My Saturday morning in the garage started very early with me being out there about 6.30am. I had woken up at 5.20am (That seems to be my new waking up time in this heat!) and had a couple of cups of coffee before venturing out to start work on the green Cortina. Luckily my neighbours are early risers, but I started off doing jobs that weren't making much noise anyway.
My first job was to replace all of the bell housing bolts and replace them with ones of the correct length instead of the mish mash of oddities that were currently fitted. The next job after this was to replace the interior mirror. The car does have one but is very loose and moves out place whenever you hit a bump in the road. With this done I then removed the steering wheel so I could get to the column shroud. I'd never been happy with the steering wheel on the car as someone had bodged a Steering wheel boss to make the Motolita steering wheel fit it. Although it never felt loose, or dangerous it was just something I couldn't live with once I'd seen it.
This steering wheel was also flat as opposed to the dish type. Due to it being flat someone had moved the column shroud closer to the dashboard. To do this they had had to fit additional brackets onto the steering column, but instead of welding these brackets on, they had siliconed them on. (See below)
It's amazing the amount of bodges I keep finding with this car! With the incorrect brackets removed, I then re-attached the column shroud to the correct brackets and fitted the Mountey steering wheel that was on the estate. All was now looking good and as it should be. At least I'm safe in the knowledge now that this steering wheel has a proper boss that hasn't been bodged or messed about with and wont fall apart while I'm driving.
The next item on the agenda was to relocate the ignition coil. It was under the battery tray which to be honest, is where it should be. However, the battery for this car is in the boot, so I moved the coil on top of the battery tray where it's away from puddle splashes and is easy access should I need to get to it.
I then paused for a spot of breakfast before starting the next job which was going to be a massive task. I'm always weary of cars that have been lowered. Most people do the job properly, some people don't. Whoever lowered this car didn't, which isn't really a surprise considering all the other shortcuts and bodges I've found.
Removing the front springs was straight forward as so much height had been cut off of them I didn't even need to use spring compressors!
However, getting the replacements back in was a nightmare. For some reason I just couldn't seem to get them seated enough to get the insert to come through the strut top. Luckily, around 3pm Dave Maton arrived and within an hour we had managed to to sort out what was causing the issue. We then decided to do the other side and got that done in about 20 minutes!
With the front springs done we then turned our attention to the rears. This was a bit more involved as new bushes had to be fitted to the springs being fitted and removal of the old bushes proved to be a challenge to say the least!
We persevered though and despite stopping to scoff a Chinese takeaway that I had had delivered, we were all done by 8.30pm!
It had been a mammoth day for me and I dread to think how many gallon of water I had sweated out! Poor old Dave had the bad luck of a road closure on the M25 and didn't get home until gone half past ten!
So, with the new springs fitted I took the car for a test drive on Sunday morning to see if the springs would settle. I must admit, when we let the front of the car down off the jack on Saturday afternoon I wasn't happy with how high the new springs were sitting. Dave had suggested that they would go lower once driven, but I had my doubts. They would needed need to drop by about 3 inches to be right and I've never known coil springs drop that much.
Sure enough, the test drive showed that the front springs wasn't as advertised and are indeed way too high for the car. From the side view it looks like it's about to launch into orbit! The rear springs are ok, I'm happy with them, but the fronts are rubbish.
Its also changed the way the car drives and handles. Frankly, It's awful. So Monday morning will involve a trip to Gaz shocks at Basildon and Burton Power products to discuss and hopefully buy, the correct springs.
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