Soooooooo, off to drop off the subframe from 9AM this morning. Had that off and out by 10:30.
T'other half collected the bits from GSF, then back to Calbourne Off Road with the trophy.
Steam cleaner bought the replacement subframe up nice and clean.
Then finished getting the subframe off the Corrado, dropped the rack, prepped the replacement rack that came with the car..... then found that the supplied rack had fine splines, but the old rack and column are fine spline, so that's pretty much scrap.
Oh and the oil that came out of the system was golden, not green or red, so f*ck nose what that was
.
Bolted the two subframes together, back to back, drilled the repositioned trailing holes in the subframe and cut the unecessary ends off the trailing tabs, then everything pretty much bolted up. I needed to replace the bracket on the back of the block, as the Corrado takes a different rear mount to the Golf3, thankfully I'd got that one to replace. I did also have to drill out the fixing bracket on the mount, which secures the lambda, as it also grounds the lambda. It made sense to replace the gearbox mount, so that got done, too.
I bopped off the outer CV on the offside, as the boot was perished to hell and back, and fitted up a new boot.
I didn't replace the front engine mount, as the mounting bolt rounded, on a good quality 6-sided 1/2" drive socket
. So, next session will need me to unbolt the front mount bracket on the motor, hoping the bolts on the front cross member come undone, so the front mount does come off that, or I'll be working out from there.
Thankfully I did finish the thing today, although I still need to do the front mount and sort the tracking properly.
It's taken the shine off the new car, but it drove home a LOT tighter than when it drove in. There's a long way to go before I've got it driving how I want it to, but at least I've now started down the road of making sure the mechanicals are sound.