Front suspension and steering

 So finally after having the car for 6 weeks, I was able to start building. The first mission was the front suspension and steering rack. Having had a chance to read a lot of other build diaries and learn from their adventures, the front wishbones and dampers went in with little fuss. All the bolts and nuts are only finger tight at this stage, and these will be tightened before I drop it onto its wheels, and then torqued correctly once on the ground.


Connecting the steering column to the steering rack spline proved to be an interesting task, as it would not press fit together easily and required a fair amount of persuasion to get it mated. I ended up having to remove the entire rack and the bottom half of the steering column and assemble it on the bench. 

The bolt that finally secured it was also interesting and I suspect I will take it off and replace it in the near future. One lesson learnt from the hours of reading other builders blogs was not to tighten anything and pre fit everything first. This meant the steering rack only went in 3 times!  I must be mellowing as these sort of issues that would have had me previously throwing tools and yelling expletives now merely cause me to chuckle and walk away only to come back later and solve easily.




 One thing I have come to rely on is other builders photos and descriptions as an invaluable source of truth. I have taken far more photos than are shown here, so if for some reason you find yourself using my build as a reference, feel free to drop me a line and I will share the other photos with you. 


Once the uprights and calipers went on, it started to resemble a car (from front on anyway)!