A ‘better late than never’ update on the most recent round of repairs. This was an all-day effort with Andrew getting up before city chickens (country chickens are notoriously early risers) to arrive Euro-trash style in the ‘Berg before we all headed white-trash style to Alliston. (Well, Andrew and Bryce took the Bush Pig Rally Van, which accounts for the trashiness; Derek drove a Volvo so he was rocking more a ‘community college prof/corduroy jacket with elbow patches’ stylee, but it’s all good). Anyhow, I have dubbed this the Scary Green Doughnut session, because of this:
Through the course of the day we:
– Removed the crushed bits of the exhaust (of which there were many) and replaced it with solid tubing. Some flex hose had somehow got in there so it was summarily relegated to the ‘spare parts/scrap metal’ pile
– Replaced the sketchy mounts with welded solid ones that also keep the exhaust closer to the body and further away from mean old rocks (hopefully)
– Removed the rear skid plate brace (1″ square tubing that we crushed like a pop can the first time out – Oh yeah (say it like Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage) – and the rear skid plate
– Fabbed up some super cool quick release mounts for the rear skid plate (see below)
– Removed the rear suspension and replaced it with our spare. The one we took out had taken some serious abuse before we got it; this one is WAY straighter
– Swapped in the new rear wheel hubs and bearings. This necessitated drilling out the wheel stud holes; old ones were threaded but the ones we took off – and for which we had studs that fit – had been drilled, so drilled the new ones.
– Installed the newly rebuilt rear shocks (properly, not like the first time that we did it on the trailer with the old suspension so we could move it around). They look like this:
– Ate like locals.Thank you, Timmies and Dairy Queen!
– Checked the front brakes and our super cool Green Stuff racing pads. Still there!
– Bled the brakes. Well, actually we had to mangle the lines to get the rear suspension off, so the brakes sort of bled themselves.
This led to our end point: we need a Lada-to-rest-of-the-world adaptor so we can hook one side back up (the other already had one, from when the brake cylinder on that side croaked) and have a functional car again! Also on the list is to convert the front skid plate to quick release as well. And change the oil. And then we’re done!?
You can see the first ~7 hours of effort in less than 1:30 here: