Spent some time in the garage last night. I am close, so close to that moment when you move from dirty parts to clean parts, and yet so far! Why do the last things always take the longest! At any rate was cleaning the cam cover and the oil pan last night and noticed that there are flanges(?) welded on the oil pan. 4 in total, three of which had plastic covers. Anyone know what these are for? thanks as always and happy motoring!
Here are two: these on the dipstick side
On the end - and this was bent badly, what is it supposed to be shaped like?
If you look at these pictures, you will see two trailing arms. The top one, (Painted black) is the one that came with the car. The bottom one (dirty) is the one that came ON the car. This is a crucial difference, in that the car as it rolled into the garage had its original SL rear axle instead of the the GT rear axle. (The body was an SL with GT bits moved over.)
So, I have removed the axle, removed the trailing arms and am now in the process of starting to swap things over.
If all this makes sense, two questions.
1. The ones that came off the car (Dirty) have rubber on the outside of the arms. The black ones (GT) do not. The GT ones never appear to have had. This is the case on all the arms on each end. Any thoughts?
2. The GT arms are shorter than the SL arms - I presume this is due to the axle setup? (The long arms are the same for both)
The bushes for the trailing arms should all be the same physical size, but there are lots of different stiffnesses (is there such a word?) I have seen the same sort as the top ones from Martin Robey (AKA Jensen Healy spares), they are stiffer rubber and metal encapsulated, the lower ones look more like Vauxhall ones, where its got (as you say) rubber on the outside.
It could make a difference in the way the car feels for two reasons, one, the stiffness of the rubber, and secondly the way the forces are transferred from the trailing arm to the body. The top one (in your picture) pushes its forces via the steel tube in the middle being nipped tight against the shell mounts and the rubber twisting in the bush itself. The lower version used the rubber against the body.
From personal experience changing the bushes is a right pain in the ..... First I burnt out the old ones.
Then I obtained new ones from Martin Robey's in Nuneaton
I then pushed the first one into an arm and realised that Metal on Metal is a great way to split a trailing arm in two... Realistically the arm need heating up and lots of lube needs applying before you might get it to fit... I gave up in the end after scrapping one arm... Even after heating it up the bushes twisted half way in and split the arm.
I returned the bushes to Martin Robey's and talked at length about the poor design of the bush, and noted your point about the thickness of the rubber and small contact surface area. They had already changed the design and supplied me the newer bushes and these work the same as the original Vauxhall design. Spreading the load over the whole surface area of the bush.
These fit by hand (no press needed) and rely upon applying force across the entire body mount and not just the bolt surface.
My answer is burn out those bushes and put in new ones.... Polybushes are also available to the same design as the Vauxhall ones, In my mind the Jensen design is flawed (I call it the Jensen design as thats all i can think it is).
JP, the metal sleeved bushes were ( so I was once told by my local dealer)used on the droop snoots. I believe that the number 65 should be moulded on and the parts number end in 8838 ??. anyway it looks like someone has done the hard work for you !.Some time ago I made a tool for removing and installing bushes....less messy than arson!!. I should lo point out that metal sleeved bushes really need a fly press to install them, a little care with some spacers (big washers)so that the sleeve is pushed and not the tube in the centre with a drop of oil to help ease them in and to install them the right way round !- they will only go in the arm from the correct side ( Haynes manual will reveal all !). Cheers Tony.
by dazza » Tue Mar 25, 2014 8:55 pm 
