Well by the time I got back from my eldest’s Brownie Promise and got the youngest in bed it was too dark and too cold to get anything done on the car, working outside in the winter is not a clever Idea, so I decided to go into the garage and strip down one of the Passat hubs. The calliper nuts were very tight, obviously, but eventually gave in to a little bit of "persuasion†and separated from the hub. I then stripped the disc off and it is 256mm in diameter so I am very happy that I have my bigger brakes. The calliper looks bigger as well but I will have to wait until I get a pad from somewhere else to confirm this. I could not get the track rod off the hub nor, somewhat surprisingly, could I get the lower wishbone ball joint out! I was expecting the track rod arm to be tight but the ball joint should just tap out on the shaft! Still I will renew both when I rebuild the hub so I am not too worried.
My plan is to strip the entire suspension completely back to individual parts, clean and possibly powder coat, and then renew all the bearings and fit poly bushes where necessary before fitting to the Golf in one go. It makes sense to me to do it once properly and know that my suspension is completely new so that I can then go onto another part of the car safe in the knowledge that this will be ok for a long time. The wheel bearings, for example, seem good but are probably 133,000 miles old, the mileage on the Passat, so might fail at any time and although it is more expensive to change everything even if it doesn’t need it I think it is money well spent to prevent having to strip everything down later to renew something I could do easily now.
I did take some photos but need to upload them from my camera to the web sometime today. I will add them to this post as soon as I have done so. Does anyone know how expensive it is to powder coat small items such as hubs and wishbones? I think that I have a bead on someone who will shot blast small items reasonably but need an idea of the costs involved with powder coating. Everything I read says that it is the way to go as it provides a very tough and durable finish over painting or galvanising etc.
Anyone got any thoughts?
