What joy!

So with a day off work and a load of parts from Chris Witor today was a good day to crack on with PMW.

Unbolting the rear trailing arm suspension bushes went better than feared so it was straight on to the usual method of setting fire to the old bushes to help remove them.

Then it was removing the centre steel tube and all going according to plan. Removing the rubber bushes themselves wasn't quite so easy until I came up with the novel idea of drilling them out with a 1" wood drill which worked very very well.

My experience in the past has been that inserting the new polybushes is a piece of cake but no matter what I tried with bolts, washers and or old sockets they wouldn't co-operate. Here's the best I could manage!

So I bit the bullet and did as advised and removed the whole trailing arm. The flex brake pipe didn't want to undo though so I cut through it as I have new braided ones to fit. It looks like the actual "solid" brake pipe is going to break when I undo it so it looks like I'll need a new one made up.

It looks like I'll be doing a complete rebuild now with new brake pipes, new wheel cylinder (nearside), new brake shoes, new polybushes, springs, shock absorbers and various other bits and pieces. I only hope PMW plays ball when we do the 10CR. I do keep threatening it with an emergency purchase of an Austin Maestro if it doesn't!

Here's the arm off the car ready for me to return to the attack on Saturday.