The Stupid Car failed it’s MOT on knackered bushes in the shocks and the Panhard rod. I knew this day was coming as they looked pretty ropy last year when I took this photo
This is not something I’d ever done before, so new stuff to learn and maybe an excuse for new tools! First port of call was the Spax website to see if they had suitable bushes. TL;DR was “We don’t support old shocks, want to buy some new ones?” That would be the Answer Of Last Resort. So off I went and did a lot of searching.
I ended up of www.superflex.co.uk who have a terrible website, but they do do a range of fairly random ‘universal’ bushes. The closest is sizes was the snappily named SF0476P-80 which had the right inside diameter and outside diameter but was a bit too long. So I ordered a pair, took one shock off and tried it out.
I also bought myself a 20 ton press because, why not?
I cut them down to length by half putting them on the crush tube, mounting it in my lathe and introducing it to a stanley knife. This was a little scary with the idea of the knife being grabbed and propelled out of my hand so I ended up designing and printing a lathe-mountable holder for a blade. !3D rendering of tool
After a lot of swearing and a sidequest to make my lathe even moderately accurate and not scary I ended up with this
The Panhard rod was the main fail. It was decidedly wobbly at the axle end. Getting it off the car resulted in having to take the passenger seat out in order to get at the head of the bolt. I moaned on Mastadon about why wasn’t this bolt welded in place so I could easily spin the nut off, but I’m now so glad it wasn’t.
The original builder appeared to be a cautious chap. He had used a nyloc nut, but had also drilled through it and pinned it with a split pin.
I bought a M12x130mm bolt and I now have protruding threads, as it should be.
I’m now off to the garage to do the other three shocks. I may be some time…