I'll get to the title in a minute. First, something momentous: That's right! The Mini is finally sitting on the ground. No more jack stands, dismantled drive train or dripping joints. It's finally able to move and roll. I would add that it could do this under its own power except the battery is dead! 11.06 volts. Not nearly enough to crank the engine and unfortunately my jumper cables are in Manhattan, in the back of my wife's car. I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to drive it. What a bummer.
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I really liked admiring my handy work and all the shiny new bits in the suspension, but the brakes were really letting the side down. There were shiny new wheels, shiny new discs, shiny new tie bars, shiny new ball joints, cleaned and black hubs and control arms, even some green brake pads and then...rust.
This just left me feeling like all my work was, well, unfinished. I knew something had to be done about it. I didn't want to take the caliper off the brake hose because that would require bleeding the system and I wasn't really interested in doing that. So, I got one of those brush-on kits and a little white later, I have black calipers. Part of the car at any rate, can finally join the 21st Century. No longer will it be stuck playing cassettes! It can finally know what an MP3 is and learn that the discy thing doesn't require a needle, but uses a laser instead.
This was a project I have wanted to do for a little while, but just hadn't found the time. Today, I found 45 minutes and can now enjoy my drives a little more. So just 5 months after the incident, I believe I have finally repaired all the damage. It has been a long time coming, but all the work should be worth it. What started off as just brakes and ball joints turned into so much more. I ended up replacing the brake discs, the brake pads, the tie bars (nothing related to the accident but they were in a bad state and since everything was disassembled anyway...), track rod ends, ball joints, re-greasing the wheel bearings, replacing the bearing seals and replacing the inner CV boot. All in all it has been a lot of work and a lot of frustration, but I can finally say it is all done.
I haven't taken the car off the jack stands yet, but I'm hoping for a test drive some time this week. I still have to decide if I want to paint the calipers so they don't look so nasty. All in all I'm very pleased! Well this was a relatively successful weekend. The good news is one side of the car is finished. The bad news is that I discovered some more damaged from the accident that had gone unnoticed. So for starters, the good news: The driver side of the car is completely reassembled and all I need to do is put the caliper back on. Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself. The hub has been completely assembled with new ball joints, re-greased bearings with new seals and new tie rods to replace the old split ones. I test fit the new wheels and everything seems to roll smoothly. On to the bad news: It seems that at some point, the inner CV boot was ripped. I'm not sure if this was directly related to the accident, but it sure is annoying. I was really hoping to have everything running by now. So, instead of driving it, I'm waiting on another shipment from 7. Hopefully I can repair the damages on Saturday because there is a car show on Sunday that I was to go to.
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