Saturday 15th October - New rear springs!

 The new rear springs I'd recently ordered arrived on Thursday, so today was the planned fitting day. Before I started this job, I had another little job to do on the Cortina estate first and that was to fit a new battery. The battery had never been that great on the estate, (or so I thought) so I bought a new one from Halfords and fitted it. However, whilst I was fitting it, I found that one of the cables for the cut-out switch was loose. This could have been providing a poor earth and therefore cranking the engine over slowly which will give the impression that the battery is flat. So, with the new battery in place, I took the old one over to the work bench and hooked it up to the battery charger. The green light came on straightaway meaning that the battery was already fully charged! So, it was the cable causing the problem then! A brand-new battery purchased for nothing! Great!

Anyway, with that dealt with I then started on the rear springs. I did the driver's side first as it's easier. (No exhaust in the way.) The new springs are single leaf instead of the usual multi-leaf spring arrangement. I had also ordered them to be made one inch lower. 

Because I had only changed the springs in the summer, everything came undone nice and easy, and it didn't take me long to change both springs. With the car lowered back down, I then had to adjust the front coil over springs to a similar ride height. This will have to be done numerous times yet though as the car will need to be driven a few times for the springs to settle down. It did look fairly level by the time I finished for the day though, so at least that's a good starting point.