The restoration of Wombat

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Originally Posted by crackers

Anyways.
That sodding MG. Water pump. So I looked up how to change it. My favourite MGZR forum has 'how to' articles and, for a forum that prides itself on being able to fix everything, I was disconcerted to read at the top of the 'how to' for the water pump - "Warning, this is an extremely difficult operation" :eek: The day went down hill from there and no, I didn't attempt a repair. This vehicle has a long history of 'easy repairs' getting expensive quickly such as the wheel bearing a month ago that chewed out the drive flange and, seeing none are available in Australia, an engineer had to repair the old one. :mad: A solution was eventually reached - I'll brag about it tomorrow if the bank decides to be generous. :cool:.

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Right, that sodding MG. In the two years I've had it, it's cost me roughly $20,000 in repairs :eek: Kept fixing it because I'd get nothing for it broken and, as we all know, eventually you run out of things to break. Well, that didn't work did it. A year ago, it got a full engine rebuild - now the water pump's gone again. I had it on the market as a private sale for three months and didn't even get a phone call. So, last saturday, I headed off down to a local car yard who was having a sale. They offered me stuff all for the MG... which I stubbornly refused to accept. See, I'd set my eyes on a nice little demonstrator that they were trying to sell because they no longer sell that model in Australia (and so needed to get rid of the demonstrator). They upped their offer. Nup. So they doubled their initial offer and I accepted it. Still less than half what I paid for the MG. To be fair, the MG ZR160 is usually a reliable and impressive motor vehicle, I just happened to get one that'd been abused enough to turn it into a money gobbling turd.

So, what did I buy?
I bought a four month old dealer demonstrator with 1,500 km on the clock for half the new car price :D
Oh, it's not a Land Rover.
And it's not a Jeep... though Jeep are part of that dealer's network.
It's a Fiat Panda... the one with the TwinAir motor - that's the 900cc twin cylinder, turbo charged engine that pumps out 87hp while giving 60mpg. Impressive little beast. Peak torque comes at 1,900 revs so although only little, she gets up and boogies rather well.

So, I won't be able to tow bits of my Landy around the place or even rescue others, but at least I'll be able to afford to run it.

I think I'm going to love my little Fiat, though I'm desperately disappointed with how the ZR ended up. Been a very mixed week emotionally.

It is amazing as to what cars and makes we get involved with. A lot of emotional weighting to our decisions. We buy them, enjoy them and move them on. I am still holding on to a Defender, about to re register it after letting it get out of registration for a while. Economics seldom comes into it despite many people trying to justify their decisions to themselves and others. For various reasons we don't all drive a hybrid toyota camary.

Enjoy your fiat, hope it provides what you are after. Good luck.

I've just sold the wifes Golf R to a nice chap who flew up from Canberra, replaced it with an older Golf GT Sport TDi which did 4.6l/100 driving it back down from Harvey Bay.
I should pick up my new D90 in the next couple of weeks!

They're prediction 40 degrees here this weekend (both days). Good chance Wombat will be allowed to rest. In fact, the only aircon I've got is in the car... so maybe I'll go visit Mum and Dad. :angel:

Woo hoo, a weekend free. Able to spend hours and hours and hours working on the Landy :D
Then some bugga invented 'life' :mad:
Tomorrow became out of the question as Mum decided to hold Dad's birthday party this weekend rather than next weekend when it actually is. Ah well, that left today. But first I had to do some shopping... then more shopping... then wash the Fiat :D...

but eventually, I was able to get to poor old Wombat.

Today's mission: remove the front suspension.

Like the rear, the nuts on the shackle bolts had been loosened some weeks back, so that wasn't an issue.

First job though, was to remove the shock absorbers. Where the rubber bushes at the rear were poor, sorry creatures, these were fat and healthy... and jammed firmly in place. Once the nut at the top and the split pin at the bottom were removed (gee that sounds easy, rather hysterically so in retrospect), I simply gave the shock a whack with a rubber mallet and off it popped. :D No, that wasn't my first option but failure feeds inspiration... and I was getting desperate.

That done, I turned my attention to the rear shackles - two bolts involved, the inside shackle being threaded.

The passenger side bolts came out by a simple application of my socket wrench to the head of the bolt, alternating between the bolts to balance things and, once the shackle had fallen to the floor, I simply tapped out the bolts with a hammer (and a drift to drive them through the chassis).

Then the driver's side... which was determined to make up for the shameless capitulation by the passenger's side. No way were those bolts going to turn... so I fired up the torch and reached for the WD40 (gee, where have I heard that method before :angel:). It took two applications of heat before the brutes began to turn and from there, it was all downhill... sort of. Eventually, the parts joined the others in the plastic bag :cool:

Sweat pouring from my brow and resisting the urge to go inside for a therapeutic cuppa, I turned my attention to the front bolts.
They didn't want to move.
So I reached for the torch. And heated the living daylights out of the brutes. Affixed the socket and applied enough pressure to lift the front of the vehicle from the ground (seriously).
Nuffin.
More heat. More effort. More failure.
Too tired and sore to swear , I waded through the pool of sweat surrounding the work area, shut the shed and came inside for a quiet cry.

Here's a photo of one of the offending bolts.
http://www.aulro.com/afvb/attachment...1&d=1449907608

I now need to investigate how this all goes together - is there a threaded bit, is there simply a compression tube along the centre part of the bolt? If the latter, there's a good chance the bolt has mated itself to the inside of the tube and I'm in real trouble though I could hear my angle grinder purring in it's box as it anticipated yet another opportunity to destroy something.
Any thoughts?

The shackle bolt goes through a compression tube in the rubber bush, but is threaded into the inner shackle plate. It is likely to be seized in the compression tube, and expect to have to cut it with a thin disc in the angle grinder. But with repeated heating and soaking in penetrating oil you might get lucky.

John

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

The shackle bolt goes through a compression tube in the rubber bush, but is threaded into the inner shackle plate. It is likely to be seized in the compression tube, and expect to have to cut it with a thin disc in the angle grinder. But with repeated heating and soaking in penetrating oil you might get lucky.

John

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I thought that inner shackle might have been threaded like the ones at the rear of the springs, simply by the feel when giving it an experimental tap with the hammer (done for this very reason). I'll keep up with the heat and oil.

Sorry, I misled you - it is not threaded. I looked at that photo and saw a rear of spring shackle! Yes I know that is not what it clearly shows.

The bolt will be seized in the compression tube (this would still have been the major problem even if it was threaded), but you may still eventually free it by repeated heating and penetrating oil.

But not being threaded, belting it with a hammer may start it moving - but do this with a nut to protect the end - you don't want it flared. And don't hit it hard enough to bent the dumb iron.

John

Just looking at the parts manual, there isn't an individual part shown for the bush/compression tube at the front of the spring. Is this the same as used at the rear of the spring (part no 233573) :confused:

How hard are these parts to get? Even if heat and blunt force do get the shackle pin free, how much use are these parts going to be? In other words, is there any point in trying to save them?

I used a thin cutting disk in my grinder on most of the bolts, and on one I had to use a hacksaw blade as I couldn't get the grinder into the right position.