The All New, New "What have you done to your Bay today" thread.

Full anti-crust survey while the weather holds.



Auto-Paints a perfect match as usual.

 

Quick 70mile jaunt in Chip across to Lincoln, 3 nights camping, back this morning and a working weekend. Quite like a mid week break

Checked up on a couple of the siblings whilst we were there

 

Took the offside track rod off, freed the ends, changed a perished boot, reassembled and set the tracking. Had a look at taking the ball joints apart to do the boots and retreated. I'll post something in Mech Tech to get some advice. Also looked at a brake caliper to work out what I've got as I want to change the disc because one is warped. Not much mechanical stuff is original so there's some detective work involved and I'm not an expert in Bay matters

 

Start by ordering a decent ball joint splitter. The cheapest " pickle fork " (e.g. Laser brand) splitters that you hit with a big hammer are made from ordinary cheese metal. They damage your boots so you have to replace them, and splay apart as you apply hammer force instead of splitting the joints.
I am trying a Kennedy brand lever plus big bolt type splitter from Cromwell Tools ( all the stuff I bought from them has been reaonable) .. its in the post. I looked on eBay and some of the pictures showed tools that could either snap or bend before suspension ball joints give way..I will check to see if it fits when I get it.. I bought it for a track rod end replacment.

 

Camping and keeping the dog cool







Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Finally got round to replacing that dodgy earth job I started last week, like you [mention]SkutterBob [/mention] made use of the daughters nimble fingers! Tappets could well be her next job which she’s happy to do if she gets a ‘wheelie thing’ to slide in and out!





Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

If @snotty can have a hole in the back of his bus, I want a bigger one !


And I found out for @paradox why the rear valance panel was not folded over properly at the seam... .. Turns out the previous "resto-monkeys" decided the previous folded over bit was so pretty they left it there.



I am just going to leave this one for later, put a patch over it and use the original hole to fill things up with Dynax.

I also had to plug weld the rear valance panel back together at the bottom, as it had started flapping away from the inner part of the rear valance..

 

That is grim Good luck.

I've found they seem to rot at the end of that chassis member. They just fill up with water.

 

More scraping, polydisc-ing and Dremelling, followed by a good squirting with Metal Ready. Tailgate hole stuffed with epoxy putty, which worked a treat, bit more sanding, then on with some Rusto tomorrow

 

That was it after some not very pretty welding, some grinding .. Its covered in filler now. Its never going to be perfect - I would need to cut more back to rebuild the pillar. So I will use the access hole I uncovered to spray some Dynax.. the whole bottom corner is ropey.. like that filler to the left..

 

Fitted an inner track rod ball joint .. water got in the old one through a manufacturing defect..



pinched boot .. and an elastic band.. at least the Meyle replacement uses steel rings...


Rusty ball joint.

These are installed with the ball down so driving through the Trent and its tributaries in 2020 after the last ever Dubfreeze probably started it off..

Guess which brand ...

This was almost too epic for the Kennedy brand balljoint breaker.. look at the mushroomed tip of the bolt, that started off with a parallel sided rectangular profile but PlusGas and a wait got it with a deafening bang in the end(the other joint on the wheel end)

At least it didnt just bend and slide off like my 1985 Laser brand one that I tried first.

 

nothing...nada...zilch

 

Drove from San tropez via Cannes to nice and then had the strangest noise coming from what I think is the back wheel - a metallic knocking sound that was rotational so as I slowed the knocking slowed and as moving faster then sped up - however no sound on acceleration only when foot off the gas. So I rolled underneath the van to probably the shock of the posh folks walking around Nice and checked drive train, wheels for tightness, anything fouling the wheels and could not find anything, checked that everything tight on drive shafts and all looked ok- Went and had lunch and then drove again and no noise ??? So got to campsite and took rear wheel off and the brake drum for inspection ( this was a royal pain in arse to get drum off) but all looked perfectly fine?? Still none the wiser can only imagine a stone or ???wheel balance weight or something got into drum but I don’t know - van drives and feels perfectly fine but was a very significant noise. Will see if comes back tomorrow

 

Dry CV joint. It won't go away, though sometimes a few good bumps or a corner spreads the last vestiges of grease enough to stop the knocking noise for a while.

 

It is quite a high pitched noise sounds like something tapping or rolling around - quite metallic - does this sound like the noise of a dry joint?

 

It would sound like someone hitting the bottom of the bus with a large spanner.

 

i recently had exactly this.

try driving without a hubcap on.
. ask me how i know...
mine clicks as it twists... i straightened it up and noise went.

Sent from my ELE-L09 using Tapatalk

 

Moved it from the front drive,to the back garden,in preparation to fill it up with junk for a boot sale this weekend. Hopefully,make a few quid.

 

Well no sign of grease leak around that area as all looks quite clean but if it happens again will get it on a ramp somewhere and see what’s going on - thanks for the advice - heading to Italy now so will see how far I get! We have driven nearly 10,000 km since end may on this trip so far and first issue other than a dropped door window and seized wipers so Cant curse the van