Back under the car!

This year definitely hasn't gone to plan, I've done odd little jobs on the car but made very little progress until today when I got a few solid hours working on/under it.

Quick catch up - I got the front brake calipers off in June and had them refurbished. More recently I bought new front brake discs and pads along with new flexible hoses for the front; there are two on each side. I also bought a hub nut tool as the hub has to come off to replace the disc. Unfortunately when I tried to use it the nut was so tight one of the lugs broke off:

The broken hub nut tool

I bought a second tool from a different source, as with the one I bought for the rear it was designed to be used with a tommy bar but knowing everything I tried on the rear just bent I immediately bought an impact socket to weld into the tool so I could use a breaker bar:
Modified tool with socket welded in

Unfortunately it didn't remove the nut and having tried I could see the lugs were beginning to bend so decided to resort to scrapping the nut and drilled it to split it at which point it came off quite easily.

The nut after drilling and using a chisel to split and remove it

A while ago I decided that it would be worth replacing the CV joint boots as they must be very old so maybe likely to crack if put to use. Doing that entails removing the driveshafts of course so at least having the hub nut off is part of the job. I undid the bolts holding the inner CV joint to the flange, and took off mountings for the anti-roll bar and shock absorber from the lower wishbone. The bottom ball joint was very tight in the upright and by the time I'd got the separator tool I have tight enough to split it the thread was damaged (I had tried leaving the nut on initially but as a castellated nut it wouldn't have provided much protection and might actually have got stuck on). The rubber split on the joint so I'll order new ones of those.

Lower ball joint split from hub and anti-roll bar removed from wishbone

Shock absorber lower mounting removed

Hub after removing the disc assembly

The Fulvia has a transverse leaf spring on the front so I need to take the tension from that to enable me to remove the driveshaft. In a recent episode of Wheeler Dealers (series 15, episode 8) they featured a Fulvia and rebuilt the driveshafts. Ant Anstead made a tool from steel bar to take out the tension so I will do the same. Once I've done that it hopefully won't be too difficult to get the shaft out and replace the boots - fingers crossed!

The disc and drive flange after removal


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