Paint Prep and Front Suspension Strut

Gosh, it has been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for my absence of late but I have been working on the TR7, honestly. To be honest, a lot of my time has been on fettling the body and frankly I got bored with the endless hours of rubbing down and re-filling grey primer.

The roof in particular needed work, as it was dented. This took a surprising amount of time to do but as it will be so visible, it is worth doing correctly.

I'm afraid the remainder of these photos don't convey too much, as once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. But the following will give you the general idea of where I am up to.

Did I mention that I had gotten bored with grey? Well, after tripping over a big pile of rusty suspension parts, I decided to start work on cleaning it up.

I decided to start with one of the suspension struts, and was surprised how involved the whole thing was (I had expected a quick rub down with wet & dry, and hey presto!). Splitting the ball joints was tough, as was undoing many of the seized bolts (which came apart with a combination of heat, hammers and WD40).

Having compressed the springs, I was able to remove them and have a go at the top nut, which, as always, bore no resemblance to what was in the Haynes Book of Jokes. It talked about a split pin, but I couldn't find it. In the end I used a various mole grips and other things to undo it.

Next was the large collar-type nut thing which needed to be undone in order to withdraw the damper insert. Imagine my delight when I read that - you guessed it - a special tool was needed. Heat, a vice, a stilson and hammer & chisel saw it come out fairly quickly.

Once that was done, I was able to dismantle the hub, disc, disc shield, calipers etc and give everything a good lean. A wire brush in the angle grinder was effective for removing loose rust (and there was a lot of that), after which things were painted.

More next time!