What have you been up to today

[Phil Kingdom]

Decided to do a test fit of the new S/Steel front twin shock absorber, a lovely little bit of kit, Removed old shock, then noticed the bush pins are set at different lengths, this is to compensate for the way the original shock is designed, checked parts list and both pins are the same part number so the offset is machined into the taper in the axle. All the twin front shocks setups I have seen are made the same way and do not account for the offset, this would probably not matter to much as the rubber bushes would take up the difference over a 20 inch span, still the axle did not look right to me, and as the pins had to come out for a clean up anyway I decided to put it right. The N/S pin came out easy with the aid of a small 2 leg puller from behind, the O/S pin was a bit more of a problem the nut had its thread stripped and just went round and round, a nut splitter just fitted into to hollow in the axle and solved that problem, then the 2 legged puller popped the taper. After cleaning up the pins and threads refitted the O/S pin then re-cut the taper on the N/S pin so that it sits deeper into the axle, now both sides match. So what should have been half an hours work ended up taking me half a day!