My Mk7 Fiesta Titanium Diary

[mattiff]

I know what you mean, some days I think about taking them off, others I like them. When it doesn't rain here I'll get pics of the wheels all done as they do look good.

[b4zz]

looking good fella and look forwred to seeing the pics of your wheels and I to am not a fan of chrome bits.

[mattiff]

So I gave the car a good clean, car was looking rough after a fair bit of driving and needed to sort it out before taking pictures of the wheels. Also fitted my new boot badge.

Before:

After:

And so the wheels, I sadly forgot to take any before shots so you'll have to takemy wor for it that they were in a bad way. Each one of them were scuffed along the rim and others had damage to the faces etc. looking much better now though :)

Chuffed with how they came out, it was only the faces that were done as the insides are all good minus a very small bit of rust on one. Only thing letting them down is the centre caps. I have new ones but I need to take the wheels off to swap them and I ran out of time before the Sunday lunch and the footie came on. Might have a go a bit later if not I'll do them next weekend.

[mattiff]

So with the footie finished I nipped out to swap the centre caps. I took the wheels off to do it rather than take them off in situ. I wanted to make sure the wheels were on right so gave them some fresh copper slip and made sure they were all up to the proper 110nm, to be fair the bodyshop hadn't tightened them to 10000nm like some places do.

Comparison of new v old:

The OCD in me made sure they went in exactly the same lol.

[b4zz]

looks like you done a great job on the clean up fella and the new badges for the wheels will make it look much neater

[Jeff4155]

Very nice, may I ask why not go for Gel overlays?

[mattiff]

Never really tried them and wasn't sure on longevity so just plumped for Ford ones.

[kristriple]

Never really tried them and wasn't sure on longevity so just plumped for Ford ones.

Couldn't be any worse than the Ford badges! I've never seen without tatty badges! Lol

Sent from my KFTT using Ford OC mobile app

[mattiff]

So I did a little bit more work on the car today. What was supposed to be a straight forward job turned out to be anything but. I was simply going to replace the passenger side rear bumper bracket that had somehow been snapped off by someone or something. I also thought I would get the back end up on axle stands and clean the rear arches as you do.

So when I bought said bumper bracket from Ford, the parts guy assured me that it was secured to the body by bolts and not rivets. I got him to check the diagram showing all the parts etc and he still claimed it was bolts. Low and behold when the rear bumper is off I was right it was rivets:



6mm rivets at that, which nowhere had any of so I was buggered from the start. I still drilled them out to remove the old bracket:



As you can see by the one on the right it was fubared, I have no idea how it broke but it did. Thankfully I got the three rivet heads out of the bodywork as no doubt they would have rattled like mad. So unable to finish that job I cracked on with cleaning the arches, this is what I faced:



And with the arch liner out:



Whilst removing the arch liner the metal clips that secure it were in a pretty poor state:



So I decided with my extra time to give them and a few other bits a going over with some hammerite.



Yes, that is the locking wheel nuts as people keep pointing out how bad they look so decided enough was enough lol.

Anyway whilst cleaning I thought I would do another job I have been meaning to do for a while, paint the brake drums:



Only problem was I went a bit mental and decided to paint the entire back axle as there was a lot of surface rust letting it down.



Other side:



It's by no means perfect, I need to take each of the springs out to do the cup areas properly and a few spots need another coat but pretty chuffed all the same. So I gave the arch liners a go with the power washer and a brush and chucked them back on:





I also gave the painted surfaces a coat of Wolfs hard body to help prevent the tar etc sticking. I know it's a primer surface but thought why not.

One thing to remember when jacking your car up is to put the covers back on properly, I didn't do this last week and it came off on the way to work resulting in this:



Thankfully it still fits and you can barely tell it's so badly damaged but I will get it resprayed at some point, doh.

Another thing I noticed whilst working on the car was the towing eye on the rear was already showing signs of rust:



Not sure if I will try and get ford to sort it or do it myself. Not good after three years either way. So with my work complete for the day I have left the car to finish tomorrow:



I need to borrow the hand riveter and some 6mm rivets to finish, until then the dog is keeping an eye on the bumper as he garage was full :)

[mattiff]

Thanks for the comments guys. I realised I hadn't put the last few pictures up from when I finished the work off.

So I borrowed a set of lazy tongs and went to work with the new panel.



So then it was just the simple task of sticking the bumper back on. All done and now silver locking nuts looking very nice lol :)



Here is a picture of the top screws for the bumper, subtler than black i think.



Was going to fit the new front fog surrounds this weekend but it looks like it will be a wash out so will have to do them another day.

[Jeff4155]

I cant see the pictures, is it just me?

[alexp999]

I can't see them either, I think matiff has run out of pb bandwidth. :(

[mattiff]

I have deleted loads of old photos from my PB account so hopefully they will come back. If not I'll have to open another one up.

[b4zz]

still cant see the pics fella