Fitting Rear wishbones

Fitting the wishbones onto the brackets wasn't hard, It was just tedious. Looking at other blogs and builds people seemed to be fitting washers here there and everywhere. There didn't  seem to be a certain way or order of placing washers between the end of the wishbone and the bracket on the chassis. To us it made sense that you would have a small washer both sides between the bolt head and the outer side of the bracket and a large washer on the inside between both sides of the plastic bushes and the insides of the bracket.

However this was not the case, people where placing two on one side and none on the other. When we lined our wishbone up this was happening for us as well, on some brackets there was room for two washers on one side and none on the other and for other cases there was room only room for a washer either side. 

The only explanation we could come to was that the brackets had warped with the heat when being welded, which is perfectly understandable. But we were still not happy with some of the placement so my dad came up with a genius invention involving an old thread and three nuts.

The idea was to put the thread through both bracket holes and screw two nuts onto one side of the bracket, tightening the bolt in place. Then by using a spanner screwing the third bolt in an outwards direction it would push against the other bracket side and widen the gap. We just had to make sure we only widened it slightly (up to a washers width) otherwise the bracket may have cracked, which would not be good news.


We widened the few brackets we thought needed to be and fitted the washers in. The bolts where then pushed in to secure them in place. For the two bottom brackets we put the rear bracket bolt in from the front, so bolt head on the right hand side and for the other bracket we put the bolt in the oposite way so the bolt head was against the left side of the bracket.

We tried to get a washer either side, which worked better now we had widened the brackets but there was still space in some areas where we could fit two. After chatting with GBS we where informed that it doesn't really matter where they where spaced, just fit them in where you can. So as best we tried, some places needed more and some places needed less.

After both sides where on and loosely screwed we fitted the Hub carrier which was bolted to the top and bottom of the two bones. The inside of the long narrow tube was drilled out to get rid of the powder coating inside.

Lastly both the top and bottom bolts where brushed with copper grease and slid through from front to back. I didn't manage to get a photograph at the time, this photo on the right is from a later stage in the build and is just showing which way up the black hub carrier fits to the car.





  

Pressing bushes into wishbones

The next part of the build we wanted to crack on with was the rear. We already had the diff in didn't see why not we couldn't get the rear wishbones in place. However before we could fit them we had to push the plastic bushes into the wishbone ends.

Tools you may need for this job;

A powerful cordless or corded drill
A bench vice
Sanding drill attachments
Copper grease
Bush
Craft knife
Electric sanding machine

The first job is to sand all of the powder coat out of the wishbone ends. We clamped the wishbone n a vice and used an electric corded drill and several attachments to get it all out. We started with a very corse attachment and slowly progressed to a finer one and finally a round sandpaper piece.

Once there was no more black powder coat in the holes we got the bushes ready for pressing into the ends. Both the bushes and wishbone ends where covered in copper grease to allow for them to be pushed into the ends with ease. They were then held in the vice with two pieces of wood and clamped up. Once half way home we found that excess plastic built up on the edge of the hole. We used a craft knife to cut this off before continuing pushing them together.

Before they where pushed all the way in we used the metal feral to make sure the bushes could not be pushed beyond the correct amount therefore avoiding the plastic to warp. The feral's had thier sharp edges filed down on the sanding machine before being lubed up and slotted into the hole.

Now we could tighten it up in the vice as hard as we could. Once in place we cut any excess plastic off and wiped any excess copper grease off the outside.

We applied this same technique to all of the 14 rear wishbone holes. It took us about 10 hours to complete this process, and the vice leaver gives you a good gym workout!