another tip when installing the lower wishbone with the new bushes. If you have the hangers loose enough to move a little you'll probably find it a lot easier to force the bushes into place...then retighten the hangers making sure that they don't twist.

Cor, that suspension looks great! I hope mine will turn out looking as nice

Some good tips there, thank you! Any ideas on the torque for the wishbone bolts?

One step forwards and a few steps back today, sadly. On Friday I degreased the the suspension turrets and liberally coated them in CurRust, then gave them a couple of coats of some anti-rust paint I had to hand.



Then this morning I had a bit notice slapped on the windscreen stating that the car had to be moved by 6am tomorrow morning else it would be "removed"

This is due to the London Marathon coming nearby. Very annoying, as there were no notices warning of this near the car - the only one I could find was about 150m down the road!!

Luckily my new vertical link and trunnion arrived in the post on Friday evening, so at least I had all the bits. So I've wasted my whole Saturday bolting everything back together again as-is so I could move the car 100m down the road

My front shock absorber is no longer attached to the spring, so driving down the road with only the bent shock attached was rather scary! It made it though.

Polybush and bolt kit has arrived

Phwoorr......bags of shiney plated things. We like shiney things. Make sure all the bolt heads line up...babble babble..is it time to go now nursey?

Slight update on my suspension rebuild.. the new (secondhand) lower wishbone and spare upper wishbones I had have been de-rusted, painted and re-bushed..

Hi Howard,
Just noticed you wanted to know the torques for the suspension. Here they are as per Repair Ops manual:-
2nd column in from right in lbf.ft

And while I remember....some of the "new" suspension bolt kits have trunnion bolts where the threaded section is (imho) too long which means that thread sits inside the trunnion bush sleeve. It may not matter too much in reality with plenty of grease / copper slip but original bolts had a shorter threaded section to avoid this.

Steve

Thanks for that - very helpful indeed!

Sadly progress has ground to a halt for now as I've badly mashed my left arm, rendering it useless for the time being

What the hell have you done?

Thankfully not broken, just ripped a nice big chunk out of the muscle! It's swollen up and I'm on antibiotics, but I'll live

Ouch.....get well soon.

Just gone to check on the Spitfire and was greeted with this:



Yes, it appears that my wingmirror has been kicked off again only this time it's the other side

I'm getting really pi$$ed off with these mindless acts of vandalism, this is the third time this year FFS

At least this time the glass remained intact and someone had the thought to pick the mirror up off the floor and put it safely underneath the windscreen wiper.

I honestly don't get it, my 1500HL was parked in exactly the same spot for over a year, and nothing happened to that?!

Sigh..

Anyway, wingmirror bolted back on now, I thought about removing them both completely, but then other parts would probably get damaged instead.

Finally a nice update in that the new front shocks and top plates have arrived. I decided to splash out on new top plates (£8 each) as the originals had threads partially stripped and bent out of shape, which isn't good!

Top plates have received a coat of satin black, I've got a decent match to the original blue Girling shocks were painted in, so I'll also paint the shocks in that to make them look more original.

Removed all of the wishbones, etc again today and gave the area a nice lick of paint.



Shock absorbers also painted up, not quite the same colour as the lid of the can promised, but should look a little more original and break up the expanse of black in the front suspension.



Just the springs to paint now..

I guess I spoke too soon about the bolts all coming out of the bushings okay.. ONE is stuck in the wishbone so I can't get the chassis bracket off! No amount of hammering, swearing or Plusgas will budge it. It's the only thing preventing me bolting the wishbones back on the chassis



Also wire brushed one of the springs, it has JWO stamped in the ends.. any idea what that means? I would have expected it to be Stanpart, unless my springs are aftermarket?

You can't beat freshly painted parts

For the last bush heat is your only hope.

A new hacksaw blade and a bit of effort to carefully saw through the bush, sleeve and bolt.

How's your arm Howard?