Everyday Appia

[simonandjuliet]

Winter is actually one of the busiest times for us - We have about 12,000 vines now and each one needs pruning and it takes me about a minute to give each one a nice back-and-sides. I get some time in the garage, but very little time to post about it

So a belated catch up.

After dismantling the axle on the car I found that there was too much wear on the parts for me to be happy, so I bought a "new" axle at Christmas and it was delivered in January.

This has now been dismantled , cleaned, checked, repaired and re-assembled - all good homework for my "Idiot's Guide". It took about 1.5 hrs to dismantle, a couple of days to clean and paint and then an afternoon to put it back together. BUT and it is a big "BUT" , nothing was seized.

Now it just needs to be exchanged with my worn axle .......  hopefully over the weekend

Couple of photos of the tools needed, most of the axle in bits and then a nice , new, shiny axle to go back on !

[lancianut666]

Impressive stuff Simon!

[will]

Simon

Can you tell me are the springs on you axles marked
for which side of the car there for ?

[simonandjuliet]

Will, there was nothing obvious and they were the same length. I think that they may have been replaced because they were hardly marked.
Having said that , they were the correct , chamfered springs

If you don't mind, I won't be taking them out again to look more closely !

[simonandjuliet]

Busy old day today, re-organising the winery today which meant that I needed to move the furgoncino.

At the end of last year I had a brake cylinder leak and have been waiting for a rebuilt cylindre to arrive ( a very long story of woe, worry and wonder that I may recount at some time ....) anyway I took the furgoncino back to the garage to fit the new cylindre.

It fitted nicely under the front of the Berlina which is on the ramp, just careful not to jack it up too high ! All in all a very quick job because you don't have to remove the shoes and if you clamp the flexi, it takes no time to bleed with the plunger. Also I remove the wheel cylindre with the flexi still attached so that you don't disturb the copper/flexi junction and let air in, you just unscrew the cylindre from the flexi

The cylindre that had been leaking was a brand new, repro unit supplied by a leading European supplier.

Back to the Everyday Appia - I took off the drums/brakes , hung them out of the way, dropped the steering arms and then the old axle.

It is always a worry replacing axles just in case one or other car (donor or recipient) has had a bump at the front end that has moved the frame or bent the axle. It only needs to be a mm out and it won't fit without body rams. Mercifully everything lined up first time.

It was a bit of a fiddle to do on my own, but now just need to be finished off, hopefully tomorrow