With a slight delay (originally planned as a Christmas present), the new suspension set up for ‘t Kreng arrived today. To be honest I think it looks pretty nice, and I can hardly wait to put it under the car to see how it performs!
To start with, the front springs are 60kg/cm (336lbf/in). Although they look rather flimsy the rear springs are 30kg/cm (168lbf/in). But as these will be placed slightly behind the axle, the effective spring rate is almost 45% higher compared to the original location. So they compare to 43kg/cm (241lbf/in) springs in the original location. A few test drives will be needed to determine if these springs are up to the job.
And a few details of the set up; The top mounts have fully sealed spherical bearings and camber adjustment plates;
As the front dampers are placed “up-side-down“ in the strut the adjuster knob sits on the bottom of the strut casing;
And finally a picture of the top mount for the rear coil-overs;
Finished the first stage of the restoration of my DHC this evening. Dropped the engine from the shell;
After which I went over the bare shell to see if there was anything left or forgotten. Only found a few grommets and clips, so it is completely bare now;
Body will be send off for paint removal and shot blasting next Wednesday. And tomorrow I will go to AST Suspension in Valkenswaard to pick up the new suspension set up for ‘t Kreng ...
Nearing the end of the first stage of the restoration, the dismantling. Spent a few more hours in the workshop yesterday afternoon. Started with the front suspension;
As this was renewed in the spring of 2007, al the bolts came off without a problem. Only the anti-roll-bar put up a bit of a struggle but that was solved by removing one of the track control arms. Having access to some proper tools certainly makes life much easier!
Also loosened all the nuts and bolts from the sub-frame in preparation for the last job;
As you can see there is some light (surface?) rust at the top of the front suspension turrets. As the affected area is double skinned this needs to be treated properly otherwise the rust will return sooner or later.
With the front suspension removed it was time to switch my attention to the back of the car. As there is a pallet lift in the workshop I thought it a good idea to use it, makes life so much easier;
With the back axle firmly supported on the lift, it was only a matter of undoing the four bolts which hold the links to the body and pull the back axle out from underneath the car, easy really!
By removing the back axle I could (at last) access the fuel tank. Only part that put up a fight were some jubilee clips from the fuel line. Easily sorted with a pair of pincers and some brute force. And after I found a deep 17 mm socket to go over the rather long mounting studs, removal of the tank itself was a piece of cake. And by the looks of it, it’s a fairly new tank. Which could well be as, judging by the body protection, the tank clearly has been of the car somewhere in past;
Will drop the engine from the body somewhere next week(end);
Body will go to a local firm to have the paint removed in a chemical bath, after next week. They will also lightly shot blast bad/rusted sections. After that the body work will be done. And when that's ready the whole body will be shot blasted and coated with an epoxy primer. But that is still somewhere in the future!
I went to the workshop with a friend yesterday
evening to have a go at removing the wind screen. I had tried to remove the
windscreen from a TR7 three times before with mixed results (one shattered, one
cracked and one came off in one piece). So I entered the workshop with mixed
feelings. But we did come fully prepared. As said friend works at a body shop,
he had borrowed a few tools to make life a bit easier;
Before starting on the windscreen we first removed
the stainless windscreen surround. Starting from both bottom corners and using
a combination of gently pricing it lose and a selection of “available” blunt
levering tools, this was removed pretty quickly. Which brought us to the main
task. The windscreen itself. We started with the traditional cutting wire;
But we had to abort this line of attack. Regardless
of the type of cutting wire used, the wire almost immediately started to dig
into the glass. This is pretty normal on a TR7 and is caused by the way the
window is glued into the window lip, and the depth/length of this lip. After
that we tried an air powered knife. This worked pretty good as long as there
was enough room to work and see what you were doing. Which meant we only used
it on less than half of the bottom part. So only solution left was cutting out
the sealant with some pen knifes. Pretty easy, only took the two of us well over
three hours to cut it free. But we have a result, one reusable front screen!
Which means I now removed two front screens
successfully and broke two over the years. But as I have a NOS one in stock
(still in its original factory packing) the old screen will go to the spare
parts storage. And after removing the last bits of kit it was obvious that the
front screen frame is pretty solid;
Remain the removal of the back axle, the fuel tank,
front suspension and engine. Shouldn’t
take more than a few hours. So well on schedule to get the body ready
for paint removal and light shot blasting in preparation for the body repairs.
