Front end repair

There was some serious rust under the left front corner, right around the torsion bar mounting plate. This is apparently quite common, especially here in the pacific north west. The folks at Weissach here in Vancouver supported me and got some replacement parts from Restoration Design in Michigan.

Here are a series of pages with pictures that will take you through the steps.

First, I had to remove the rusty bits ... here.

Then we fitted the new piece.

And added some undercoat and Por15.

And now it has the Wurth undercoat and I can add the suspension.

Well, as I had the engine out for some repairs it seemed the ideal tme to paint the engine compartment ...

Before I re-installed the suspension, I had to replace one of the struts. Why? Well, one strut was a Boge and one was a Bilstein. (Don't ask em how that happened - it was before I owned the car). I bought a second-hand Bilstein through Weissach. When I got ready to install things, however, I realized that I was missing a seal from the top of the strut. I had a heck of a time getting a replacement - it was not in any parts catalogs and no one here seemed to know much about it. Well, Bilstein said that only they can do it. All I had to do was send the struts to them. This seemed excessively compelx but after a conversation with Steve Weiner at Rennsport in Portland I sent the struts off to Bilstein. When they were returned it seemed that they had replaced a bearing surface and provided a new seal. The bearing surface is actually a sleeve bearing inside the strut. I was not aware that this was possible. It was not terribly expensive and I think that it was worth doing. Here are a couple of shots for you to see.

Click here for the strut pictures.

And now here it is ...