It's not meant to do that!

Westyfield2 · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:26

The Westfield was ready to be collected from the engineers today who's had it all winter, so I drove dad over in my VTR. We had a good chat with him and test drove it and then loaded all the old parts into my boot.

Heading back home was quite a nice run for my car - though for some reason dad driving a 250BHP 500kg Westfield on the B-roads back is a bit quicker than me in my Saxo VTR

.

Anyways, coming out of a round-about at about 15mph his rear left wheel suddenly got massive positive camber y0! and was scraping the inside of the wheel arch.
Instantly we pulled over and I stuck my car behind with the hazards on, as this was a really busy A-road. Annoyingly this is only five minutes from home.

Checked and it still had all it's wheel nuts which was my first thought but then, WTF is wrong with the upright.
Under the rear of the car I go, with a "Put the handbrake on it's rolling at me!" and this is what greeted me:

Upper wishbone is completely un-attached.

Right....

Fortunately the anti-roll bar, the bottom wishbone, and the bolt through the suspension were all still attached.

Walked back a bit but no sign of the nut

Rung a few guys in the classic car club but no-one had a trailer nearby

. And all the Westfield club guys were at Castle Combe today

.

Dad's in the AA so he rung them for a recovery truck to take us home, but they wouldn't be with us for 1.5-2hours (obviously their patrol vans would be but this needed taking home on the back of a truck).
So whilst waiting it was bodge time!

Friend came along with a trolley jack and some tools, and cut a long story short, we got the bolt back in and fortunately the wheel nuts are the same size, so we used one of them (as we were only 5mins from home running it on 3 wheel nuts would be fine).
So we ring the AA and cancel them.
Just about to leave and I check the nut on the opposite side and that one is held on by one thread! Evidently the engineer had forgotten to do them back up

. Tighten that up and right, we're ready to leave.

Westfield started: Check.
Tools and jack into friends car: Check.
Saxo started: ****.

This is about an hour after we first pulled up (and everyone's been having to queue to get around us!) and my hazard lights are still flashing. My car had electrics still, but I couldn't hear the fuel pump prime and the starter wouldn't spin (or even engage).

Re-arrange the cars as there's no way the Westfield would have enough umph to jump mine, and jump start my Saxo off of our friends car.

Clock on my Saxo had stopped about 35mins after pulling up and putting the hazards on.

Finally got home, but argh. I hate cars.

Stuck the Optimate on the battery but it's coming up with the Critical low light, so it's gonna try and recover it with a 22v charge. Hopefully it'll recover it, otherwise it's new battery time

.

To cheer myself up I fitted my pressed metal plates this afternoon - they look lush :cool:

.

Out of interest - the battery on it is a year old, and it would have been fully charged as the journey their and back is ~30mins each way, and I wasn't hanging around! Was I being overly optimistic in thinking it could run the hazards for an hour and then still be able to start the car? As it really surprised me when it wouldn't start!

EDIT: Whoa, didn't realise I had rambled on that long!

InvaderGIR · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:35

I've run hazards for longer, sounds odd to me.

Ouch on the Westy though....glad it was a simple problem though I suppose. Going to be having words with the garage?

rypt · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:35

Moral of the story, build your own damn kit car so that you know that you have done up all the nuts

InvaderGIR · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:36

rypt said:
Moral of the story, build your own damn kit car so that you know that you have done up all the nuts

It could happen on any car, not just a kit car.

Dogbreath · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:38

Lucky escape. I know of quite a few people that have had this kind of thing happen and always at low speed. I would go over the car with a fine tooth comb now, find out which other fasteners he's not tightened. Are you going to tell the mechanic about this?

Westyfield2 said:
lush

Unless you are a pre-teen girl you really shouldn't be using that word

4T5 · 24 Apr 2010 at 18:40

I'd go round the whole motor & check every single nut & bolt after that, the old man was lucky he wasn't chucked into a hedge or worse.
Good effort on getting him home though.

Clarkey · 24 Apr 2010 at 19:07

InvaderGIR said:
It could happen on any car, not just a kit car.

Incredibly unlikely for something like this to happen on a car which has been built properly.

Oh and it must be one hell of a shonky battery if it can't run the hazards for an hour, get a replacement, that is shocking.

rypt · 24 Apr 2010 at 19:08

InvaderGIR said:
It could happen on any car, not just a kit car.

Unlikely to happen from the factory, since since I do most of the work on car unlikely anyone else will be undoing bolts

Westyfield2 · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:06

Clarkey said:
Incredibly unlikely for something like this to happen on a car which has been built properly.

Oh and it must be one hell of a shonky battery if it can't run the hazards for an hour, get a replacement, that is shocking.

The upper-wishbones had to be removed for him to get the diff out.... not sure where "built properly" comes into it?

rypt said:
Moral of the story, build your own damn kit car so that you know that you have done up all the nuts

The old propshaft was un-necceaily heavy, and really out of balance... and funnily enough we haven't got the equipment (or knowledge!) to make a perfectly balanced propshaft from scratch, but the engine builder does - so that's why we left it with him.

rypt · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:32

Why does the builder need the car to make the prop shaft ... it is balanced in its own right iirc

Clarkey · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:35

Westyfield2 said:
The upper-wishbones had to be removed for him to get the diff out.... not sure where "built properly" comes into it?

Did you seriously ask that? I think it's pretty obvious that the bolts wouldn't have fallen off and a potentially catastrophic suspension failure wouldn't have happened if he built it back up properly.

Westyfield2 · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:37

rypt said:
Why does the builder need the car to make the prop shaft ... it is balanced in its own right iirc

Yup you're right.

He had the car for a variety of things, the propshaft was just one of them.

Clarkey said:
Did you seriously ask that? I think it's pretty obvious that the bolts wouldn't have fallen off and a potentially catastrophic suspension failure wouldn't have happened if he built it back up properly.

All that was wrong was two nuts weren't tightened up. Yes that could have caused quite a big accident (thinking about how fast I was going and I was still losing ground!) but it's not like the entire car has been re-built wrongly.

When we got it home we sorted it out properly, and have checked that everything else at the rear is done up tightly. We're changing the gearbox next weekend so will check the front then.