DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Yaaaaa Hooooooo!!!!!!! (In a Blur stylee)

Jon's method worked. I put it in position, rested a 3lb hammer against what I wanted to hit, and hit the 3lb hammer with a 4lb hammer. A few goes later it popped out and the ball joint is fine

On to the other side next.....

Well done

What's the saying?......if you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical fault!

Here in Birmingham, I thought you increased the weight of the hammer until it worked?
This rule worked really well when I was an apprentice and ever since.

Nice use of two large hammers! When I replaced my struts for 3.5" versions I replaced the ball joints as I couldn't get them out either!

Last time I did this I got it out OK - but I did so while it was all still on the car.

I tried with them still on the car, but stopped the escalating violence for fear of breaking the suspension/bending the bodyshell!

Coppa-Slip on re-assembly?
Oddly, both of mine and the '3.5" strut swop many years ago all came out with a good lump hammer and Plus Gas (that dates my mini adventure...)

Coppa-slipped the pins on re-assembly and they popped apart 5 years ago to replace the lower arms for rubber bushes from squeaky poly bushes.

They were put together with alumslip - will do the same on assembly - maybe coppaslip here as it's steel/steel

Back onto it again today.

Last week-end I a managed to bigger things up briefly. I tried to use my home made press to raised the spindle. Unfortunately I didn't have a suitable piece of tube to fit over the spindle. I thought I could still give it a go pushing on the edge of the spindle.

However everything moved and I ended up pushing at an angle
-with this result



D'oh!

I put a wanted ad on DDK and impact bumpers, and within 24 hours I picked up a pair of good condition Boge struts from CrisC - the power of forums!

So anyway, back onto it today

Ground off the two mounting tabs



Now onto the big weld. Last time, like Jon I ground it out with a grinder. This time I thought I'd try something a bit different - I bought some milling end cutters, fitted them into the pillar drill and tried it this way instead



I wasn't able to clamp it in but a combination of locking the milling piece into place and moving the work around got to this








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I tried putting it in the press again - this time I bought some tubing that fitted over the strut perfectly



But nothing seemed to be moving.

Took it off and applied a lot of heat to the collar. Then put it all back into the he press and started again. I pressed and pressed. Eventually there was an enormous BANG! Nothing was broken - I reckon it was just breaking 30 years of not moving. I pressed a bit more and then checked it - you DON'T want to push it too far



Looking good! It had moved 5mm. I measured out another 14mm marked the strut. I then started pressing again. Got a lot of BANGs! And then movement - I'm assuming even though I'm using the tube it's maybe not pushing down completely squarely. After a while I got to this - the desired 19mm






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Make sure you go no further or your wheel won't clear the low ball joint

With the spindle now raised I went to instal the racing bump steer kit

The bump steer arms are clearly marked left and right and initially this caused me more than a little confusion. They looked completely identical - so I was a bit worried that they'd been misplaced and I had two the same.



However after looking into it a bit more carefully and bolting it all together I realised they fit onto the arm at an angle



Everything was now ready for welding up








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Which brings me on to my first question

On Jon's spindle-raising he added these additional fillets in



However Jon's Coilover kit involves a collar being welded higher up the strut, which gives you space for these fillets. However my coil-over kit is different and uses these spacers



Therefore no space to weld in the fillets as per Jon's kit. I think the fillets give additional support to the strut. Whilst I'm not racing or anything, while it's all apart I'd like to strengthen it as per Jon's kit.

I was thinking of maybe added a couple of additional welds to the underside of the collar - what do you think?




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The other question is about the bit the wheel goes onto. I'll start calling that the spindle

Here's the one that came off my car



Here's one of the ones that I bought



Mine has the extra collar on it. Is this part of the wheel bearing kit? Or is it a separate part?

Thanks for any help

Cheers

Mark




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sladey wrote:
Mine has the extra collar on it. Is this part of the wheel bearing kit? Or is it a separate part?

Thanks for any help

Cheers

It's listed on PET as a separate part but won't come with the wheel bearing kit, you don't normally need to remove it.