Painting Things Black

With the bulk of the parts de-rusted with Deox-C, things are looking a lot more presentable. On some parts, the surface finish was still very rough, mainly on the front hub ‘cap’ and rear splash shield. To improve this finish, I gave them a quick sanding by hand. With some care, these surfaces looked a lot smoother and ready for painting.

Sanded and de-greased rear splash shield. Hanging and ready for painting.

Now that these parts are ‘de-rusted’, they need to be painted to protect the bare metal and to make them look nicer. I did some research into different paints before settling on POR 15 (Paint Over Rust) from Frost. I chose this paint mainly due to the vast number of previous builders/restorers who had used it, with barely any negative comments. Most blogs recommended buying only a small amount of this paint as it goes a very long way and some blogs even noted that if you are not very careful you can seal the lid to the can after one use. I guess this a testament to the strength of the paint itself. I, therefore, ordered 1 US pint of semi-gloss black from Amazon. When it arrived I realized I didn’t have any sacrificial paint brushes, although a quick trip to Wilko resolved this problem. 

Since the cleaning was done in stages whilst being stuck during the breakdown work, so, in turn, was the painting. However, rather than painting each part in turn once it had been cleaned, I collected a selection of parts together and painted them in one go. In the first round of painting I painted the following parts:

• Four Caliper carriers
• Two Rear splash shield
• Differential tie bar
• Different pendulum
• Differential bracket
• Two Front hubcaps

To ease the painting process, I tied most of the above parts to my garage door rails and wiped them down one last time with white spirit to remove any remaining grease. To avoid having permanent black blobs on the garage floor I placed plenty of newspaper below them.

Suspended parts ready for painting.

Some parts were too heavy to easily support from the rail (Pendulum and Differential tie bar) or did not have holes (front hubcaps) to attached them to the rail and so I placed these on newspaper on the floor.

Painted parts drying.

When it came to doing a second coat I discovered that despite having carefully cleaned the brush with lots of Fairy and white spirit, I must have left a small trace of the paint on the bristles because they went rock hard. After letting these parts dry/cure for about 5 hours, using another paintbrush I applied a second coat. I was very impressed with the finish of the paint and these parts. I wouldn’t say the parts were perfectly smooth but they are 20 years old after all. The gloss definitely builds up with each additional layer. 

Painted rear splash shield.

Painted caliper bracket.

Painted Differential Pendulum.

A few weekends later, once I had completed the strip down of the calipers, I continued the painting process. By this stage I had gathered together not only the brake components but also finished cleaning the front and rear hubs. These hubs didn’t need the Deox-C treatment, but instead a good wash in soapy water. 

Caliper and pistons in cleaned ready for painting. The slight surface rust on the calipers should not be a problem as POR15 is designed to be painted onto rusty surfaces.

Calipers and pistons ready for painting

To avoid paint getting inside the brake calipers I re-attached the cut sections of brake lines and reinstalled the bleed nipples. I then put a layer of electrical tape over the exposed bleed nipple to keep it clean. Further, I filled the main piston bore with newspaper and duct tape. The surfaces of the piston which sit inside the caliper should also not be painted so these were covered in a layer of black electrical tape (as shown in the above image).

To keep paint out of the internal surfaces of the hubs, these were also filled with newspaper and then a layer of duct tape. 

Front hubs cleaned and ready for painting.

The painting of these parts followed the same process as before, starting with a wipe over with white spirit and then two layers of POR 15.

Painted calipers and pistons.

Painted hubs.

With the painting of the donor parts, things are starting to look a lot of respectable and not just like a pile of rusty car parts. I can’t wait to get these on the chassis when it arrives.

Removing the Bearings and Races

With the front and rear hubs clean-ish, the next step is to remove the bearings, races and rubber seals. Given the potential age of these components, they will be replaced with new shiny parts.

The process to remove these components is very similar on the front and rear. The only differences are the size of races/bearings and the number of oil seals. Therefore, in this blog post I will document the process for a rear hub carrier, and briefly summarise the process for the front hubs.

Rear hub carrier prior to removing the bearings.

My first step was to review a schematic diagram of the rear hub, as firstly this illustrates which parts can be removed and how they are assembled into the hub carrier. Secondly, this diagram also shows which parts can be replaced and which parts cannot be bought separately and so require extra special care. I learned this second point the hard way, but more on that later. I have previously shown the excellent diagrams from JustJagUK, and their diagram for the rear hub carrier is below. The parts which need removing are the races and bearing (3 and 9 in the image below), the grease seals (2 and 10 in the image below) and inner spacers (4 and 5).

Schematic of rear hub from justjaguk.

I initially tried to remove the grease seals with some leverage from a flat headed screwdriver, with little success. I then placed a punch from the opposing side on the bearing and hit this with a hammer. With one or two good hits both the grease seal and the bearing popped out. This process was repeated on each grease seal/bearing without any problem. So far this was an easy job. The bearings don’t look in too bad a condition; however, they will be replaced as a matter of course. When removing the last bearing from the rear hub carrier two spacers fell out, one large and one small. These are specific to each hub carrier and so must be kept as a pair with a record of which hub they came from. The best way I found to mark these parts and the hub was to use a white cable tie to hold the spacers together and then place another white cable tie on the corresponding hub carrier. On the other side, I will use a black cable tie.

Hub carrier with grease seals, bearings and spacers removed.

The next step is to remove the races, which are a tight pressed fit. These are drifted out with a punch and a lump hammer. When Jaguar made these carriers they made a pair of opposing recesses in the internal sidewall in-between the two races. These recesses allow a punch to be placed against the back surface of the race so it can be drifted out with a hammer. Using these recesses and a few hits with the lump hammer the races start to move. To ensure the races stay square and slide out ‘more’ easily, ensure you alternate between the opposing reses.

Punch placed in reses to move inboard race.

One race has begun to move!

With many, many hits with a hammer later the races finally fall out. Whilst on paper this doesn’t appear difficult, it is a very time-consuming process with what appears like very slow progress.

The carrier is then turned over and the other race is removed using the same process. With both races removed, there should be 8 additional pieces on the bench; 2 races, 2 bearings, 2 grease seals and 2 spacers, to go along with the hub carrier. At this point do not bin the races or bearings as they will come in handy later on. 

Removed parts from hub.

The final parts of the rear hub carrier to disassemble are the fulcrum bearings. These are found at the bottom of the carrier, where the fulcrum shaft passes through, which secures it to a swing arm. To gain access to the bearings there is a metal washer and a grease seal which can be pried off with a flat head screwdriver. With one bearing removed, the other side bearing and central shaft will fall out, or at least they did in my case. 

Fulcrum shaft sand bearings removed from rear hub carrier.

From inspection, these bearings and races appear to be in good condition. There are no signs of rust or marks on the surfaces of the races. This is good news because the process of removing these races is a pain since there is no easy access beneath them. Since they seem to be in good condition, I will forgo the plan to remove and change these races and bearings. They now need a good clean, re-pack them with grease and ensure the same bearings go back into the same races. 

Fulcrum bearing race.

Front Hub

The front hub’s bearings and races are removed by a very similar approach, as is evident from the schematic below. The one thing to note is that when I removed my front hubs from the spline both the grease seal and the bearing came off and so I only have the races left to remove.

Schematic of the front hub from justjaguk.

The races are drifted out using the same approach as above. The front races come out far more easily than the rear ones … or maybe I am just getting better at drifting.  

The Cleaning Begins

Now that the bulk of the strip down is done, the next step is to clean, paint and service the parts ready for use on the new chassis. To minimize this work make sure to only clean the required parts, by reading through the AK manual (spot the rogue parts later on). I should say that whilst this blog article appears after all the strip down of the subframes is completed, in actuality due to being stuck at various stages (fulcrum shafts, separating the rear diff components to name just a few), this cleaning progress was done alongside the stripping down process.

As both of the front a rear brakes came off first, this entry will cover their cleaning, as well the initial stripping down of the calipers.

First Clean

With the bulk of the parts removed, the scale of the cleaning task ahead was very uninviting. To make this more fun and less like manual labor, I broke out the pressure washer. This should give all the parts an initial clean and degrease. Whilst this did not remove all the grease and grim it did remove the majority of the surface dirt/grim.

Originally dirty parts.

To avoid spraying dirt/grease everywhere, I needed a contained place to pressure wash these parts. So the day after our recycling bin was emptied, I turned it on its side, placed each part in turn inside and gave them a good spray. To aid the pressure washer I connected it up to a bucket with very soapy water. Given the color and quantity of grit which came out the upturned bin, this process certainly did something. With the parts sprayed, I left them on the drive to dry. With the warm summer this year, this did not take long.

Comparison of rear brake caliper before and after a pressure wash.

Pressure washed parts drying on the driveway.

Removing the Rust

The next stage of cleaning is to remove as much of the rust as possible. I don’t want to say I will remove all the rust, as at some point I would like to start building up the chassis. The rustiest parts which need to be reused are certainly the brake calipers (shown below). Whilst I could use a wire brush and/or a Dremel to clean these parts, this seems like a lot of effort, and I don’t have a Dremel. Luckily there is an easy chemical based option, which requires no more effort than placing these parts in a bucket of a chosen chemical solution.

Front brake calipers – initial condition.

Rear brake calipers with the carrier – initial condition.

After watching numerous rust removal product review videos on YouTube and reading other cobra blogs, I choose to go with Deox-C from Bilt Hamber. Weighing up the options on their website I chose to go for the 4 kg bag, rather than smaller bottles or the pre-made solution. This should give me plenty of rust removing solution without needing to reorder any.

Using this solution was easy, I mixed a 25% ratio of the powder to hot water in a 20 liter bucket. I then placed the complete caliper assembly and carriers into this solution. The Deox-C should not attack any of the rubber parts on the calipers, so no need to fully disassemble them at this point. However, I won't be re-using these rubber components anyway, so the point is mute. When placing the calipers into this solution, I ensured that the cut end of the brake lines stayed above the water line. This should avoid water getting into the brakes. 

Then 24 hours after placing the parts in the Deox-C bath I removed and inspected the chemicals hard work. The initially less rusty parts came out with a dark surface coating which easily washed off. With these parts rinsed, the metal looked in brand new condition, ready for painting (right hand side of image below).

Caliper with no rust left on it. Notice the black surface coating on the left-hand side which has been washed off the right-hand side.

The more rusty parts certainly look a lot better, and the regions which still had surface rust had now turned a bright orange color. Scrubbing these areas further removed a lot of the now loose surface rust, but it did not remove everything. These then went straight back into the Deox-C bath for another 24 hours.

Rear Brake caliper immediately after coming out from Deox-C bath.

Front brake caliper – still rusty after 24 hours and scrubbing.

I repeated this process of leaving the parts in the Deox-C bath for 24 hours and then scrubbing the surface to remove the loose rust. After 4 days all the parts came out clean. I did not change or replace the Deox-C during this period, which further adds to how impressed I am with this cleaner/de-ruster.

De-rusted caliper.

When finished, the magic solution appeared very black and had a lot of grey sediment sitting at the bottom. Reading the literature that came with the product, it says it is safe to pour down the drain, which I carefully did. I then rinsed the bucket out and also poured this down the same drain.

In addition to the large parts, I also had to clean a lot of the smaller nuts, bolts, handbrake shoe springs, and assorted clips. The process for these was the same, although instead of the large bucket, these were placed in a small jar with Deox-C. For such small parts, a single 24 hours was generally sufficient to remove the rust before being taken out scrubbed and rinsed. 

To keep track of these small parts, I bought a small bits box from TK-Maxx. Once each part was clean and dry, it got placed in this box, along with a label explaining where it had come from. This should prove invaluable later when rebuilding. 

Box of clean small parts, with labels.

At later stages, I also cleaned the pendulum, differential tie bar, and both front and rear hubs, although not discussed above since they followed the same process. The rear aluminium hub carrier (IRS) was dealt with separately and will be tackled in a future blog entry.

Disassembling the Brakes Calipers

With the brake calipers cleaned and de-rusted the next step is to break them down further into their component parts e.g. caliper and piston. Hopefully, this will now be a slightly cleaner job… although I doubt it will actually be clean! For me, this started with ensuring that all the bleed nipples and brake hoses could be loosened. The bleed nipples are all 9 mm nuts, which came off with a little careful force. The brake hoses have two different size bolt heads (15 mm on the front and 14 mm on the rear), but oddly, the internal threads of both are the same.

My next plan was to remove the brake piston and the rubber components. After a little research online I found two approaches; one is to pump the brakes whilst on the car and the other is to blow the pistons out with a compressed air line placed over the open hose line port. Since neither of these methods would work for me, I needed to come up with a different solution. 

To replicate a compressed air line, I decided to use a bicycle pump. However, in order to get sufficient air/pressure into the caliper, I have epoxied a football pump needle into one of the removed brake hose lines. I can then attach the needle end of the line to the pump and use the hose connector to attach it to the caliper, as normal. I did originally try without the epoxy, with just using multiple cable ties, but this did not give a good enough seal.

Bicycle pump connected to brake line with an epoxied needle.

 With the DIY tool connected to a caliper, I then placed a piece of wood in between the piston and the opposing side of the caliper to avoid the piston hitting the caliper and damaging itself. Then with two strokes on the pump, each piston in-turn popped out. Such an effortless job! Even though I might not need this section of hose again, it is defiantly a keeper.

Piston removed from caliper using DIY tool.

With the pistons out, they can be inspected for scratches and damage. Luckily they all appear to be in good order, with no scratches or marks below where the rubber boot sits.

The key lesson which I learned here from Ian, was to only ever use brake cleaner on the internals of these calipers, never WD40, or my favorite go-to cleaning product: white spirit. Luckily, I had already ordered a large spray can of this from Amazon. The internals of the calipers are then cleaned with brake cleaner spray. I found it helpful to also spray cleaner through both the bleed nipple and the brake hose port. I was surprised by the amount of gunk that came out of these internal sections.

Front caliper with piston and seals removed.

The piston itself is a story of two parts. The external surfaces of the piston were cleaned by rubbing them with a rag and brake cleaner to remove small imperfections and dirt. 

Cleaned front brake piston.

The internal part of the piston, however, was a lot rustier/dirtier. With delicate fingers and some sand paper, it was a quick job to get these internal surfaces looking considerably better and ready for painting.

Sanded internal surfaces of the front piston. 

The painting and re-assembly of these components are still to be tackled and so will come later.

Opening the Differential

In an earlier post, I mentioned I had an issue opening the differential cover due to the two large bolts which support the tie bar. After some head scratching, Ian came up with a perfect tool for removing these stubborn bolts. What's more, on his holiday travels to Finland he even found such a tool in a local hardware store, something none of my local tool stores stocked. The magic tool is a 30 mm slogging spanner, or in other words, a spanner designed to be hit with a hammer.

Differential with slogging spanner on the righthand bolt.

With the spanner placed around these bolts and many many hits with a lump hammer, this bolt finally began to loosen. With the bolt's removed, it is no surprise why it was such a pain to remove, given the large smooth concave contact area.

Complaining over though, the bolts did come out and with that, the differential cover fell away and I can at last check the internals. Upon opening the differential I was initially surprised that there was no paper gasket between the main housing and the cover, but Dr Google informed me that this is normal and instead a silicon gasket is used. Must make sure to add this to one of my future shopping lists.

First view of the opened differential – nice and oily.

Close up of the crown wheel.

After rotating the main crown wheel and inspecting these teeth along with the internal gears, everything seems to be in good order. There was no excess play in the output shafts.

Having had a precursory look, the cover can be placed back on with the smaller bolts which I took out last time. I will keep the large bolts out for now and give them a good clean before putting them back on.

Rear subframe breakdown

The final major section to disassemble are all the parts which connect to the differential (or pumpkin in American). Having previously separated the IRS from the prop shaft, what remains to be removed are: the swing arms, two half shafts, opening up and checking the internal condition of the differential. 

The steps taken in this blog entry could not have been completed without two of my good friends Ian and Suvi Virtanen, who came up several times and spent the weekend helping out in the garage. Ian’s all rounded mechanical experience was, is and I'm sure will continue to be a massive help.

Half shafts

The half shafts are connected to the differential with four 11/16 nuts, through a thick spacer. To remove these nuts, I placed a spanner on the head of each bolt in turn, which I then wedged against the wooden pallet to stop the shaft from rotating. I then used my small upcycled breaker bar on the corresponding nut to loosen it. These did require a considerable amount of force for such a relatively small nut. With these nuts removed, as the bolts stay in place, the half shaft can be freed from the differential. In case the spacers (between half shaft and differential) are not symmetric, I decided to leave these in place on their respective sides by loosely putting back on the nuts. This should also help reduce the chance of me loosening them and the nuts.

Differential with one of the half shafts removed

The removed half shafts need to be further broken down into three components; differential mounting plate, half shafts, and splined hub ends. These three parts are connected together using two universal joints or UJ’s for short. Whilst the shafts go to AK for shortening, I need to retain either end for cleaning and painting.

Complete half shaft assembly prior to breakdown

Since I don’t have a hydraulic press or a large enough vice, the UJ are separated by brute force. The approach which Ian suggested was to place each UJ between a pair of sockets, one smaller than the central section and one larger. Then, with plenty of percussion persuasion, the joint cups began to slide within the gap. Unfortunately, there is not enough space between the shaft ends to separate the joint from its cup. Instead, the plan was to move one end of the UJ cap to its far extent and then use a drift or a sacrificial chisel to move the other end of the cap out by hitting it with a lump hammer. Similarly, you could also hit the UJ itself, depending on your future plans for them. With the two cups partially out, this created enough space between them for the joint itself to be removed.

Sockets used to drift out UJ cups

Repeating this process multiple times, all the UJ are finally removed. As I am not going to reuse these ball joints, I am not too worried about damaging the joint with the hammer or losing any of the needle bearings from within.

Separated UJ and differential mounting plate

Swing Arm Strip Down

Now the half shafts are removed and broken down, the remaining components connected to the differential can be removed. These are the square looking ring item around the front of the differential (apparently it’s called the Pendulum for some reason), the swing arms and the rear tie bar. These are all held together by some large bolts on the differential and another pair of fulcrum shafts.

This is becoming somewhat of a habit, but I again kept referring to another exploded diagram of the rear assembly to guide me through the process. 

Exploded diagram of the rear subframe Justjagsuk

The first part which Ian and myself removed was the Pendulum. The nuts holding this in place had already been removed by Simply Performance so it was just a case of leveraging this free. Unfortunately, the stiff bushes in the pendulum and the large contact patch on the diff bolts meant this required some long pry bars and considerable force to shift. We then discovered that the pendulum would not pass the plate on the input shaft, with the lower fulcrum shafts in place. 

The plan dynamically changed to pulling the rear tie bar and swing arm assembly in the other direction to separate it from the differential. As we removed this part we were greeted with a clunk as the pendulum also came free and fell onto the differential casing. We should have seen that coming, but no damage done. Now the pendulum easily slides over the input shaft bracket and away from the differential.

Differential after the removal of the swing arm and pendulum  

Swing arms connected to the tie bar with their fulcrum shafts

With the components removed from the differential, we had hoped to open it up and check its internals. Whilst the 6 smaller 1/2 inch mm bolts were easy to remove, there were two bottom bolts/shafts at the bottom which proved more troublesome. These two large bolts required a 30 mm spanner with a depth of approx. 100 mm. Even after a quick trip to Wicks to buy a large adjustable spanner and some percussions we could not shift these bolts. With these in place, we could not open the differential. A review of several other AK builder blogs (mainly Steve's AK blog), revealed the historical difficulty and some of the innovative solutions which others had used. Clearly, more tools and further research was required here so I will mark this as a problem for the future. 

Not wanting to stop, we continued to separate the swing arms from the tie bar and the fulcrum shafts. The fulcrum shafts, however, seemed to be rusted in place to either the tie bar or the swing arms. Due to the large horizontal void between the swing arm and shaft, it seems obvious to expect water to collect here, eventually rusting these parts together. Clearly, Jaguar either didn't see this or cared.

Having tackled a similar problem before at the front, the solution seemed obvious, cut them out! A quick phone call to AK, it was apparent that they no longer require the swing arms and so I was free to cut them up as I wished. Out came the angle grinder again and I began to cut slices into the swing arm to separate the fulcrum shaft from the swing arm. The second time around and with better access to the metal surfaces, this was an easy-ish job.

Cutting the fulcrums free from the swing arm

Partially removed lower fulcrum shaft

With all that said and done, I had two fulcrum shafts, two junk swing arms and a tie bar. A good weekend's work!

Front Suspension Breakdown

Having previously stripped down the front brakes, the final stage of dismantling the front subframe are the suspension components. I must confess that during this stage I did phone both Simply Performance and AK to check what I should be doing and how to do it. The solution involved the use of an angle grinder, so fun times ahead.

As with previous entries, I found a schematic on the just justjagsuk website very helpful as it explained how the components fitted together. This made pulling them apart easier - or at least I knew what to do, even if at first I wasn't able to...

Schematic of front suspension assembly from www.justjagsuk.com/catalogue

Front Wishbone Removal

A few nights before starting this process I did a precautionary spray of WD40 on all the nuts and bolts I could see, connecting suspension components together. A quick job that should hopefully make my life easier in the long run. Using my shorter upcycled breaker bar I loosened the M10 bolts which connect the two halves of the top wishbones together (through the top ball joint). This was so easy I couldn’t believe my luck so I carried on, easily loosen the top fulcrum shaft nut (19 mm) as well. The same story was true of the bolts connecting the bottom halves of the wishbone together as well. At this stage, I chose to only loosen all these bolts in case I needed the rigidity of the suspension when using a breaker bar. A trick I learned from pulling apart IRS splash shield as mentioned in my last post.

Front top and bottom wishbones connected to upright and subframe

Although I could loosen and remove the lower fulcrum nut (22 mm), I was not able to twist or remove the shaft itself. This does lead to the pointless hypothetical question, when does a bolt become a shaft??

My luck had finally run out, however having loosened all the other wishbone bolts, I decided to completely remove all the wishbones parts that I could.  With the easy wishbones removed, the top ball joint remains in place as well as one half of the bottom wishbone, which connects to the fulcrum shaft and the upright via the bottom ball joint. 

Remaining front bottom wishbone and upright

Despite trying for an afternoon with a hammer and several sets of different pullers, I wasn’t able to separate either the top or bottom ball joint from the upright. Getting very fed up, I decided that I will tackle these joints when the bottom wishbone is off the subframe and I have easier and better access to them. This calm decision was taken much later having given up in the garage for that day.

After repeating the above process on the other side I ran into the same problem, with the ball joints and the fulcrum shaft, so it was time to tackle this obstacle. Initially, I tried hammering and prying on the shaft but with no joy, so went to do some research with the help of Dr Google. The two main methods I found from the internet were using a hammer (which hadn’t work) or using a blow torch to heat and expand the surrounding frame and then hit the shaft with a hammer. Given the amount of metal, I needed to heat up most mechanics used an oxyacetylene torch for this, which I didn’t have.

Fulcrum shaft rusted into the subframe

One solution which I came up with was to cut the shaft out from the subframe, although realising that I would need to be very careful, as this shaft is required for the kit. Another concern with this approach is that I didn’t actually have an angle grinder. Luckily, I was able to borrow a friends (massive credit to Andrew Young) brand new angle grinder, so many thanks to him. Also on a side note, congratulations to him and his wife on the birth of their first new child. 

Removal of Front Fulcrum Shafts

A quick phone call to AK, to check this approach and they said that they (and I) didn’t need the fulcrum shaft end of the bottom wishbone, so to make life/access easier I could cut this lose from the shaft. I therefore carefully cut two slices through the wishbone bushes and then chiseled the metal cutout and bushes free from the fulcrum shaft.  This meant I could drop the wishbone away from the fulcrum shaft, leaving just the fulcrum shaft to be removed from the stubborn front subframe.

With the loan of an angle grinder, I could start cutting up the frame. To avoid cutting into the shaft I cut some exploratory slices in the upturned subframe a few cm’s away from the shaft. Bending back this subframe metal, I found that, to my surprise, it was filled with foam. With the foam removed, I could see the shaft and so could begin cutting closer to it removing the metal as I went.

Initial cuts into front subframe to avoid cutting the fulcrum shaft

Whilst making these initial cuts, it was amazing how quickly the angle grinder began to look oily and dirty. I did carefully clean the angle grinder once finished with white spirit before returning it.

Borrowed angle grinder - what a tool!!!

Having cut away much of the metal which covers the fulcrum shaft I learned that there is a metal sleeve surrounding the shaft. This makes life more challenging and so more careful cutting required… joys

Fulcrum shaft still within a metal cylinder

The process that I went through here was to cut the fulcrum shaft and its sleeve out from the rest of the frame. Due to the concave angles which surround the bolt head, I had to cut a large section out from the subframe which included the shaft ends, and then cut this section down afterward at my bench. With the shaft and sleeve finally removed, I now had to separate them. My suspicion was that only the ends of the sleeves were rusted onto the shaft. If this is true, I only need to cut the ends of the sleeve away. For this, I made very careful slices into the sleeve along its length and then one circumferential cut. With these cuts, I could then chisel the sleeve away from the shaft. Repeating this process on both ends of the shaft, the sleeve did then slide away. Lucky it was just the ends that had been rusted.

By only cutting small depths at a time, both shafts were extracted and more importantly are re-usable. This saves me a few hundred quid on buying a new set. Given the faf that I had gone to achieve this, I had to take a photo of the shaft placed back into the cutout of the subframe.

Front Fulcrum shaft, finally liberated!

Cutting out the Ball Joints

The one remaining item of the front corner to disassemble was separating the upright from the bottom wishbone half. After earlier removing the four 1/2 inch bolts and failing to separate the lower ball joints with either the puller and hammer approach and because I had had such fun using the angle grinder, I decided to slice the bottom off from the ball joint and its casing. Having cut the largest part of the ball away, the upright came free from the bottom wishbone half. Of course, this does still leave part of the bottom ball joint (and the top ball joint) in the upright, however, as AK will be refurbishing the upright, I will leave these there for them ... an early Xmas present.

Bottom wishbone with ball joint casing cut off

Final Thoughts

Having completely disassembled the front subframe and the rear hubs removed, the pile of parts is starting to mount up. 

Parts removed from donor chassis thus far