| Another MoT on my 12yo Westminster | |
I've had my Westie for two years now and in that time, I've covered 20k miles.
Last years MoT was a breeze, but this year I've had a few issues which needed resolving before the due date. The front struts were replaced a few months ago, but there has been a niggling 'shimmy' in my brakes lately which I initially thought was just warped disks. When I bought the new front struts, I also bought a complete set of front & rear disks/pads with an eye on changing them all out to resolve the shimmy.
However, I changed the rear disks and pads as they were well worn, but upon inspection, the fronts looked like they were in very good condition with a significant life left in them. I began to look elsewhere for my shimmy and recalled that on my previous 3.6 Vogue, the large bushes on the lower (banana) arms could cause a lot of problems - introducing a bit of a wobble with both steering and brakes.
Sure enough, I watched in a large shop window as I crawled along in Drive at idle and then stamped on the brakes. The front wheel visibly moved towards the back of the front arch as the brakes took hold.
This car has never seen a workshop since I got it as I now do ALL my own servicing, so I set about removing the banana arms..... Two hours later, after getting the car up on blocks and working with two scissors type ball-joint separators and two different fork style ball joint tools, I still couldn't get the arm off the bottom ball joint. To make matters worse, I had burst the rubber boot on the bottom ball joint into the bargain. 
I resorted to my local Indy and had the car booked-in to get the bushes on the arms replaced and to stick new bottom ball joints at the same time. When I collected the car, I was relieved to discover that they had had problems getting the arms off the ball joints too and had resorted to a significant degree of induction heating to do the job - so that made me feel a bit better. The invoice came to £300 for new bottom ball joints and new Lemforder bushes installed into the original arms.
I went straight off to the dual carriageway and tested the brakes from 70mph - no shimmy!! 
Before going for the MoT, I was a bit concerned about my tyres, as the worn bushes had caused a bit of scrubbing on the outside of the fronts. I considered changing the tyres before the MoT, but decided just to go with it and see what was said. Much to my surprise, the tester showed me that there was 5mm left on all the tyres and the slight scrubbing at the edges wasn't a failure. In fact, it wasn't even an advisory! He explained that the MoT can still pass a tyre that the local plod will give you a ticket for! 
Anyway, I got my MoT with an advisory for a rear number plate light which wasn't working. Damn LED's are still problematic, despite being 'canbus error free'.
Whilst under the car, the tester said that this was the best L322 he'd seen for a decade! Absolutely dry underneath with no signs of weeping anywhere from the engine, the transfer box or the diff. RESULT!!
After a total of 14 years with an L322, I still love it to death and wouldn't swap it for a new Rangie, even if I was paid to.  The older I get, the more I realise that people confuse wrinkles for wisdom 
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29th Aug 2023 11:30am
