Well, last year went very poorly really.
I only did about 650kms in the car between MoT's so that's a very poor effort.
One of the reasons for such a lacklustre effort was my distractions with other cars like the Dedra and GTV but also for the last year or so there has been a knocking noise on the drivers front suspension which I couldn't trace despite multiple checks and even two MoT tests showing nothing untoward!
This last test though did point out that the OSF outer CV boot had a bit of damage that needed sorting before it split.
So I decided that the whole corner would be stripped out, suspension and hub plus the wheel arch liner to make sure a crack weasn't appearibng somewhere, I was getting that paranoid!
With the car up on axle stands I used the wheel to lever myself up off my knees, as I seem to have to now in my mid 50's, and to mu surprise there was a loud "clonk" from the suspension as the wheel dropped slightly! Aha I thought, there's my noise!
It turns out that the strut top mounts which are aluminium ones with spehrical, rose joint type bearings rather than rubber bonded ones had some wear in them which only became apparent when the wheel pulled down. No hint of any play when doing the usual checks in lifting the strut up with a lever, there must be enough tension in the lower arms to hold the suspension up even with the weight off the wheels so no play was detected at the top mount.
This afternoon I fitted new mounts both sides and the knock has gone at last!
This year I will now have no excuse to not use the car, if I don't then I may as well let somone else have it!
But after all the work that's gone into it I would be hard pushed to let it go. Can't really see that happening.
