02 TF 160 rear end refurbishment

That was a better read than my classic car magazine
Only wish I had the space to work on my F

Very good writeup. I like watching other's projects. Keep up the good work.

The sensor is the engine bay temperature sensor and is used to control the engine bay cooling fan.

Hi all, here's todays update. Not many pictures this time.

Sunday 10th November
My plan for today was to remove the brakes and suspension components.

The first thing I did was to completely remove the hub nuts.

The one on the left of the picture was the one I had difficulty removing. As you can see the face of the flange has corrosion which is probably why it was more stubborn than the off side one.

Next I moved onto removing the brakes. Starting on the O/S I undid the screws which retain the disks to the hubs (both sides). It was necessary to use an impact driver for this. One was missing on the near side.
Returning to the O/S I undid the braided hose, expecting only a little brake fluid to come out, as I had applied brake hose clamps the previous week (you can see the blue handles in the picture further down). Unfortunately these turned out to be ineffective, so I place a jar underneath and turned my attention to the near side.

I started by disconnecting the handbrake cable, by removing the R clip and knocking the pin out. This is where I noticed a difference with the O/S, more about that later. Then I removed the clip which holds the cable into the bracket. It was well rusted in place, but my large pry bard soon had it off. It was also necessary to knock the cable through the hole with a few light taps of a hammer via a pin punch, being careful not to damage anything.
With the cable out of the way I removed the bracket from the calliper by undoing the 2 bolts. Next I undid the carrier and pulled the calliper assembly away from the disk. I removed the brake pads and then bagged them up with the R-clip, pin and bolts. I decide to tie the calliper up out of the way and come back to disconnecting it when the brake fluid had stopped dripping out of the pipe on the O/S.
Off came the brake disk, and now I could see the remains of the missing retaining screw, so that’s going to need drilling out and re taping before reassembly. Finally I undid the bolts the retain calliper carrier.

Next I set about loosening all the nuts and bolts on the hub assembly, just a quarter turn. This enabled me to make sure all would come undone, whilst still having some stability to work against.
Before I did the upper ball joint and the TRE I cleaned up the tread with my Dremel type tool, as they were rather crusty and as there is no bolt head the other side can prove troublesome when the nut jams on and the whole lot spins around.


I also cleaned them out in case I need to use a torx driver. Both loosened off OK, so it looked like it was going to be a piece of cake removing the hub.

I then undid all bolts and nuts until they were nearly out. This included the bolt that secures the shock to the upper arm. Unfortunately the nut on the ball joint, got stuck, and I shattered a torx bit whilst trying to remove it :oops: . To complete removal I tried using my trolley jack to push the taper back into the arm, but even when I had applied enough force to lift the car slightly off the axel stand, turning the nut simply rotated the ball joint . I’m planning to replace these, so out came the hacksaw.
I had better luck with the TRE. That remained firmly stuck in taper, so once the nut was removed it was necessary to use my scissor type bolt joint separator.
The other bolts and nuts were then completely removed, but the hub did not want to get go of the drive shaft, so a very old pulley puller donated by some years ago by my father in law was used to persuade it otherwise.
By the time this was done the brake fluid had stopped dripping, so it was able to undo the banjo union and complete remove the calliper

Once the hub was remove, I focused on the upper arm. The bolt securing the shock was fully removed, and with the aid of my large pry bar, a large lump hammer and pin punch the shock was separated from the arm. The bolt retaining the upper arm was then removed and the arm with drawn.
Finally I removed the trailing arm link assembly. But this proved a challenge also, as I was concerned the ½” T50 Torx bit was either going to break or damage the bolt. So I decided to have a go at it with the air impact wrench I had on loan from my uncle, and after a slow start, this did the job a treat.
The result looked like this.

Note the cable ties holding the drive shaft up to prevent damage to CV joints.
All components were labelled and placed in a box. Once side done time for lunch :pop:

Returning to the Off Side I pondered how I was going to remove the R-Clip and pin that were on the other way around.

According to the picture is step 15 of this how to http://www.the-t-bar.com/en/forum/54-how-tos/1039-rear-brake-calipers-how-to-replace it is the correct way around, but was much more difficult to deal with, so I will be putting it back together the wrong way around.

The R-clip was well and truly mangled but came out with a good strong pull. There was no way to tap the pin out with a hammer and pin punch, and I couldn’t leaver it out as there wasn’t much to work against. So I tried using a G-clamp and small socket, the socket being placed over the head end of the pin, so that as I tightened the clamp the pin would be pushed through into the socket. After apply a lot of force it was clear the pin was going nowhere, and I was risking turning it into a rivet . So out came the cobalt drill bits and electric drill. Having checked the size of the good pin from the near side, I centre punched the end of the pin, and then started by drilling all the way through with a 3mm bit, followed by 4mm, 5mm and finally 6mm.
With that done I followed the same steps as before to remove the hub on the off side, with the same difficulties! I had placed my trolley jack under the hub to apply upward pressure on the upper ball joint taper, before I tried undoing it, but the nut still jammed and I had saw that one off also.
Again everything was labelled/bagged and boxed up. Then it was time to pack up and go in. :woohoo:

This weeks question. How do I remove the drive shafts at he gear box end? I have a toll for doing it on the mini.

Well done

Argen69 wrote: Tuesday 29th October
Time to attack that near side hub nut again! Pole goes over breaker bar, heaving and grunting is followed by another crack, with me face planting the floor shortly after. If the wife had been watching she’d have been doubled up in fits of laughter.
This was the result

:spank:

Yeah.

My faithful and trusty breaker bar laid down it's life for Tracy's car in Italy. It died the same way.

Damn, I miss that breaker bar.

Well done. Thanks for pictures

It's been a busy birthday weekend so I only managed to squeeze in a couple of hours spannering this morning.
I continued to strip components from the sub-frame, and have managed to remove the trailing arms, front mounts and damper from both sides.
The trailing arms came off with out bother, though I did need to use a bungee to hold them in the right position to centralise the nut.
I was expecting trouble with the dampers, from my past experience doing the front sub-frame. Sure enough one of the nylonic nuts decided it wasn't going to budge so it was introduced to the nut splitter.
The ends of the sub-frame mount bolts were good and crusty...

...but a couple of minutes attention with the electric drill and wire wheel cleaned them up nicely. Some 3-in-1 and couple of break bars persuaded them to come undone.
I had hoped to get the rear mounts off also. There was not enough room for the drill and wire wheel so, wire brushing by hand was necessary. I managed to get one full turn on the first one before it started to jam, and 16mm socket began to slip. :doh:
I was running out of time, so elected to pack up, and go and get ready for our nice Sunday lunch out.
I've now order a long reach 16mm impact socket, ready for renewed attempts next weekend.

Tremendous work there... and a good read. I've not looked at the underside of mine but I've been assured it's all been done

Saturday 7th December
I Spent 3 hours more stripping down the sub-frame. As I haven’t (yet) got an engine crane I had to come up with a plan to take the weight of the engine off the sub-frame so that I would be able to undo the engine mounts.
With a trolley jack on the front sub-frame jacking point, another on the rear, and a good old scissor jack on the engine side I was able to lift it enough to insert some off-cuts of 2“x2” under the sump and gear box.

As a result the sub-frame was hanging from the engine, but there was not enough room to remove the exhaust, so a second lift was required and the 2”x2” that had been under the sub-frame were added to the stack.
Next I the removed the clutch slave and it’s supporting bracket, both are going to need a good clean up. I also removed the lower gear selector cable bracket, and sump to sub-frame “torque tamer”.

Next to separate the engine and sub-frame. Starting on the gearbox side I undid the bolt in the centre of the mount (no 22), which released the sub-frame. Next I undid the four bolts securing the buttress to the sub-frame. This was very hard work despite me soaking them in WD40 every weekend for the past 4 weeks, and cleaning up the exposed thread with a wire brush. Several times I had to place my feet in the suspension tower, and pull back with my longest break-bar, like a member of the oxford rowing team.

Moving to the other side I removed bolts 10 and 12 and put the rod assembly to one side. Next I undid nut (7) from the mount. Attempting to undo the bolts that hold the restraint (27) resulted in one shearing.

Rather than doing the same with the other, I decided to undo the 4 bolts retaining the alloy buttress to the sub-frame. Again the long break bar and rowing action was required.
Finally I undid the bolts (25) and removed the bracket (24) from the gearbox.
This was the result.


I wanted to remove the rear sub frame mounts but the 16mm impact socket I had purchased was too small :oops: .
So I called it a day, as I had some chores to-do, and wanted to go to the local motor factors and get the correct 18mm long reach impact socket.

Sunday 8th December
Only had a couple of hours free, so I started by removing the sub-frame rear mounts. The new 18mm impact socket gave me the re-assurance that the cracking noises were not the socket slipping. When I finally had one removed I found that the head had not been damaged by a slipping socket. The noises had been coming from the copious amounts of thread lock present.
Seen here with many crusty items I’d removed on the day before.

Now I just need an engine crane or a couple of strong volunteers to lift the engine away from the sub-frame!
Returning to the engine bay I decided to investigate the areas that would need some de-rusting.
There was rust behind the fan, and the casing of the motor was looking rather nasty.

So out it came.

And the air & fuel filter bracket was in a poor state. It’s held in by 3 bolts which are quite difficult to work with, the rear most being obscured by the fuels pipes, so much so I only noticed it after having removed the obvious 2 but was still unable to withdraw the bracket.
With the bracket removed it was obvious that the parts which support the bottom of the air filter box and handbrake cables was in very poor condition. 5 minutes with a drill and wire cup brush and it looked like this

30 minutes later, and the whole bracket was only half done, but it was time to pack-up and go in doors.
The plan for next weekend is to continue cleaning parts, and perhaps even paint some.