Two days before Christmas which is always exciting and I have a day of garage action.  I started by pressing the bushes into the chassis on the near side to finish that job.

I then turn my attention to the front suspension because I want to return the complete units to storage at my Mother-in Laws house and free up some space.  I actually drove them round there last week along with the petrol tank but decided against dropping them off because I need to keep hold of the shock absorber.  It occurred to me that I need the shock to ensure that the inner wing doesn't obstruct its movement and mounting the inner wings is rapidly becoming a job I need to do.  I detached the shock from the front suspension by removing the bolt that holds it to the top of the king pin assembly.  Naturally I killed the bolt in the process.

I was about to load the wishbone/king pin assembly back into the car for transportation when I noticed the two bolts that hold the wishbone into the chassis.  Having spent hours sanding / polishing the chassis mounts for the rear leaf springs I realised that I would need to ensure that these fit into the front mounting apertures post galvanising.  So I removed them from the wishbones and cleaned them up.







































Having done that I dropped off the front suspension units and brake drums that I worked on a month or so to the In-Laws for storage.  When I returned I had a package from Ahead 4 Healeys containing the shackles and pins.  I knew instantly that they had sent what I thought was the outer shackle when I needed the inner, damn.  I gave them a call and discovered that they had started their Christmas holiday an hour earlier and wouldn't be back until I was safely back at school, oh well.  I was pleased to get the lower shackle pin though as it meant I could see if the bushes were properly aligned.  I greased the bushes and eased the pins in, success.  The near side pin feels perfect, the off side pin is very tight, there is the correct movement but boy is it stiff.  If the car was being used now I wouldn't be troubled by it as I am sure it would settle in nicely.  But as it will be years before the car is used I will have to make sure that it settles in correctly as I wouldn't want to have to change the pin or the bushes.









































If you look at the two vertical marks on the chassis in the picture above this shows the place where the rear chassis member that holds the bumper mounts.  Directly alongside that sits the boot box section.  This section also runs along the rear edge of the chassis meaning that the whole area is extremely difficult to get to.  Perish the thought of replacing those bushes on a complete car.