March 28, 2010 blog

A weekend full of hope…

I got up early on saturday morning to finish off what I had started the week before (replacing bushes on the rear axel), and now armed with a 1/2 drive 18mm socket I thought it would be easier going this week.

I had changed the rear track control arm (RTAB) bush the weekend before, but had not finished with the top ball joint, (as I was waiting on the part to arrive from BMW). Also the week before I had noticed that the anti roll bar drop links were well past there sell by dates on both sides, so I removed and replaced these whilst the car was in the air.

snapped-boltThen I hit a snag, I moved around to the drivers side to do the top ball joint, no problems, and then started to remove the three bolts that hold the rear track control arm bush holder to the body of the car, one of these snapped clean off (as you can see in the photo) and it left me with this as an issue. A couple of places that I have spoken to have suggested leave it as it is, as two will hold it securely, but for piece of mind I think I want three bolts holding the carrier in, as the car is being used for racing, so when I can get the car down to BM Sport they will get the rest of the bolt out, and do the alignment on the car, so at least I can get to the first race.

I think I am going to have to leave the clutch to be done in-between the large gap in racing that we have during may and june, as it would be cutting it very tight to get this done for Brands on the 17/18th of April.

UPDATE.
snapped-bolt-outJags at bmsport (http://www.bmsport.com) removed the bolt with skill, he drilled the center of the bolt with increasingly large drills, until he could get some special tool into the center of the snapped bolt, then with a little heat it was out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.