My 3B Coupe project - Total rebuild

[AndyP]

Can you remind me where your LMs came from originally?

Try PM'ing Rob AKA Polishing Frenchman, he was the original owner

[Error404]

Cool cheers mate, I'll look into those. My springs are getting crusty after only a few k mikes, pretty depressing! My car is garaged and I don't drive it over winter. ****** climate! Can you remind me where your LMs came from originally?

[AndyP]

Nice job Andy, Denso tape ordered
Not seen the coilover covers before, where are they from?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CUSTOM-COV...4AAOxy4dNS92nu

Pretty certain this is why my Bilsteins failed so quickly, there is no room to run the std cover with the 2.25" coilover springs, so the seals got trashed. The KW's do have a built in cover but I wanted to be certain they'd stay clean.

KW's came from Danny at DNA

http://www.dnaautocare.co.uk/

I did try seam welding the subframes, but even though they'd been cleaned there was still dirt trapped in the gap and I couldn't get it to weld cleanly with my TIG, if I'd have tried MIG it might of worked.

[Error404]

Nice job Andy, Denso tape ordered
Not seen the coilover covers before, where are they from?

[newsh]

Very tidy!

[neal1981]

Looks mighty clean mate,where did you get the suspension from?

[PRY4SNO]

Nice work with the denso tape.

How come you didn't seam weld the subframes while they were being refurbished?

[AndyP]

Decided I better get my act together and fit the re-furbished subrames and suspension. When I stripped the passenger side I found some rust that I thought I better deal with at the same time and as with most jobs, this snowballed into an all weekend affair!



Bumber and wings off to get the washer bottle out of the way


Rust wire brushed out, and treated, then washed, de-greased and dried.


Unused holes in wing plugged up


Masked ready for underseal


Coated with 3M 08861 and new KW V1 installed


Whiteline anti rollbar drop links installed along with coilover covers


Top tip for front track rod adjusters, wrap them in Denso tape. Mine were wrapped from new, must be over 2 years now.


This is the result when I took it off, no corrosion and the adjusters were free!


Best £7 you'll spend
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Denso-50mm...cAAOSw3ydVpibY

Forgot to get and pictures of the subrame, but it's been chemically stripped, hot galvanised, powder coated, then coated with 3M 08861 inside and out, it better not go rusty this time!

Now just go to do the same again on the rear

[Error404]

Cheers mate, I'll give it a try

[AndyP]

Nice work Andy. Im going to be prepping some hubs with new bearings soon. Is there a technique to getting the dust covers off without damaging them?

I just popped them out by pushing the race out from the inside, didn't need any tools. You'll see once you have the bearing in your hand

[Error404]

Nice work Andy. Im going to be prepping some hubs with new bearings soon. Is there a technique to getting the dust covers off without damaging them?

[4WheelDrifter]

Well my car did not make it down to ADI due to a grumbling front wheel bearing, so here's the tale of the fix.

This is the old bearing I took out, it's a Ruville bearing bought from a well known Audi parts supplier and I'm guessing at the mileage, but it can't have done more than 10k miles





The outer seals were still intact but as you can see there is not a great deal of grease in there and looking closely at the face you can see where it's started to break up, causing the noise



Now, if you search for 'wheel bearing' on here, you'll find on almost every thread user Caterpillar banging on about putting this fancy Mobil grease in your new bearings, so I decided to get some. I couldn't get the grade he used, but after asking the local Mobil rep, he recommended this



So I striped the new bearing, FAG bearing this time. As you can see, still light on lubricant.



Cleaned out the old 'grease' which looked very much like Vaseline!



And re-packed them with Mobil's finest synthetic grease



The first test drive revealed that it's now as quiet as a mouse, so I'll be doing the other side when I get chance.

I'll report back on the long term benefits

Caterpillar has been saying for years that the original bearing grease is ****. A job well done, Andy.

an other thing,the grease in the org bearing are some ****,so i use to open the dustrings(use a knife)carefuly,and fill the bearings with the MOBIL xhp222 grease in,and set in the dustrings back,the grease are BLUE coluored. its the grease they use on heavy loaded lorrys.its the BEST grease to use in the most places.in the outer joint and so on.

[neal1981]

when are you doing mine Andy? only joking pal lol

[Quattro Dan.]

To save cutting anything you could have just bought the different pad retaining spring. The different pads are listed as pin type sensor and ( forget name of the other) BTDT.

Hope this helps for next time

Also found another horror story while I was doing the bearing. When I took the brake caliper off, the brake pad literally fell apart

Part of the pad had already broken off


The rest of the pad had cracks running through it and fell off as soon as I lifted the caliper off the disc


There is plenty of life left in the pad, so a visual inspection through the wheel would not reveal any problems. I decided to try a different pad this time, these were DS2500, so I went for Pagid S sport pads


Even though they are listed as used in 996's I had to cut of these 'ears' to get them to fit.


I've only done about 20miles so far but initial findings are that they've got loads more bite from cold compared to the DS2500's, I'll report back on high speed findings once they're bedded in.

[AndyP]

Also found another horror story while I was doing the bearing. When I took the brake caliper off, the brake pad literally fell apart

Part of the pad had already broken off


The rest of the pad had cracks running through it and fell off as soon as I lifted the caliper off the disc


There is plenty of life left in the pad, so a visual inspection through the wheel would not reveal any problems. I decided to try a different pad this time, these were DS2500, so I went for Pagid S sport pads


Even though they are listed as used in 996's I had to cut of these 'ears' to get them to fit.


I've only done about 20miles so far but initial findings are that they've got loads more bite from cold compared to the DS2500's, I'll report back on high speed findings once they're bedded in.