03-09-2017, 04:34 PM
Bit of an update on this. The new beam I bought (from CP4L) got the car through its MoT and seems fine for now. How well it will last remains to be seen.
In the meantime I've been gradually getting on with refurbishing the old beam. The local garage pressed out the old swing arm shafts and the stub axles as I wanted to properly clean up the swing arms and repaint them. A lesson here ...I asked the garage to give me everything back, including the hubs, which I wanted to reuse. They threw it all in a bag and when I took the hubs out the bearings were full of crap that had dislodged from all the rusty parts.
Various parts went in an electrolysis tank to be cleaned up. (Thanks to one of Piggy's Youtube vids a while back for getting me started with electrolysis for rust removal. Lots of other info on the web too). The swing arms looked like this after a night in the tank.
10 mins with a wire wheel on a drill and these are the results.
The rusty splines on the torsion bars and the ARB end plates got the same treatment.
I've got some new trailing arm shafts to be pressed in to the swing arms shortly and Stef205 supplied an aftermarket beam tube that has bearings and seals already installed. It looks like a really good quality piece of engineering and will get some pics up when I've taken some.
The costs have added up a but it'll be shortly going on my other car which is also showing some slight camber. It'll be good to know the beam going on there should last a good while. My only concern is the mating surfaces between the swing arm and the arb end plates. Both are quite pitted and I'm not quite sure the foam seal will be able to keep the moisture out. Was thinking about spraying it all liberally with some anti-corrosion wax to fill the imperfections. Any other suggestions would be helpful.
In the meantime I've been gradually getting on with refurbishing the old beam. The local garage pressed out the old swing arm shafts and the stub axles as I wanted to properly clean up the swing arms and repaint them. A lesson here ...I asked the garage to give me everything back, including the hubs, which I wanted to reuse. They threw it all in a bag and when I took the hubs out the bearings were full of crap that had dislodged from all the rusty parts.
Various parts went in an electrolysis tank to be cleaned up. (Thanks to one of Piggy's Youtube vids a while back for getting me started with electrolysis for rust removal. Lots of other info on the web too). The swing arms looked like this after a night in the tank.
10 mins with a wire wheel on a drill and these are the results.
The rusty splines on the torsion bars and the ARB end plates got the same treatment.
I've got some new trailing arm shafts to be pressed in to the swing arms shortly and Stef205 supplied an aftermarket beam tube that has bearings and seals already installed. It looks like a really good quality piece of engineering and will get some pics up when I've taken some.
The costs have added up a but it'll be shortly going on my other car which is also showing some slight camber. It'll be good to know the beam going on there should last a good while. My only concern is the mating surfaces between the swing arm and the arb end plates. Both are quite pitted and I'm not quite sure the foam seal will be able to keep the moisture out. Was thinking about spraying it all liberally with some anti-corrosion wax to fill the imperfections. Any other suggestions would be helpful.