17th October 2010 - Axles off!

The last "big" items still attached to the chassis were the front and rear axles, complete with springs and shock absorbers. I'd like to say they came off without a problem - but they didn't. To be fair, nearly all of the bolts holding the springs to the chassis did come undone reasonably easily, but the front bolt on the rear nearside spring absolutely would not come out of it's hole - the bolt was rusted solid inside the spring. I tried various approaches to removing it - heating it up with a blowtorch, beating it with a very large hammer, etc. In the end, I used Mr AngleGrinder to remove the hanger itself from the chassis - that should put my welding skills to the test some time in the future.

So the chassis now looks like this:

I bought some cheap and cheerful axle stands to keep it off the ground (they were less than £10 a pair!). Originally the plan was to start the chassis renovation right away, but time is moving on and I'm concerned that if I jetwash it inside and out at this time of year, it'll sit there full of water all winter without drying out. So I'm going to finish removing the last couple of bits from the chassis (bulkhead brackets, handbrake, etc.) and then wrap it up until the spring. It's not as if I haven't got anything else to be getting on with!

For completeness, here are the axles sat alongside the garage - these will be stripped and rebuilt, along with the springs and shock absorbers. I see no reason to replace perfectly good components just because they're a bit grubby.

So I'm now at the point where all the main deconstruction is complete - Pod is in lots of bits now! I've got to start the actual restoration process - but where to start...?