Removing & refitting the bottom pulley nut

Job now done, so far all seems well (mild paranoia!) . You'll see from the photos that I found that the rear suspension arm obstructs access to the pulley bolt, so I ended up disconnecting the shocker and antiroll bar to make enough room.


I bought myself a DeWalt impact driver, as I already have some other of their 18V tools, and it managed to loosen the bolt at the 3rd attempt. I've now replaced the cambelt, water pump, tensioner, aux belt and all seems fine so far. I actually managed to change the cambelt by undoing the 2 setscrews that hold the part of the mounting onto the engine bracket (they were incredibly tight!), jacking up the engine to create enough room to remove the old belt (trial and error) before fitting the new one. Having done that, my considered view is that it would be better to remove the complete mounting, thereby gaining much better access all round.

Whilst I had the engine cover off, I decided to do the plugs, petrol filter and air filter and encountered some other challenges:

Plugs - I found that my engine has distributor-less ignition, seeming like the MG ZT. The rubber connectors that go from the 2 coils down to plugs 1 & 3 took some pulling off, levering them with 2 blunt screwdrivers. Having replaced the plugs, I then had the challenge of refitting them, much aided by some WD40.


Air filter - access much improved by removing the diagonal braces that were added to the TF to stiffen the body. When I removed the old filter, I was surprised to find a stash of nuts, presumably left by a squirrel at some time in the car's previous life! But how did it get in there? Something to investigate later! Sorry the photo is out of focus.


Petrol filter - the outlet pipe was on so tight that I had to first disconnect the inlet, then remove the whole unit to gain enough access.

I also did some work on the front o/s at the same time, with the car on ramps on the n/s and on axle stands on the o/s - I actually used 2 trolley jacks and 4 axle stands in the process, and getting the car down seemed to take more juggling than getting it in the air in the first place

I'll take it for a longer run tomorrow, I have a long journey planned for Thursday to collect a hard-top. Fingers crossed!

Well done Steve , nice that it all went well . Your comment about the tight fuel pipe reminded me of my experience last year with my TF . Both inlet and feed pipes were unbelievably tight . So much so that the flare of both pipes resulted in them being deformed to the point where they wouldn't seal to the new filter . Initially I thought the fuel filter was wrong as the original part is no longer abvailable and although there is a slight difference where the pipe fits , that wasn't the problem . I sourced a new fuel rail pipe from Rimmers just to see if it cured one side of the filter leak . The tank feed pipe seemed like too much work to go through to replace so I ended up using a Dremmel tool to reshape the flare to obtain a seal into the filter. Make sure you check that you have a good seal before going for that run .

John

250 mile journey completed yesterday without a hitch, thanks to all for your comments/advice
Steve G