Today my Mini Wheel studs turned up, they are of the correct length but very slightly oversize in diameter, in that while the threaded section of each stud will fit through the mounting holes in the handbrake calliper the shank will not. So I eased the holes a bit in the drill press using a 10mm drill and also put a shallow countersink in the mounting face to take the head of the stud.
Now the bolt passes nice and snugly through the mounting holes until it reaches the splined section where it jams solid. This is why the stud in the picture has ali marking around the base of the splines… it’s from a test fitting. So it’s time to take my courage or rather a big hammer in hand and knock the studs permanently into place. This goes surprisingly well and you can see from the picture on the right, it looks like a “Riiiight Proper Job!” to use a phrase from a well known UK scrapheap based TV programme.
A quick test fitting on the car shows that the calliper now clears the drive chain by about 5mm… wonderful. Unfortunately I don’t have time to complete the fitting tonight as I’m off out to a CAM7 meeting, but I’ll finish it tomorrow, and I can at last say that I’ve completed at least one system on the car …. Wooo Hooo