Boing (Part 4)

The final frontier ... not space, but the Front Anti Roll Bar

Katy didn't have a Front bar so a whole fixing kit was needed

The first part was fairly easy - undo the Drop link and bolt on the bracket. only one problem the bolt at the front would have had the nut just half on so we decided that a new shiny longer one would be better.

Then as we would be needing the spacing to decide where to fix things the next job was to assemble the bar and fittings loosely. This is the new 25mm bar in all it's glory, and the last time it will be clean

The bar was held in place with the front drop links and a bottle jack as you can see. The kit came with rivet nuts (more about that later which needed holes so we set off and drilled them

Unfortunately we discovered that the rivet nuts were just not going to work on Katy's Chassis.

The chassis has been plated with extra re-enforcing along it's full length as part of the strengthening to create a 127 chassis. It made the section too thick, and probably meant we could have actually tapped it and screwed straight into it, but we'd already drilled larger holes than would have been wanted for that so

After consideration of whether to go and try and find some even larger rivet nuts and tools (and the cost and delay) it was decided that the best option was to weld these brackets in place as they were never going to be moved anyway

Luckily Steve is a wizard with a welder so all I had to do was sit back and take pictures of the nice pretty sparks whilst waiting with a water spray just in case (Katy leaks oil and we were not going to be able to clean it all up)

So here it is in place, just a job of going over all the nuts and bolts and tightening them all up

So hopefully that's the end of the suspension upgrades. The improvement has been significant already and I feel that it's been really worthwhile.

The cost of the whole exercise has been about £1200 as. I've gone for high end components that should really stand the test of time. I've learned a lot I'm a lot more confident in being able to work on the suspension should we have any trouble again and most importantly the driving experience is already significantly improved so I can enjoy the view out of the window rather than worrying about every bump in the road