Bianca Ratlye

[C2K]

So, about time I made an update to this I suppose.

As per previous posts it seems that my beam was best taken apart looking at the state of the arm shaft and bearings. Blessing in disguise that I had reason to take it apart I suppose as it wouldn't have lasted long.

So, out with the outer bearings. One came willingly:


The other required a puller using some M14 stud and a backplate:


Which also worked nicely for pulling the inner bearings out. So it was obvious that there was some surface rust in the tube, so cue a handy wire brush with a cable tie and a length of airline...


That worked to clean the beam up a treat, and blew it out with an airline afterwards to clean it up.

Looking at my trailing arms I had a torsion bar stuck in the one trailing arm. Took it to work, and through judicious use of a BFOH and a Bigger BFOH the torsion bar was soon free. The penetrating fluid i'd been applying liberally had worked it's way through in most places, but was then leaking through the first full thickness path so no longer having much effect. Regardless, they both came out in the end:



I took the arm shafts to work and used the press to pop them both out, and brought the arms home so I could clean everything up.


Stripping the old seals and carriers off:


Now, I needed to knock the new bearings into the tube. You can use various tools to do this, but I happened to choose a sleeve for an English Electric 500MW emergency governor trip bolt, which happened to be the perfect size. I used no 1, but no2 would also suffice.





Outer bearings I just used a lump of ally I had kicking about which was perfectly sized:


Cleaned up the end plates ready for my hybrid arb. I noticed the new shafts were capable of accepting the 30mm ARB so i'm on the lookout for one of those casually.


Torsion bars powdercoated and greased up, arm shafts pressed in and all ready to go back together, I added in some solid beam mounts and used a dummy shock I got made at work to set the ride height aiming for a 30mm drop on 21mm VTS bars.

Just need to pick some new Nylocs up for the shock and mount bolts tomorrow and job done, had all the bolts on the wire brush on the grinder so all nice and clean. Very pleased with how it turned out even though i just threw whatever paints I had kicking about at it lol.



So in one hit i'll have solid beam mounts, lowered 30mm, VTS 21mm bars and a Hybrid arb.

Aside from that i've just been driving it really. Haven't had any bother from her at all and had been umming and ahhing about a track day when I had a nasty accident on my road bike which wasn't pleasant. I got a tax reminder on the mat this week reminding me she's due for an MOT, can't believe it's been a year already. I've gotta get it booked in for an MOT and then the beam can go on, along with my Russian guy top mounts.

Only frustration is my Magnex if making a right racket. Buzzes like mad at 4k which is the Baffles, but as it warms through i get lots of strange noises and it's generally very irritating. Going to have to cut it open and see what's what I think.