23 Mar 10 ..... More floor painting & fitting wishbone bushes

This week I have been mostly fitting the new oem wishbone bushes and ball joints. There are 3 different bush types to be fitted and generally they are inserted either from the outside in or inside out dpending on if they are upper or lower wishbones.

Fitting them requires a bit of care but can be done using a bench vice and a suitably sized socket. You have to be careful to make sure that the bush goes fully home as they can spring back a little.

The ball joints have to be pressed in using the special tool from eliseparts. Just a smear of grease is needed to stop the rubber boot tearing as the joint is pushed home. The tool has two b 

 olts that need to be tightened equally to ease the joint in squarely. I also put a smear of copperslip anti-seize grease on the wishbone joint face. Once you get the hang of using the tool, it is pretty easy and it didn't take long to fit all eight joints. I have fitted plenty of these joints in the past and have always put the new joints in the freezer for a few days beforehand to shrink them down a little and they fly in. I didn't do my preparation very well this time and forgot! but in the end they went in without too much extra effort. It is always worth checking that the new joint stepped face mates up with the mounting face of the wishbone. Sometimes thay can go tight and you think they are fuilly home and they aren't which can cause geo problems and poor handling. There is a small inspection hole on the outer face of the wishbone eye so that you can check.

Next job is to finish re-painting the last part of the floor. Same technique as my previous post for the footwell floors. Slightly easier to work on the floor arfea under the seats as it is easier to get to. Still takes a good 4 hours start to finish to rub down, degrease, mask off, metal ready and apply 2 coats of POR15 silver with a 2 hour gap between coats. The POR15 paint coats can be applied with a brush taking care to go round the edges and then finished with a small foam roller. 

Finish is as good as the footwells (well it would be really as it is the same process) and the whole interior now looks so much better. Not that I am going for looks as it is a race car but I know it will be hard wearing and wipe clean when it gets dirty.