Red Rallye resto

[Ben_w]

Had a shocker of a day at work again so came home and decided to go and twirl a few spanners in anger and take the front subframe off. Been meaning to do it for a while and planning on doing a bit of grinding at the weekend to clean some more of the underside off so went outside and got busy.

The beginning…



Hubs off, suspension legs off etc. Then onto those bloody mounting cups on the inner arches/chassis legs. Passenger side cracked off very easily and came out without any fight at all.



Drivers side was a swine. Plenty of undoing, doing up again, etc. Took the subframe off, thinking I'd be able to brace the cup and undo the bolt further. No such luck, seized solid.



Healthy application of wd40 (not ideal but all I had), subframe back on, two 13mm bolts bolted back and and then more undoing, redoing, undoing etc. Eventually it gave in and came out. Subframe back off.



Little bit of rust here, think it's where I bare metalled earlier but didn't get with electrox. This bit is still pushed in and needs pulling out. Not sure how I will pull it out. Thinking about drilling a hole into a strip of metal, welding a nut on, sliding the strip into the hole on the pushed in bracket and attaching a slide hammer……





Where the cup fixes to the chassis leg….



Should be able to get in here and clean up quite a bit….



So the mounting cups have gone into the electrolysis tank, will see how they clean up but not holding my breath. Unfortunately, the cups are NFP.



I shall get my parts man on the case as I think I'll be looking to replace. Interestingly, Servicebox shows a gasket between the subframe and body, part number 7 on the diagram but no number 7 on the parts number list…..odd.

Thats all for tonight. Was knackered by the time I was done this far so hot shower, cold beer and dinner cooked by the wife…..