Done a wee bit more to this in between nursing the golfie.
Finally got round to building up my driveshafts. Had them powdercoated. When I stripped them down I measured the position of the counterbalance weight. However I took another pair of shafts to the coaters for a mate and now i have no idea which I had to start with
The measurement the haynes manual give seems pretty useless and didn't correspond with the measurement I had previously taken. So I checked against a spare shaft and this didn't correspond to my measurement or the haynes manual. IIRC I measured 282mm from the shoulder of the inner CV splines to the face of the tapered weight. Which got me thinking.. presumably these are all balanced accordingly and no two will ever be the same?
Anyway once i'd assembled them with a selection of used CV's came the fun part. O/S shaft went on with no major drama. I refused to remove the ARB as it's a bit of a mission to fit with the Thorsten SW blocks, due to the bolts he supplies being the correct length (can't diss a man for this, good practise but in this instance 10mm extra would have been ideal!).
So then for the offside.. what an arse! Somehow when drifting the flange from the bearing/housing i'd managed to slightly damage the splines (think i used a socket upside down as a drift, wont be repeating this one!). Which meant after much cursing and awkward jiggling the whole strut had to come off.
A good thing really as it meant I could have a go at sorting out the ridiculous front toe-in created by the Thorsten SW blocks. Finally by 2am it was all re-assembled. It now moves under it's own steam for the first time in about 3 years!
Got the steering arm all free'd up and set somewhere near. So there was no getting away from it exhaust is the only thing left. had a look at how far we'd got.
So put the car back on stands. Lacking material for the exhaust, so thought i'd double-check the rear beam for alignment to the shell as tracking was in my mind.
Previously i had used stringlines to align the rear beam as best as possible. Unsure as to how accurate this method was, I thought i'd check it again.
So basically plumbed off the sills at the front and back and drew out some chalk lines on the floor. Then made datum points on these lines working from the crease where the door shuts and the front of the sill where the wing joins.
I then Measured between these lines accross our datum point at the front and at the back. Divided these measurements in half and marked this on the floor. I then drew this line out as the centreline of the sills. (wish my floor was flatter at this point!).
Next stage was to level the wheel studs on either side of the axle. I then got a mate to hold a straight edge to the face of the hub while resting on the level studs. We then plumbed to the foor and make a few marks, then joined these into lines either side.
Next i plumbed the centre of the stub axle to the floor as a datum point either side of the car. Marked across our existing line and measured out equally forwards and backwards from the centre of the axle.
Final stage was to measure accross our datum points square to the centre line in front and behind the axle. Our findings showed a lot of offset (left) in relation to the sills almost 40mm IIRC. But equal toe-in either side. Which made me very happy.
So yesterday still didn't have enough parts to really get cracking on the exhaust. I did however aquire a couple of Alloy oil coolers off my mate at the weekend. Think they're off a lotus Avora. He wants a fiver a piece for them, so happy days!
Got wee Jimmy to give me a hand working out location and measuring up. Made some rough cardboard templates and got cracking. Thought in the N/S wheel arch will do for now as im not running a Front mounted intercooler. I saw a lad on clubpolo had fitted some E30 foglight scoops from demon tweeks into the fog cut-outs, so I think i'll be getting some of those.
Had some 3mm s/s plate knocking about so used that.
To keep hose routes tidy and easy to work on have decided to blank off the union at the bottom on the front and cut one out of the other cooler and tig it in the back of this one.
Just need to gnawse a boss out of the other cooler and give it to Jim to weld up at work on an AC set as my plant only does DC.
Jim found some stencils lying about on the farm, would have been rude not to..
And a cheeky pic of the fuel pump assy.