Update

I don’t think that I mentioned that I wasn’t too impressed to find that the droplinks which were fitted less than 1,000 miles ago are fooked. Both lower joint gaters have split. They were the First Line ones from 106parts. Not sure whether to try some more or stump up and try and get some rose jointed ones. Surely someone must be doing them…

Tonight I did a test fit of the HiSpec Ultralights on the new struts as I wanted to make sure I had the necessary spacer shims from Marc for them. They fit fine, so I’m happy with that.

Did a little bit of other faffing including taking the cheap wheel studs off the hubs (I’ll be putting my Motorsport Spec ones back on) and then spent some time just tidying up as the garage was a complete state.

In terms of the original brake setup, the discs and pads are off. Tomorrow I’ll drain the brakes and removed the front calipers. I’ve left the flex hose unions soaking in penetrating oil over night. I also hate the photos as they just show the state of the arches and how much work is needed to get the car cleaned up. It’ll be a case of stripping back all the arches and doing a bare metal repaint starting with POR15 and hoping there’s no rot… what are the chances?

Finally the weights of the Bilstein/Eibach setup struts that came off (fully assembled with hub, shock, spring and top mount) was 17.22kg each. The ASTs come in at 10.76kg each. That’s a 12.92kg weight saving in largely unsprung mass.