Well this will be my last update for a little bit as I have to go on holiday for a week with the family tomorrow and then am away for a four day course, courtesy of work!
I have received a couple of parcels recently, it has been like Christmas in my garage, including the suspension sent by oldmiller8, many thanks, the first lot of parts from VWSpares and this morning 4 CV Joints complete with boots. Lots of nice shiny new stuff to go on the car! I have also cleaned up all of the bits I took off the Passat and they have been inspected and will be serviced, painted and rebuilt when I get back into the garage.
Last night I finally managed to get the suspension changed over and packaged up my old stuff and sent back to oldmiller8. Getting the springs and dampers off the car was easy, getting the strut tops and spring plates off the dampers was very, very hard! I don’t know how anyone else has managed to get that bl00dy collar off but I struggled big time. It was not until I went round to a mate’s house and we manufactured a special tool from some 14mm Internal Diameter steel bar that we actually succeeded. I now have a new tool but the effort was exceptional for what should be a simple job. The other big downer was that the rear spring plates were very tatty. One had actually rusted all the way through and the spring was pushing put of the top! We turned the springplate round when we refitted but I have had to order new anyway. Failure of any suspension part out on a track is not an option I want, especially if I know about it in advance. I have now ordered now springplates, boots and mountings for the rear so they will go on once they arrive.
I still need to sort out seating as I cannot find any Corrado seats in the vicinity but I may have a new cunning plan! The mate I saw last night races and is currently building a MX5 car and has placed a very large order with a custom cage manufacturer. He has kindly offered to ask for a 2m length of FIA approved roll cage bar that we will cut to length and tack onto some 8mm steel plate to make a harness bar that sits between the rear seatbelt inertial reel mounting points behind the rear turret tops. We will then locate captive nuts for the harnesses and the whole thing will then be welded up by them to ensure that it is solid. For the front mounts we will drill though the floor and gearbox tunnel and then locate steel spreader plates with captive nuts on the outside to allow harness mountings to be fitted. This meets with current FIA regulations so I am happy that it will be fine for track days. He has a set of 2†harnesses that I can borrow, for as long as needed, and also has a seat I can borrow. We were looking at how we could mount this and scoped out a number of options. Because I want to retain the ability to have different people drive the car the seat needs to be on runners but he has a set of MX5 runners that are very low and flat so that mounting plates for bucket seats bolt straight to the top. These would be fitted to the floor in the same manner as the harnesses using steel spreader plates. This means that I could run the current passenger bucket and borrow his nice drivers one in time for my first track day, hopefully! That has been booked for Brands Hatch on the 28th of next month so time is now officially against me! Still life wouldn’t be fun without a challenge or two!
More as I get it,
Jon
