Topic

mine are in very good nick, his for 40 quid or free if he/you takes them out and fits mine too !

cheers guys ! [ the gaitor was a doddle ]

Yeah they look great, Matey, glad to help!

Sundance

Bumper off, on my new ramps and dropped the anti roll bar and removed the cross brace so I could wire brush off my front subframe and treat it with Jenalite rust killer and then a fresh layer of black recoat spray on underseal.



While the front bumper was off, decided to remove and refurbish the bonnet catch guard and lubricate the bonnet release catch cable.

Rusty screws replaced with new stainless ones and new mesh in the front bumper grilles.

One thing I found useful was how low the ARB can be dropped now I have rose jointed droplinks instead of the standard ones, also good to see how well they have stood up to a years hammer of potholes use. They should hopefully last the lifetime of the car since there is no rubber to perish.

Now my subframe and front underbody is all treated and coated and will be ok for the next few years!

Sundance

SundanceUK those ramps look good are they, where did you get them from and whats the benefits of the rose jointed drop links other than the above?

The rose joint droplinks are Dunlop male and female units with rubber joint boots.
They are really robust and have no rubber bush to fail. They come with M10 spigots, so you can throw away the old bolts and use the spigots to mount them.
This is what they look like..



And here fitted...


The ramps are ace, but they do need a lower angle ramp extension for use when the bumpers are on.
Mrs Sundance treated me to them for Christmas, but I suspect they are available on Ebay.
The extension ramps I got for them are Sealey ones. However I did have to modify the hooks on them to fit my big red ramps.
The ramps come with two 2 ton jacks so you can get those valuable extra inches....think my missus is trying to tell me something there!



Sundance

did that steering wheel today, just got to put the finish on, pop round when ur free, see if you want it, looks good

I split the off side track rod end ball joint.

Literally just that, didn't even take the nut off as I did that yesterday.

I did however spend most of the day with my kids celebrating my grandsons birthday and when I got home we were doing ground works for our forth coming 7m by 5m deck.

Made the best of a nice warm day so started early and dismantled the inner liner off the hard top. The original cotton headlining was all manky so that's gone in the bin. I replaced it with a cream coloured leatherette material with a foam backing as I think it will keep clean easier and stay relatively mildew free over the winter months. Almost matches my leather seats as well.
Easy to fit with spray adhesive, but the corners were tricky. Only cost £20.00 for the material and adhesive. Good improvement I think; so I deserve one of these

Decided to put the resprayed Bilstein struts on and then look for new springs for them later in the year and do a full refurb then....

One of the original struts was a nightmare to get off.... finally CUT the top nut off the rear passenger side strut..... It was stuck on the upper arm so bashed it with a mallet and it flew apart and spring oil poured everywhere!!



The internals had come undone and I think were just holding together as it was jammed between the top arm and the top of the strut support in the subframe!

The Bilsteins have transformed the ride today..... so much nicer.

The nearside dipped headlight on my 2004 TF packed up. An inspection revealed that it wasn't the bulb but the bulb connector and wiring inside the lamp. I sourced a pair of H7 connectors from eBay and set about repairing it.

I removed the cover from the back of the lamp


You can see the scorched yellow wire. The insulation on the blue wire has disintegrated


The connector has melted too


I cut the wires about 3cm from the connector as the insulation seemed OK here


Here is the new connector, tinned and ready to go, complete with heat-shrink tubing


All soldered and insulated.

Ideally, I would have liked to have replaced the whole length of wire (the leads on the new connectors were long enough) but I couldn't figure out how to. The offside dipped headlight not quite so bad but will be repaired the same way. The main beam lights are perfect, presumably because they don't get used as much, as talkingcars suggested.

cleaning and painting brake calipers ! Lovely job, nuff said !