Well, the first problem came on Saturday morning. Arrived in the van laden with Gearboxes, exhaust manifolds (trip to Dunc's on Friday!
) mounts, tools, sausage and bacon butties and some crisp notes to pay for the previously arranged two days of lift hire.
First job, change the track rod ends, put some torsion on the front end, wang the wheels on and roll it down the hill straight onto the lift!
Or not...
First, the track rod ends weren't coming off for love nor money. Pain in the arse. Eventually abandoned plan and resolved to stop wasting our precious lift time and replace the complete track rods at a later date.
So a quick whizz with the ratchet would see the torsion bars tensioned then get the wheels wanged on and roll it down the hill straight onto the lift!
Or not...
Somehow, in the all the upheaval of replacing the front end bushings, the plate that houses the tensioning bolt in the passenger side LCA had popped out of it's housing and jammed itself sideways, half in/half out of the square retaining hole.
It was not going to budge for love nor money.
By this time, we were a good couple of hours into our lift time and getting more and more frustrated.
Having backed the bolt all the way out, we tried jacking the arm up to release some of the downforce on the plate. Nowt. So we tried prising it back up. Nowt. Vise Grips, screwdrivers, pry bars, you name it, it didn't care about it.
So to cut a very long story short, about another hour and a half later, halfway through our lift time, we managed to pop it back in. So...
wang the wheels on and roll it down the hill straight onto the lift!
With barely any brakes to stop it and around half a foot either side breathing space and a wall dead ahead....
