Monday, March 19, 2007
Ramps broke, again!
I think our 4 poster is reaching the end of it's life if recent experience is anything to go by. The internal chains broke on Friday leaving a Stag high and dry at the top of it's travel. Bearing in mind it was only fixed and serviced a few weeks ago following some bright spark dropping it down on a V8 saloon exhaust system and wrecking one of the corner post bearings (not exactly the ramps fault!). I wouldn't mind but the workshop is fit to burst with a fresh influx of customers cars all requiring the services of a ramp. We have 5 customer cars in at the moment needing servicing, pre MOT, and suspension work. I even had to do the wife's 2.5 saloon front suspension on Saturday with the aid of a trolley jack. All the usual stuff needed attention including a bottom ball joint, a track rod end, and a new set of pads. I seem to be changing ball joints every couple of years on our own cars these days, and Ive had the luxury of new old stock Stanpart items, Ive tried a repro one this time to see if it fairs any better. Oh well seems like I'll have to give the ramp specialists a bell this morning, we are on first name terms now!
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Dave
ReplyDeleteDo your NOS rod ends have nipples?
My Vitesse had a mention on the last MOT and so I tracked down some NOS with nipples hoping they might last better.
Steve
ReplyDeleteThe NOS joints mentioned in the post above were track control arm lower ball joints for the 2000/2.5 range. The power steering track rod end was a repro item (I haven't had NOS ones of those for years).
We used to have some NOS Standard Ten greaseable track rod ends that could be used on Heralds/Vitesse, all now long gone. They are easilly identified as they don't have convential gaiters instead they rely on tin shit shields. I'm no great fan of NOS stuff myself prefering to sell it to the show/shine brigade. I'm finding a lot of the repro stuff these days better than old stock 'original' stuff specially for the big saloons. Don't get me wrong it's not all sweetness and light with the repro stuff there is still some real tat out there! Fortunately everything coming out of China recently has been excellent, much better than the Turkish, Indian, or stuff produced here come to that.