Bromley Westfield Build Blog: Some Progress and Tale of Woe !

Strange day today, full of enthusiasm we had an early start and fitted the fuel filter and finally fitted fuel pipes and tidied wiring for pump. We then moved on to the tank frame with a view to getting the tank sitting loosely in place until we receive the rest of the missing suspension parts ! To fit the tank frame the four bolts which had been loosely fitted into the upper wishbones (rear) have to be removed and replaced by much longer 7/16 bolts to secure the wishbone, anti roll bar and tank frame, simple job five minutes.... three of the bolts fell out without a problem just requiring thumb pressure to remove them from the wishbone bushes, the fourth although never tightened up did not want to come out. I left the nut on the thread and gave it a gentle tap with a nylon hammer expecting it to fall out, nothing ! getting a large punch I gave the bolt a blow with a mallet, still nothing !, I noted the bolt head was not pulled up tight to its washer as I had never tightened it up, so figured if I pulled it up with its nut it may free it from whatever was holding it and then remove easily, the bolt tightened with its nut but I was then back to square one where no amount of persuasion ( gentle and otherwise ) and plus gas would make it back off a micron ! strange my Midget ones were like this but they had been in 35yrs !!. Having seen the bolt move forward i.e. towards its thread I decided to grind off the head and if that was the way it wanted to go drift it out from the rear........ some careful grinding later and I was able to use the bolts nut and a spacer to pull it halfway through the bushing....... but that was it ! any more force applied and the next thing to be damaged would be the chassis mount. By this time the bush was well and truly goosed and I had tried everything non damaging to remove the bolt ! I finally had to power hacksaw through the bolt between the bushing and the chassis mount to release the wishbone. Thankfully the only damaged things are my blood pressure and the metalastic bush ! I can only figure that the bolt and or the bush centre have assumed a taper but I have never seen a new bolt impossible to remove in this way ! Hope Westfield can sort out my bushing in short order ! I had fitted and semi tightened this bolt in the same way as the other three knowing they were to come out so have no idea how they have mated in this way ! 63 hours building. (+3 hours wasted trying to remove a bolt !! GRRRRRR.)