Front Suspension

For some reason, when envisaging building the car, it was always the suspension that seemed the fun part. No idea why, I know nothing about suspension systems, what they comprise of or how they work. Don't get me wrong, I know the buzz words, "wishbones", "shock absorbers", "coils", and I'm well aware of what a ball joint is as one broke on my 1275GT mini back in the day leaving me on 3 wheels in the middle of Kings Norton Green roundabout. Luckily this is next to a police station who's occupants dragged my car out of the way to free up the traffic, but I digress.

The suspension bits. Four wishbones, a bag of
bushes, a green box full of crush tubes, and in
the top right, a drag link. 

Following the instructions for a car similar to my car (they're still working on instructions for my actual car), it all looked quite easy.
Put some bushes in the wishbones, some tubes in the bushes, attach a ball joint and a drag link. So what's a drag link then? A quick Google Images search and I knew what to look for when rummaging through my boxes. Found them, right.

So the bushes in the wishbones. The instructions would have be squeezing them in by a vice, but alas, my vice is too small, so I borrowed a bigger one, which was also too small. One quick trip to the shops later and I have a multi-angle vice that's also yellow so that I don't lose it.

It appears that fitting the bushes into the wishbones is THE most frustrating task ever. Trying to get them to fit in evenly is near impossible, and I didn't want to damage them by forcing them. After 30 mins, I had one in out of sixteen and things were very close to be thrown around the garage. Time for a break.

After another twenty mins, I had another one in, not using the vice, but by squeezing with my hands, although this was more by luck as no others would go in that way. Time for a break.

As this is very frustrating and seemingly impossible, I figured other people would have a solution on their build logs. Apparently not, as no one else seemed to mention it at all. Hmm, what about if I scrap the vice method and make a tool? Ok, stop laughing, at this point you probably know enough about me to know that I've never made anything in my life, but I have a plan. I just needed a 12mm drill and I'd be fi... oh wait, biggest I have is 6.5mm, so lets bodge two holes together. 

Bush Fitter 3000 (c) 2013, all rights reserved, pat pending.

There we have it, a bush fitting tool, I'm going to call it a Bush Fitter 3000 [tm]. Ok, so it just looks like a nut and bolt with a square metal plate with two one hole drilled through it, but you wait and see.

Right, the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm] is an improvement, but it's still about as easy as doing a rubics cube while riding a unicycle and juggling (I did actually Google this to see if anyone has achieved it see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRAwkwFMbSI although I still don't think it's easy!).

Taking a picture whilst holding
the wishbone and the
vice proved difficult.

While using the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm], I noticed how deformed the bush gets before snapping into the wishbone, so I went back to the vice method and just gave it some grief and it actually worked. This quickly turned into a technique (as my vice kept falling apart if I didn't do it in a particular way), and before you know it, all sixteen bushes were in place.

If anyone reads this and is hella frustrated about how to fit the bushes, give me a shout and I'll go through my technique. Having a vertical vice helped a lot! However I am willing to sell on the rights to the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm] if necessary.

All bushes in place.

There you go, bushes fitted. Now to put the crush tubes into the bushes. Again the vice is needed for this, but unfortunately even my new yellow vice is too small to fit it all in which is a bit of a problem. I tried without a vice, and it looks like this could be a challenge. Time to go and have a think about where to find a big vice.