February19th 2016
The Steering Wheel
When I got the car the wheel looked a bit odd. It turned out it was spaced away from the column with bolts and nuts in piles.
What a bloody awful description. Look at the piccy....
I'd already decided that it needed to be a bit further away still as I have more leg than body and my knees were in the way. The top bearing had a fair bit of slogger in it, so a dismantling was in order.
If I was a beer can aficionado I could probably have dated the top bearing repair as it had been shimmed up with a chopped up Black Label beer can.
I got a new oil-less bush and fitted that to remove the free play and then worked out how to make a taller boss for the wheel. Looking on t'internet they were about £35 upwards so a home brew affair was called for.
I use a cheap MIG welder with those disposable CO2 bottles, so I chopped the end from an empty one (the tape is to give me a decent guide-line for cutting with an angle grinder)
Then I welded it onto the top of the column (using a stick welder) and ground it down, all pretty-like.
That fitted in the bushes fine and I could test the length for knee-proximity. I'd allowed spare, but it looked like I would need it all.
I welded a flange on the top and a quick coat of silk black made it all wonderful. No play, no sticky-out bolts and a decent start to the work.
Back Axle
I took the axle off meaning to leave it until later. However I did want to know what sort of diff it had in. We had measured at at about 5.8(ish):1 by marking the prop flange and a tyre and pushing it along the garage, counting the prop rotations.
But I didn't know if it was a twin pin diff or not.
So I cleaned the axle up....
...and took the diff out.
The A-frame arms looked a bit worse for wear. They seemed to have been modified in the past, with some bumpy-looking welds. I cleaned the welds up, ground them out a bit and re-welded them.
The front oil seal was torn to shreds. It looked like bracken had got into it. I had taken the flange off, thinking I would need to set the diff up again anyway.
It turned out to be a single pin diff. Apart from the "growths" on the bearing caps it was in really good nick. The gears hardly seemed run-in.
A tooth count came up with 35 on the crown-wheel and 6 on the pinion which works out at 5.83:1.
I would have preferred 6:1 or even 6.16:1, but beggars can't be choosers and that's what it is.
A clean up, new oil seal and re-fit of the pinion flange (my mechanic friend helped and we decided we had just nipped up to the collapsible spacer enough to remove play but not alter the mesh). Time will tell.
A coat of paint and that was ready to fit again, when I had got the chassis sorted out.
Spare wheel carrier
Looking at shots of this car and others on trials (thanks to Glenn Bennett's albums) I thought the spare wheel seemed a bit low and didn't offer much extra head protection in the case of a roll-over.
I decided to fit it higher up and whilst it may slightly raise the CoG, at least if the car did fall over it would be better for protection.
I did this by welding a bit of tube across the roll-over bar stays and putting the bolts that used to be on the body top frame on there.
I added some tubes to the top frame to act as supports beneath the tyre. The wheel doesn't actually bear on them, but in the case of an inversion they would help prevent any further movement if the roll over bar or the wheel mount moved.
Other stuff to do
I'm getting to the "putting back together" stage now and am looking at things like cleaning up the alloy panels. I don't think I'll replace any at the moment. I could always do that later on.
Refitting the fuel line and pump will need a bit of thought with regard to protecting them more (I discounted running it through the chassis top rail) and cleaning up and polishing the alloy tank would be nice. I am altering the cooling system to remove the expansion tank (which had ended up in the cockpit) and will probably move the water pump to the cool side of the engine, drawing water from the rad and pushing it into the block. That would provide room to fit an alternator on the passenger side of the engine and then I could rely on one battery and more cooling fan action.
I've got a new battery cable which is more flexible, so I should be able to protect that more easily in the cockpit.
The exhaust manifold is a pile of rust in a vaguely familiar shape, so that is a new-build really.
There's a new loom to make, a sumpguard and brackets to make and I haven't even looked at the front axle yet. Some new rose joints needed there.
Oh yes. The bonnet needs altering a touch as well.
More next time.........
No comments:
Post a Comment