I should also mention that the clutch change part of the job took about 6 days for my poor long-suffering local specialist. Part of what he did is a real warning to other drivers of an older 156.
This included changing;
* both lower wishbones
* both droplinks
* one upper wishbone (that had over an inch movement, it was really knackered).
* Gearbox oil
* Slave cylinder & bleed
* dropping the subframe with associated seized bolts
* small bit of welding on n\s inner wing.
It took 4-5 hours and a few bent spanners to get the top starter motor bolt out. It is a git to get to without dropping the engine so if you get a sticky one it’s a really hard job.
We won't talk about the week of emissions problems caused by a faulty MAF and lambda plus faulty replacement lambda that caused 4 MOT retests
Nor will we talk of the failure caused by one of those Philips 50% brighter bulbs which would not give a proper beam pattern - they were a waste of money then.
And the final one which was a real problem, a rotted brake pipe.
The pipe from the front o/s brake runs through an area obscured by the subframe. It can't easily be seen without a real concentrated effort but you can just see it with a torch and if you know where it is. It is very likely to be missed by an MOT check (mine should have failed MOT at least 2 years ago) and unfortunately its in a very good place to go rotten. Mine was paper thin and just snapped with the smallest tweak, it was in an extremely dangerous state and if I hadn't had the subframe off it would never have been seen. The bad news is that even with the subframe off it still took 3-4 hours to re-pipe. It’s a sod to get to!
Its definitely something that you should check if you have an older 156. Next time you have an MOT, ask them to look at this pipe. I know no-one wants an MOT failure but we are talking about sudden brake failure here so its potentially your life and others at risk.
