My first day off in 7 weeks today and decided to tackle the things that had failed the Multi's MOT a while ago and left it looking sorry for itself on a SORN. Frankly, I wish I hadn't bothered

Whilst trying to get the nearside hub lined up with the new wishbone, it toppled off its scissor jack and came down with enough of a jolt to pull the halfshaft out of the diff housing. Gutted. I was having enough of a problem trying to get the bottom ball joint lined up so this was the icing on the cake. I never had this problem last time I did it - must be doing something wrong.

Anyway, wrt the halfshaft, what's the best way to get it lined back up and pushed into place - or will there be more to it than that?

Hacked off of Wiltshire.

sorry to hear about your problems but you really should have it supported on axle stands.

Ooooh!
Talk about rubbing Salt into the wound!


Has the whole assembly come out of the Gearbox WMF, or just the 'Tripod' part on the end of the Shaft?

The car is (and still is) supported on axle stands. I don't think I'd be mad enough to jack a car up under it's brake disc. The scissor jack is just placed under the hub/disc to allow me some control over it when trying to get it aligned with the bottom ball joint. An axle stand is to tall to fit under the disc and so is my trolley jack.

Anyway - any suggestions about the half shaft? BD - the whole shaft has pulled out; tripod and tulip housing came with it. the splines are just about visible, but I can't pull it out any further because the track rod and strut won't let me.

sorry didn't realise you had it on stands as well ?

I've got new tripods, outer CV's and all boots waiting to be fitted (have been sat here for ages - just too busy to fit them). Think I might take the struts and halfshafts out on both sides, renew all the joints and reassemble from there. Sound like a plan?

I know I had no trouble at all in getting everything put back together when I stripped it down last time. I don't know what I'm doing differently this time that's making it so difficult.

Looks like you've answered this one yourself!
We all know how you like your shiny new parts . . .

Does the splined shaft into the differential just push into place? Much the same as when the gearbox is removed I suppose?

Hi WMF


I can't help re the driveshaft, but I know for fact that some of the wishbones will fit far easier than others, I don't know if it's the rubber bushes on that mount to the subframe that move more/ less easily, but I recall one of mine taking 20 minutes, excluding wheel removal and refitting, and the other took well over an hour and a half, with lots of swearing, levering and jacking.

Agree with the above...one always seems to slip on...the other is an arse!

Thinking...would it not be easier to remove the strut to put the wishbone on? As the problem is the angle of the bushes due to hub being in the way? I can remove the strut in 10 mins tops.. Then surely access will be much easier as you can lift the hub upwards allowing you to put the wishbone in square?

I was thinking along just those lines bms. The 'arse' is getting the little stub of the ball joint aligned with the wishbone. Whilst you're trying to wrestle with a strut that you don't have a cat-in-hells chance of flexing by hand, getting the two together is to put it mildly, testing.

Alternatively, remove the two bolts holding the strut to the upright (leaving the top of the strut attached to the car), do the ball joint to the upright joint then jack it up under the disc so that the upper part of the hub upright is sliding between the plates on the bottom of the strut? Doing it that way would at least make it easier to see when holes are aligned and mean you're not trying to support heavy weights for a long time (important to a weed like me!)

Could do WMF...but you may need to be careful not to damage the CV boot with the bottom of the strut I suppose?

Oddly enough I had both these issues while putting in a newclutch at the weekend. The drive shaft should just go back in with a hefty shove but mine wouldn’t budge. On taking it out again I found the retaining spring/ ring around the splines at the diff end had caught and was bent out of shape. Easing it off the shaft and then tweaking it back into shape in a vice was a bit fiddly but it then pushed back in quite easily. If this is the problem it will mean removing the half shaft to have a look, take care not to damage the seals- I had replaced mine while the gearbox was off.
Having changed five separate wishbones in the last month (I have two Multiplas at the moment) I have found a method that works for me. First off completely release the anti rollbar bracket from the subframe to make space for the wishbones rear bracket . Once this was done I could wiggle the wishbone in, but with the brackets at an angle to the sub frame. The front mounts outer bolt can be put part way in pretty easily. Then I used a crowbar to lever the inner edge of the front mount down and started that bolt off. Moving to the rear bracket, with a little patience the outer bolt can be started here as well. The back inner bolt is the one I struggled with as it is hard to get a crow bar in anywhere. In the end I used a large G clamp on top of the bracket and under the subframe to push the bracket down- make sure not to cover the bolt holes. A few taps with a screwdriver and hammer to help line up the hole and the last bolt should go in.
To get the wishbones ball joint stub back in the hub I just leant on it from above and moved the strut into position- but the drive shaft must be right home or this will not work. Also don’t forget that there is a small notch in the vertical split in the clamp on the back of the hub into which you can wedge a short screwdriver to open up the clamp a little and make assembly easier. If struggling I would suggest getting someone to use their foot on the wishbone to push it down so you can use both hands to line up the strut. Once almost in I used a scissor jack to push it right home and get the pinch bolt in.
Finally thanks to everyone who has ever posted about changing a clutch. I had changed both slave cylinder and master cylinder innerparts which had kept us going for a while but in the end I could not put it off any longer. It was a big job but now sorted and changing gear beautifully. The friction plate was worn, as were the springs on the clutch cover. The selector cables were also part seized, despite regular squirts of grease, which had made me wonder if the gearbox was failing, but it all seems fine. Just as the clutch gave up I put my back out so bought another Multi to tide us over until I felt up to fixing it. Now I have to decide which car to keep and which one to sell!

The only real issue I had on my old Multi, when fitting a new Wishbone (A-Arm), was that the 'pre-load' on the rubber bushes made it difficult to get the bolts started.
I couldn't get the Arm down far enough at the outer end, to get the mountings 'flat' onto the Subframe.

Forestryman said:

.....Just as the clutch gave up I put my back out so bought another Multi to tide us over.....

Click to expand...

Now THAT shows true devotion It should be your sig!

That's a thought why the hell are the arms at such an awquard angle removing the roll bar bracket helps I found but still a pain


Sent from my iPhone using FIAT Forum

OK. A less fraught and more constructive day on the Multi today than last weekend. I didn't have my mind on the job then and it bit back. Stripped out the half shafts, struts, hubs, drop links, track rod ends and link arms and stripped most of the removed stuff down.

As forestryman pointed out, there's a round wire clip in a groove in the splined shaft that goes into the nearside of the diff. The clip had distorted so that it couldn't seat properly in the groove so I couldn't push the shaft back into place. So I stripped the nearside halfshaft down:



That's the outboard end of the halfshaft at the top. I' had already removed the outer CV joint by the time I took this picture. The groove in the splines take a square wire clip that holds the CV joint to the shaft. The lump in the middle is a ballast weight (probably there to dampen harmonic vibration); below that is the boot for the inner tripod joint. I had already rolled the boot back to have a look at the condition of the tripod - so there's a fair bit of joint grease floating around. I was expecting to just be able to pull the tripod out of its housing, but it's not possible because there's a very small lip at the outer end of the housing that stops it. At bottom of shot is the flange joint between the half shaft and the inner stub that goes into the differential. I'm in the process of removing the 6 screws in this shot. Note the thin metal tab you can see between the two holes on the RHS that have already had the screws removed. Once all 6 screws are removed:



The halfshaft just lifts away. Not much to see; however I could now take the stub shaft (the bit still in the vice), refit the round wire clip to the splined section (obscured by the vice in this shot) and shove it back into the diff. It went back into place nice and easily (unlike last weeks effort).

On the halfshaft you can now see the plated sheet metal pressing that closes off the inner end of the tripod housing (sometimes called a tulip). There are three tabs on the edge of the pressing that are folded around the housing. Gently bending these away from it allows you to pull the pressing off, to reveal:



a nice gooey mess. Stripping these joints is a filthy job. Have lots of rags to hand, a dustbin liner to drop the used rags into and wear some tough rubber gloves. Wiping some of the grease away and pushing the tulip down the shaft reveals a clip seated in a groove in the halfshaft:



Ping this off (make sure you catch it as you'll need it later) and then pull the tulip sharply up a few times to tap the tripod off the shaft. Everything can then be cleaned off and inspected. That's about it for the nearside shaft. Hopefully I'll be fitting the new outer CV joint and tripod tomorrow.

Things are a bit different on the offside. Because there's a fixed jackshaft running from the differential, across the back of the engine to a fixed bearing below the alternator, Fiat didn't fit a tripod/tulip joint like the one on the NS. Instead, there's a very clever (well, clever to my eyes anyway ) variation on the Rzeppa CV joint that not only allows the shafts either side of the joint to articulate, but also to plunge, whilst at the same time retaining the ability to transmit power through the joint without variation in angular velocity (in other words, the shafts turn at the same speed no matter what the angle between them). Its build up is a bit weird though and it's covered in just as much gunk as everything else joint-related:



Looking at the state of the grease in this one, I think it could be where my clicking noises were coming from. The pressed metal cover is also mishapen. Not my doing (honest ) - it looks as though someone has been in here before me. To give you your bearings, if you can excuse the pun, the shaft going out of bottom left of shot would go to the NS wheel; the thing on the red rag is next to the jackshaft bearing when it's all fitted to the car. The odd looking thing towards bottom left is the rubber boot peeled back on itself to give better access. Again, the joint doesn't just pull out of the housing. It's not particularly obvious how to get this one apart.




I guessed and started tapping at edges of cover pressings to see if anything would budge. Which led to this:



In the course of pulling it apart my balls fell out. In the interest of public decency I'll not post a picture :yuck:, but once I'd picked them up and cleaned them off, I was left with this:



Remove the circlip and the CV joint assembly just slides off the shaft. In striping this joint, it all looked vaguely familiar. Sure enough, when I went rummaging through my boxes of parts hoarded for the Multi, I found a new CV joint that I must have bought some time ago on a vague promise that it would fit. I think I bought it from ebay, but I can't remember which seller. It's not a J&R one as they don't sell the inner ones.

With a bit of luck, tomorrow I'll get everything cleaned down, inspected and will possibly start building everything with the new joints.

An honourable mention should go to this thing:



For not much money (about £60, plus another £40 for a good selection of impact driver sockets, up to 36-38mm AF) it gives you an impact driver to rival the power of a professional air impact driver, but without the need for a compressor. It undoes staked wheel hub nuts in seconds (it's best to tap the staking out a bit first, if you can, just to avoid any chance of damaging the shaft). It is way more powerful than the cordless ones I've tried. Just bear in mind it's quite heavy, a bit bulky and of typical chinese build quality - robust enough, but not the last word in finish or refinement. That said, it's very controllable and it won't try to rip itself out of your hands when you press the trigger. It wouldn't stand up to the rigours of full time use in a garage, but for the few minutes of use it'll get for the DIY'er, it's great and I've yet to find a stubborn nut it can't undo. Joins the ranks of the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth tools for weeds like me, along with my 750mm breaker bar

OK. My war against shoddy, crap parts for the Multipla continues. You'll recall I've bought some new front wishbones and I've dusted off a few of the other bits I've gathered over the past months that were being amassed for a major rebuild, but time (or the lack of it) means I've only been able to do the urgent jobs needed to get the Multi back on the road. I've also noticed that almost everything that I've replaced with new parts over the years now has a generous covering of rust and crud and is generally unpleasant to work on. Sooooo.......

I started cleaning up/stripping all the bits I've been working on (even the new stuff like the wishbones) to get them ready for painting with something that will hopefully Laugh In The Face Of Road Salt and Rust in equal measure. I started off with a selection of wire brushes and cleaning discs but wasn't happy with the results on most of the parts. I gave up with that, gathered together all I could find and headed to a shot blaster a few miles from me. He's got a decent reputation and does lots of stripping of classic and vintage car body shells (including aluminium ones) so the selection of bits I put in front of him gave him no headaches. Three days later, my boxes of manky, greasy old car parts were transformed into sound, monotone, clean pieces of loveliness.





It is so much nicer building stuff up when it's in this state. He used soda to clean it all up and I was impressed by the results. For £70, he cleaned 4 brake discs (2 of them for the Multi), the two new Lemforder wishbones, the Bilstein struts, 4 front hubs (again, 2 of them for the Multi), a new radiator support bracket, 4 drive shafts, 2 caliper carriers, a pair of new Lemforder tie rods and track rod ends, 4 brake disc guards and sundry other small brackets. It would have taken me a lot of time (and wire brushes) to get anything close to the results he produced. Bargain. Then it comes to the paint:



I bought a the POR 15 trial kit, but then started hearing mixed views about it, so got a Rustbuster kit which has very good reviews. It's an epoxy two-pack paint that is purpose made for chassis and suspension parts. Mix adhesive (black) and hardener (typical epoxy greeny-grey colour and smell) in equal measure, add a little thinners to make it flow more easily, leave to stand for 10 minutes and then you're good to go.

This stuff is more sticky than Mr Sticky the stick insect hiding in a pile of sticks. Wear rubber gloves! The soda-blasted surfaces are just about perfect for applying it to. I used a cheap disposable bristle brush so I knew I shouldn't expect a perfect finish, but I'm pleased with the results. It has a reasonable pot life (I was applying it for the best part of two hours before I could feel it starting to cure) and the build is excellent - it has a very high solids content. It feels stiff in the pot, but once you start to brush it out, it flows into every little seam and pore. Perfect for something like struts, where there are gaps dips where sheet metal meets sheet metal.



I've left it to cure overnight. Hopefully it won't have done anything nasty like producing a bloom by then. I could handle it (carefully) by the time I packed in this evening. It has an appearance and feel very similar to a thin(ish) plastic dip coating. Looks promising. Practical Classics had this stuff on test outside for three years and it finished with top marks.

Btw - if you're tempted by the cheap price tag for the Birth front hub flanges for the Multipla (as sold by Shop4Parts and a couple of places on ebay) - don't be. Another item to add to the 'cheap crap' list. There is stacks of free play on the splines where they fit onto the outer CV joint stub axles.

I used to think that Birth kit was affordable and of reasonable quality. Having seen their front wishbones and now these hub flanges (and been through a pair of their ARB drop links in less than 6 months), I'm beginning to revise that opinion.

Great work WMF!
Love getting bits blasted.
I made my own little blasting set-up a while back, only really for small stuff, up to about Brake Caliper size or thereabouts, but I wouldn't be without it.