Anti-roll bar, Vertical Links & Steering rack

Fitting the anti-roll bar

It took a bit of jimmyin but it fitted in fine. I reused old anti-roll bar links (joins the anti-roll bar to the lower wishbones), studs and U-bolts. I used new rubber bushes and clamps (there were no clamps originally, just bushes and U-bolts). None of the nuts are tightened yet as I'm finding that I have to undo things sometimes to add parts. Most nuts are 'nyloc' self-locking nuts so they should really be replaced if they're undone. At least nut tightening is the easy part but lets hope I remember to tighten everything at the end! =-O

Next are the vertical links on each side. I need a ball joint extractor to remove the upper balljoints before I can continue with these.

Vertical Links

Finally got the old balljoints out. I had four to remove - two upper balljoints on the front vertical links, and the balljoints on the track rod ends for the steering. They all popped out easily - just a few whacks with the balljoint splitter. Once removed, the links themselves cleaned up very nicely (a drill and wire brush affair once again). A lick of hammerite and they're ready to go. For now I'm using the orignal front trunnions. Maybe they should be renewed since they're very hard-working components but they seem to fit perfectly.

One of the vertical links has the grease nipple fitted for lubrication. The second didn't - it had the plug screw fitted instead. Unfortunately, even with my efforts with the WD40, the head of the screw broke off trying to remove it so, with the headless screw stuck in the vertical link, I'm left with no way of lubricating the RHS trunnion. Ideas? I filled this vertical link with EP90 before fitting the trunnion but probably there wont be enough oil in there to lubricate properly. :-/

Steering

I had two steering racks to choose from. Both look in good condition, however I had hack-sawed one of the track rods when removing the original from the chassis (track rod end rusted-on solid). Also, one of the bellows was split. Decided to use the spare rack as both bellows and track rods were fine. While I was cleaning it up however, I found a little nick on the RHS bellow. Luckily the RHS bollow was grand on the orignal rack so I reused that one. The steering rack went on with ease (although the threads on one of the mountings needed some filing before it would accept the nut). I'm now left with spare steering rack in need of two new bellows and an owner!

No problems with the track rod balljoints either. Of course, the tracking will be way off! :-) I'll wait until there's wheels on before torking up the balljoint nut - something I probably should have done for all the suspension bolts.