Rear Suspension

I started with the right hand side wishbones. Having read a lot of other build diaries, I expected the act of getting the washers in between the chassis and the pivot was going to be hard. The upper wishbone wasn't to bad......but the lower was unbelievable. The whole art of getting the washers to line up with the chassis holes and the pivot was a dark art. Also getting the final washer in took a very gentle hand with a hammer, needle nose pliers and a screw driver to progressively tap the washer home. So after nearly 4 hours I had one pair of wishbones in! Decided that was enough for one day and would come back tomorrow to tackle the left side. Would you believe the left side tolerances were much better and I had both wishbones on the left mounted in under 30 minutes.

Flushed with my new found success, I moved on to the right rear damper. It took a few goes to work out the right combination of spacers and washers but I think I have the top mount sorted. Bottom mount was easy although the bolt protrusion and nut fouled the front of the upright casting. I decided to set up the camber and caster now, as this would help with the shock mount fouling the upright, and I needed to make massive changes to the ball joint adjuster on the upper wishbone to get it to fit into the upright. This brings me to an interesting point. How much thread needs to be left in the upper wishbone after you have adjusted the upper ball joint for camber? The overall thread length is 34mm, and after setting up a neutral camber (admittedly with no wheels/tires on, and no load on suspension) I have exposed 19mm of thread, leaving 15mm in the wishbone as can be seen in the photo below. This doesn't seem a lot given the importance of that contact point so I will be sure to be checking this with Birkin and on the forums at Ozclubbies.com.au.

After leveling the chassis and setting up the camber and caster correctly the issue of the damper bottom mount fouling the upright has now gone. While I was in the general area, I adjusted the hard lines for the rear brakes, and attached the flexible brake lines to the hard lines, and then ran the flexible line out to the brake caliper and attached. Again everything at this stage is only finger tight. I will probably replace the brake lines with braided lines in the future, but will use what is supplied for now. I am waiting for a few missing parts, so will leave the left upright and damper off until they arrive. I still have the handbrake pivot assembly, differential, rear stabiliser and fuel tank to fit before the rear is done.