Well having had 3 years of fun & track days with my Firefox I decided to completely strip the car down to the bare chassis and rebuild it. I wanted to check the chassis for any signs of fatigue, give everything a really good clean and spruce up. I will also be looking for "weight saving" opportunities as I am re-building it. Reducing weight is a much cheaper way of improving performance than trying to add more BHP.
Having stripped the chassis right down the first changes I decided to make were to reposition the seats to give a better driving position (more laid back) and to make new "lighter" seat mounting frame.
The seats were originally mounted onto 2 flat pieces of steel that ran across the chassis and were bolted to the side rails. Both rear pieces had bent under the weight of driver/passenger on both sides so have been replaced by stronger angle iron. The new mounts are welded in not bolted and have captivated nuts on the underside to make fitting & removal of the seats easier.
With the sub frame separated from the chassis I started to remove the lower wishbones so that I can replace the tired Metro rubber bushes with some nice new Poly Bushes. Three of the wishbone bolts came undone without much effort but the last one was a real pig. It was so corroded that the welds holding the captivated nut to the inside of the sub-frame broke. To remove the nut I had to cut into the chassis to get access. With the nut removed the bolt was still completely seized inside the bush and had to be persuaded out with the angle grinder and drill.
Once the wishbones have been re-fitted the hole in the sub-frame will be welded up.
