We set off early as the plan was to obtain all the parts we needed and then try and fix up as much as the car as possible, so we arrived in Telford in good time. We had a choice of two rear axles, both were pretty crusty but one had end caps on the torsion bar and was in a lot better health than the one we'd taken off the car and at £40 a real bargain. We then proceeded to look through numerous boxes of turbo parts looking for the oil-in connector that had been alluding us, we were also after an actuator bracket as the standard T2 actuator did not fit. After a good 30 minutes of looking in numerous boxes of old oily Renault 5 parts we found an oil-in line that could be used, but still required an adaptor to fit to the turbo. We were told that a hydraulics company down the road should be able to help with the last remaining part. Next up was the actuator bracket, after another 20 minutes of looking through old oily boxes we found one that fitted, the only bad thing was it was on eBay and someone had already placed a bid. There was only an hour to go on the auction so we decided to head over to the hydraulics company whilst trying to win the auction on eBay for the actuator bracket.
After a short journey down the road we found the hydraulics company, to start with the guy behind the desk looked like he was going to find the adaptor instantly, he seemed to have a sixth sense for thread widths, looking through vast amounts of adaptors and finding parts that would sort of fit but not screw all the way in. (Until now I never realised how many different types of threads there are). After about five or six failed attempts things were not looking good and I was starting to get grumpy, were we ever going to find a part that fitted this Frankenstein turbo? The guy behind the desk now called the manager over and they starting scratching their heads and looking curiously at the hole they were trying to find an adaptor for, finally after lots of head scratching the part was found. This just left the actuator bracket on eBay.
Whilst we had been in the hydraulics shop and off for a chippy lunch the third trackbitch member was at home busy winning actuator brackets on eBay, we only had to out bid the other person by 50p. All that was left now was to drive back to the garage where we'd bought the axle, pay for the actuator bracket and then head back to Manchester.
All parts now in hand we headed back onto the M6, only to be told that the motorway was shut at junction 16, we attempted to come off before the road started to back up and get onto an alternative route before everyone else tried it, the first part of this worked well, but it soon dawned on us that all alternative routes were going to be stupidly busy. Instead of getting home in 1H 15M it took the best part of three hours, this really killed our mechanical time. :o(
By the time we got back it was 4.30 - 5.00, to fit a whole rear axle and new turbo before it goes dark was never going to be possible. So instead of doing two half jobs we focused on the axle, even this proved to be difficult due to moving over brake lines and hub assemblies, but with light fading we managed to get most of the work done, all that was left to do was fit the new shocks and the back end would be finished. However that would have to be left for another day.
The day had been partly successful but it was appearing that my expectations of how long the mechanics would take to do were very wrong and instead of two days of work and a track day, we'd spent three days working on it with perhaps another one and a half days left of work. In addition, the next time we could all meet up would not be for another two weeks which meant the car was on axle stands til then.
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