Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

One of the best tips I can offer is give your self plenty of room.

My car just fits in my garage, so when the time came to change wishbones, I would of struggled with space.
I left the door half open, secured with a ratchet strap and had this:



Lots of space to slide around freely! Try and make sure the work area is clean, may seem obvious, but Ive seen people rolling about in filth to do an oil change.

BALL JOINT SPLITTER

If, like me, you have the "tighten up" style ball joint splitter, but cant get it in, remove the split pin, the pivot pin and use the fork as you normally would, works quite well.





EXTRA TORQUE

So that nut or bolt is giving you grief and the ratchet is too short, but a strong arm bar is too long?

Use a decent sized spanner, a 19mm should go over your average ratchet handle and provide you with nearly double the torque.
From this:

To this:


2 spanners can be linked similar to this, one ring end to one open end and achieve the same results.

I get the idea, I think it's good. Just to cover the basics, as you say, for everyone in general.
Andrei.

P.S. the spanner locking thing is great, I've used it to remove the alternator belt on my C18NZ. Tensioner was well too tight to move with a single spanner so I locked another one onto it. Hardly put any effort in it then.
This has my backing

Hopefully if people are struggling with something, they may be able to save a bit of time, money and effort by looking up a few tried and tested methods.

It may be better in its own section, Im not too sure though, will wait for more feedback.

Glad you like the idea Andrei.

Certainly merits a thread for hints and tips, but where to put it is a good question..
Thanks for taking the time to post it up

How about making it a sticky in the Maintaining Your Cavalier thread? It covers all the maintenance threads, so I can't see a better place to put it.
Andrei.

Cavalier342 wrote: P.S. the spanner locking thing is great, I've used it to remove the alternator belt on my C18NZ. Tensioner was well too tight to move with a single spanner so I locked another one onto it. Hardly put any effort in it then.

Use your foot to push aswell.... Your legs have a tremendous amount more power than your arms!!!