D Turbo HDI Axle Assembly

[Turbo7379]

I bought a 306 HDI that someone tried to install a recon rear axle but made a pigs ear of it. I'm trying to put everything back together correctly but I'm running into problems.

One arb end plate wasn't attached to the trailing arm because the holes didn't line up. I thought that maybe the 2 hubs were set at different heights. I removed the arb tonight and even sitting on the floor the 2 end plates are not parallel, one is slightly twisted in relation to the other.

Then I noticed that the end plate has a notch along 1 edge of the flat part but the notches on each plate were on opposite sides which makes me suspect that I have 2 left end plates - will a left plate slide onto the right end of the arb and vice versa?

The gorilla who fitted the rear brake calipers over tightened them and I had to resort to a large breaker bar to remove them. Unfortunately one of the bolts snapped off cleanly at the hub so I have to tackle removing that later!

Any help/advice appreciated.

[Poodle]

I can never get my arb end plates to line up cleanly either, doesn't seem to cause an issue. Probably worth checking your ride height though, judging by the rest of the job.

[welshpug]

getting the end plates on evenly is quite important, you preload the arb if you dont.

its quite easy, if done properly.

[Turbo7379]

I managed to get the arb sorted today. The left end plate was fitted wrong and once assembled correctly with the notch on the arb next to the hole in the end plate it all fitted perfectly on the axle.  

I also succeeded in getting the broken caliper bolt out. First job was to build up a stub on the bolt using my tig welder.



I cooled it down and tried turning the stub with vice grips, no movement! Then I noticed that a blob had ran onto the axle, welding the stub to the axle.  So it was out with the die grinder to cut off the blob. Once that was done the stub was easy to screw out, only finger tight!



The remains of the broken bolt is sitting on the axle. This was an M12 12.9 grade bolt so I'm guessing it was fitted with a large impact wrench and over torqued. I was pulling hard on a 3' breaker bar when it broke so it was very tight!


I also discovered a handy way of cleaning up brake discs. The ones on the axle were new but because the car was sitting so long they were badly rusted. I put one in my electrolysis tank overnight and it came out like new!