VIN 3695 - Dutch Rob's Car

[bozzzydmc]

Well your in the right club for that rob

[RobvdVeer]

Hi everybody!

Just got out of the shower. Today I installed the sway bar bushing kit. Holy shit.

First of all, the sway bar came off real easy- the old bushings were gone as always. Also I had no problems with stuck nuts and bolts. Either i'm getting used to it or i'm getting better at it.

Then, I had to clean the old sway bar and put a nice coat of paint on it. Satin black 'Wheeler Dealer'-style. I wanted to finish the job today so I used a heat resistant quick-dry variety. Three coats in 3 hours did the trick.

Anyway the biggest problem of all was that I had a tremendous amount of trouble getting the new bushings in the lower control arm. The instructions said 'should fit snugly', but this one is tighter than a [censored]. Finally I came up with using a long bolt and just screw 'em in using large washers and lots of grease.

Then there was the problem of the sway bar being way too tight to fit the new LCA bushings. I had to grind them down quite a bit with a scotch pad to remove the rust. I didn't want to take off too much material so i finally 'persuaded' the sway bar into the bushings (biggrin).

Last job was to mount the brackets, but that was so easy i'm not going in to that.

I have some pics but they're on the camera in the garage. Nothing special really because I forgot to make pics during the assembly phase.

Anyway: I felt it was gonna rain today and so it did (my god it did at some point - I though the day of reckoning had arrived; water just flowed into the garage). I was glad to start this small upgrade. I didn't expect to finish in a day.

I gotta remind myself to re-torque tomorrow.

[RobvdVeer]

I refitted the headliner trim just now and found some cave drawings on the LH side door (drivers' side).

"3rd sept"
"1.45PM"
"W.P."

and a big "39"

and some more scribbling:

"Alan"
"1"
"R.T. 040901/11 L"

[arranj]

Looks more like 1:45 AM - did they work that late?!

[RobvdVeer]

Looks more like 1:45 AM - did they work that late?!

Oh yes AM indeed. Looks like they had to pull an all-nighter to get mine together. Explains a lot. Or did they started to work in shifts by september '81 ?

[RobvdVeer]

Today was a marvellous day for driving. I clocked 150 miles today. I could have been way more if I didn't notice an unfortunate mishap..

One of the bolts of my front sway bar came off and caused a bracket to bend badly. I literally lost most of my brake control after that, so I drove back home very cautiously without further problems. I figure I need to re-tap one of the nuts to secure the front sway bar now.

[Dan 6511]

Hi Rob. I had trouble with one of those threads stripping in that front chassis section, so to be safe I removed the raditor mounts temporarily to gain access into the end of the crumple section and put Nyloc nuts on the back of those bolts to lock them up. That way I never have to worry about the threads in the chassis being worn. Its a fiddly job but you can do it, you just need to wiggle your fingers into the hole, its a bit tight though

[RobvdVeer]

Thank you for that suggestion, Dan. You mean just the radiator brackets right, and not the radiator itself? I was afraid i'd have to invest a lot of money for a helicoil kit or such. I don't have fat fingers so I should be able to pull it off.

[Dan 6511]

Yeah just the bottom brackets and leave the radiator hanging. It is a cow's arse to get the nuts in but I did it so I'm sure you can. You WILL drop them lots of times before you get one to start.

[RobvdVeer]

Yeah just the bottom brackets and leave the radiator hanging. It is a cow's arse to get the nuts in but I did it so I'm sure you can. You WILL drop them lots of times before you get one to start.

Once! I dropped one once! Does that make me good?