Tough Times

The week after the Detling show we decided to carry out a little maintenance on the kit car. We, I mean my dad took care of the front arches trimming them right back to make the wheel removal simpler and prevent rubbing on the tyre side walls. With the arches off I gave the brakes a good going over to make sure everything was tight and secure. Turns out one thing definitely wasnt, after I gave the passenger front disc a good spin i noticed a distinct wobble. First thought was this is going to be expensive and most likely a warped brake disc or worse a stub axle but following further investigation swapping parts from one side to another turns out its the alloy hub that attaches to the disc.

Here is the offending part, well what it looked like new anyway


Chris and Marc at MNR were pretty happy to do a warranty replacement on this item as I imagine the item left the factory like this as it surely isnt easy to distort a thick lump of aluminium. Only issue is this part seems exceedingly difficult to get hold and even harder to get quality items. Reason I say this is that the first set was too deep for the stub axle not allowing the hub nut to even go on. A week later and the second set fitted but the area where the races fit were a few thou too large so the races weren't tight. The third set arrived in the post today so we kept our fingers crossed and luckily it fitted. Only problem was new studs werent fitted and the new ones were too long. A bit of sawing and filing soon sorted that out.

The car has in total been off the road for just over a month and we've missed some of the best British weather ever but on the upside we've got pretty damn good at doing a brake, hub and bearing change - Rally style!