La Tempesta

Although there haven’t been any updates for over a month, a lot of things have been going on. None of them have improved or even changed La Tempesta even the tiniest little bit, but read on …

(more…)

The final suspension piece, the front anti-roll bar (ARB), was mounted a couple of days ago, ending a long sub-project of renewing the suspension and to a certain extent the driveline. The suspension is now officially done! The 29 mm polyurethane bushings arrived in the mailbox Wednesday, and later in the evening I was on the garage floor to fit it. Even though the bushings are split and clips around the bar without problems,  there was a very large amount of more or less useless fitting grease in the bag. Another artifact for the treasure chest then.

(more…)

Earlier this week I spent almost the entire Monday and Tuesday evening in the garage, slowly mounting the last pieces of the front suspension together. As usual there was a small-ish mistake to correct. Four of the tie rod ends I got this winter had castellated nuts, but the last two had nyloc locking nuts and a rather long bolt. I don’t know how I came to the cinclusion that the nyloc variant should be on the inner side of the outer arms, but it soon became apparent that they touched the rubber dust jackets of its neighbours as the centre rod moved sideways. Since having a working steering is quite practical, the outer steering arms had to be turned 180 degrees. That took me quite a while since the tapered ends were torqued into the arms on the idler and steering box.

(more…)

I managed to put in a few hours in the garage today too, and since the suspension parts are more or less in place on the car I decided to start changing the bearing races in the hubs and pack the hubs with grease. After a short pep-talk with Svein on the phone, he told me that the races are the parts that actually become worn. It was tempting to just leave the races in place and drop the new conical needle bearings right in, but I’m glad I didn’t.

(more…)