I've decided that while the car is up on stands and level, I will sort as much of the rear as possible - when I come to finish the front, the engine will have to be taken out so I can bolt the frame to the jig, turn it over etc. As John is not around for a while, such tasks will be more cumbersome and difficult, hence the decision to sort as much as I can before the engine has to come out! This meant tackling the rear lower 'wishbones'. I discovered that Fiesta Ball joints were available separately, you don't have to purchase the entire lower arm as the Haynes manual suggests, and a spell on E-Bay yielded two of these. These will be bolted to a steel plate (on the other side to the way shown on the image) and welded to two arms. The ends of the arms will have spherical bearings, partly to allow adjustments, but also because I was given some complete with threaded inserts (albeit LH thread!). The inserts were a bit too big so a friend turned them down on a lathe - a bit roughly but they'll do. Today I drilled through the CDS tube and welded through the holes to hold the threaded inserts in place, then welded around the top. All of this was done with a spare bearing screwed into the insert to avoid distortion. I am quite pleased with the results - 1 down, three to go!!!
