Suprisingly the rear Axle assembly did not need too much work, first job was to remove the Sierra Rear Damper mounting, we are going to fit coil over suspension so we do not need this bit of excess metal any more.
Apart from another coat of Hammerite one other thing needed on the Axle was to fit some clips to the Brake Pipes.
Joey looking to see what else is required.
Oh yes, the bracket that links the brake flexy pipe with the rigid pipe was originally screwed longways along the Tube so we decided to put a nice curve on the bracket and fit across instead so the Rigid pipe could then run along the tube to the T Junction.
This Chassis has been Blessed, its a "Holy Chassis"
A bit of an unwanted divertion from the Hood Build was the sad demise of the old faithful TD Mondeo,
We had the car for over 7 years and it has been pretty reliable in its 200k Miles lifetime, Unfortunately a year and six months ago it suffered a failure of the Cambelt Idler Pulley. it was a bit annoying because the Cambelt was changed regularily, Anyway a garage in Gainsborough carried out the work and tried to charge me £300 more than the original quote , after a bit of an argument I paid the first figure and went my way. Now all this time later the Belt snapped on me Arghh, My Mate Steve from Hi Q in Gainsborough said it should still be under the guarantee as I had only done 32366 miles since the last job, Steve talked it over with the garage owner who got his book out and refused to sort it out under warranty because the figure quoted to replace the belt was 32000 miles arghh.
What a shitter 366 miles over the figure, crap service IMHO so this garage will not get any more service from me anyway.
It was not worth while mending the engine again so the decision was made to break it up, Steve has managed to sell off some of the tyres and
we could use lots of bits in our Kit Cars and whats left would be sold as scrap metal. Some of the bits would be used on our newly purchased replacement which is another Mondeo but this time a 2.5 V6 24V, But thats another story.
Back to the Hood, here we see Joey starting to weld up the millions of holes He was very impressed with the new welder and found it easier to use than the last one. I'm quite glad he likes it because he can concentrate on the welding and I can grind it all smooth ready for painting.
Here is some of his handywork pretty good that a 14 year old can weld so well I think !
And look at these, perfect, just what was needed,
well done Joey.
One task that we needed to do was to drill some bigger holes on any of the tubes that don't open at the ends and then roll the Chassis over a few times to get out all the Rivet tails, that will save a few Kgs of weight
Then we plugged the new holes as well.
Look at this small part of our collection, Imagine how the car would rattle with this lot inside
