Sunday afternoon, time to fit the diff ! simple procedure fitting 2 long bolts with washers, spaces, and nuts, then a further 2 bolts and washers to the front of the diff, what could be simpler ???
First thing, check that the bolts will fit through all the holes, (been there before not checking !). Good they all fit !. Now lifting the diff, its a heavy little thing and to make things easy its a 2 man job, so got Alex to give me a hand. Soon figured out if we where going to do this we would need a 3rd man ! A quick scratch of the head and the workmate came out, placed under the rear end of the car and a trolley jack with the diff nicely balanced on top !
Procedure is to get the lower bolt, spacers, and washers in first, again easier as a 2 man team. Problem no.1... spacers to long ! only by 1.5mm, but still impossible to get in, probably due to the extra thick powder coating on the frame. Don't want to take the powder coating off the frame so a little work on the bench grinder soon had the spacers to the correct size, just tight enough to slip in between the frame and the diff on either side.
Next step is to get the top long bolt, spacers, and washers in, once again the spacers are 1.5mm to long... another trip to the bench grinder.
Now for the 2 bolts at the front of the diff, this part was frustrating ? Holes in the frame about 0.5mm out ! So to try and get these bolts in we did notice there was slight movement in the top bolt on the diff, so we disassembled the top bolt we just put in and tried the front bolts again, this time they seemed to fit, but very tight. Problem No.2 !
The only thing I could think of was that the threads in the diff where either dirty or damaged ? So the whole diff came out, M12 tap in hand and re tapped the thread, not sure if it was damaged or dirty but it did the trick, after the bolts went in easily.
OK, so new procedure for me getting the diff in is...
1. Lower bolt, spacers, washers
2. Front bolts and washers
3. Top bolt, spacers, washers.
4. Well earned cuppa !
As you can see from the photo, the front bolts have not been fully tightened, need some stud lock on these which I purchased a few weeks ago... and can I find it.. NO ? So somewhere in the garage or house there is a bottle of stud lock waiting for these bolts, I will find it, cos at £5 a bottle its expense stuff, "Sods Law" says if I buy another bottle I'll find it on my return from the shop !
Time for a little clear up of the tools, they all seemed to have escaped the tool box in the past 2 weeks and is looking untidy again. last job of the day, got 4 bolts to connect the diff to the prop shaft, once again not tightened up, just waiting to find the stud lock !
OK round up of time taken so far...
Scuttle part 2... 3hrs
Scuttle part 3... 1 hr
Diff fitting... 4 hrs
Searching for Stud Lock... 1hr (Found it !)
So Total time now 38 hours
11 weeks since kit started.
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