Joy, Frustration, Elation and Despair

It's been a good while I know.....

Joy:
This summer saw some new ball joints for the front suspension, repainting and reassembling the majority of the front suspension, with Superflex bushes.

Very pleasing!

Frustration:
I decided that the next thing to do should be the dismantling of the rear corners, this is something that I have frankly not been looking forward to, as I have read some tales of woe surrounding the somewhat delicate TVR upright alloy castings.

After many stuck nuts and much cursing..

 Just removing the shock absorbers and wishbones was a pain! The end bolts, despite wire brushing and judicious soaking in WD40 took 2 days of levering, hitting and swearing to remove... after which almost all of the rest put up only a minimal fight. The upright itself was absolutely filthy, caked in dried greasy mud, yeurgh!

Elation:
However after lots of scraping, brushing with petrol and power wire brushing the upright looked good! No electrolytic corrosion to speak of and no broken or badly corroded studs, yay!

Despair:
However on closer inspection the pivot bar seems to be fractionally bent and worse, there appears to be what looks horribly like a crack across one of the cotter pin lugs........this is potentially disastrous and finding a replacement could be VERY EXPENSIVE!!!!!