A customer has bought in his early 380SEC to replace all the front suspension joints and reseal the steering box.

Replacing the rubber parts in the front end is very straight forward ,even the brake support mounts which get damaged by engine oil and steering box fluid dripping onto them

Above is the puller I used to extract the old rubber mount and then ,reversed to force the new bush into place. It takes about 5 minutes to remove the old one and fit the replacement .

There are two different bushes on each side and they must be checked to ensure the metal piece is level with edge of the housing.

But when i went to change the passenger side components i noticed that the whole assembly seemed to move . The forward mounting had broken free from the chassis.

The part had to be cleaned up ,along with the chassis rail then welded back together again.

The PVC underseal was rmoved and then painted with Etch primer,primer and a finish coat .Followed by a coating of PVC undercoat to protect the paint.

Next job was to drop the steering box out and strip it down..

The inside of the steering box full,with what can only be described as Mud…. lots of black oily mud which can be seen in the left hand pic ,all that black stuff is dirt .. A good reason to flush the hoses,lines and steering pump before the steering box is refitted.