I made some decent progress today, inbetween showers at least! Very odd it was, lovely sunshine follwed all of a sudden by an intense shower. Delayed April showers perhaps?
The ol' girl is on her own 4 wheels again, i'm not quite sure of the new 15" alloys but they are growing on me, my current state of mind is thet they look 'smart'. It does look quite odd with the front 17" steels on and the 15" standard alloys on the back. I think putting the volvo alloys on the front will have to be bumped up in the priority list, this means looking into the front brakes too of course... Fingers crossed the front calipers don't need refurbishing too! Although I expect some new parts might be required up there.
First though re-assembly. I didn't go for new caliper retention patch bolts as Haynes suggests, but I did clean up the old ones, removing the old thread-lock and putting a drop or two of new stuff in the hole for the bolts. They cleaned up quite nicely, and the heads are hardly rounded at all, excellent.
Newly refurbished SHINY calipers! I do like shiny. A lot. New pads, flexis, sliders and clips makes it all rather nice. I must say I was impressed with Bigg Red, they were pretty quick, speedy postage and excellently packed calipers on return too. The calipers themselves look very smart, the standard finish is pretty good and although I was tempted with a fancy top coat, they'll never be seen and as it was an expense I wasn't expecting the standard finish is just fine.
All reassembled. The sharp eyed amongst you may notice that one of the pads isn't correctly secured (2nd pic), I thankfully did notice this, so had the sliders back out and re-inserted them properly.
I got my new Teng torque wrenches out for the very first time, lovely bits of kit. And they come with a
box.
Torqued the caliper bolts up to spec (the top bolts at least, the bottom ones that you can't get a socket on were just done up BLOODY tight), I also torqued up all the rear axle bolts/nuts that I could. The trailing arm's axle retaining bracket and torque rod nuts i'll need to buy the correct sockets for, I didn't have a deep 17mm 3/8" drive nor any 19mm 1/2" drive socket (ordered this evening), they got tightened as much as I could with a spanner for now though.
So rear brakes/wheels? Check - although the handbrake needs adjusting of course. Axle? Just needs a few more bolts torquing and some new diff oil. Next? I think we'll look into the front brakes and swap over the front wheels, selling the 17" steelies will help offset some of the unexpected costs at the very least! I expect when it comes to it i'll be asking about worhtwhile front brake upgrades to deal with the extra oomph of the 2.5 turbo, but i'll see what I find when I get there, the front calipers/discs/pads may be shot anyway. The front adaptor plates will have to come off too... We'll see how that goes!
I must get some new indicator/sidelight units too, they are quite crazed and faded. The volvo alloys are ok, the pictures are VERY flattering. Ideally they need refurbshing, but a bloody good polish will certainly help remove some of the stains and marks. I put the two best tyres on the back, the other two will definitely need replacing for the front, i'll look into that before they go on. The AX needs a new tyre or two aswell and the MOT is coming up, so I may be looking for deals and offers if nayone knows of any just now?
Thanks folks, comments and opinions welcome
I wonder if there are any more Hearses on here?