Adey was on about lowering his car when he brought it, something I don't need asking twice about
He came to mine a few Saturdays back, had some bits off me, like you do whilst I set about attacking the rear beam......
Anyhow, I spent nigh on 4-5hrs trying to remove the torsion bars, the beam etc. Gave up in the end as they were seized good and proper.
Adey said he'd heard about the Renault 19 16v rear beam being a straight swap. Schakal pretty much confirmed it so he managed to source a beam.
The front suspension needed a freshen up too so he got hold of some R5GTT struts and lowering springs, -50mm to come, poly'd the top mounts, new bearings etc gave them a lick of paint and they looked as good as new. He also brought some lower arms with new ball joints.
We attacked the car Saturday morning, just gone 10ish after a couple of cups of tea and by half 12 we had completely swapped and replaced the front suspension components, good going we thought
After a couple of bacon and egg sarnies..EACH ...we cracked on with the rear beam. We had the beam off, swapping the necessary vital parts and torsion bars out and back ON, within 3-4hrs.
It wasnt that plain sailing...the brake lines were a bit tight to undo and looked a little delicate, for some reason we had to adjust the handbrake cable even thought it came off with ease ...when I was refitting the torsion bars, the passenger side bar refused to go in...then to top it off, we broke a bleed nipple on the rear caliper, fortunately, I had a spare caliper to replace it with
When we lowered the car off the jack/axle stands, the stance was completely different and it looked awesome. In the end we didnt actually lower the car, the 19 16v beam is set at STANDARD height and once fitted to the 11T, looked so much lower than before
Take a look at the few pics we managed to take, I think we had a pretty sucessful day
Old beam off...
11T beam is above the 19 16v beam...
Just after the car was dropped to the floor off the axle stands...
Adey just leaving...
R11T's engine bay after pinching a few of my bits...
Standard turbo...'T28' turbo
Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we did doing it