Steering rack

Evening,

Today was spent cleaning and refurbishing the steering rack,  the years of grime took most of the morning to remove. After cleaning I painted the rack, greased it and replaced the boots.

Hard to believe it took six hours to do that but it just takes time.  From here on out it should go faster with re-assembly.  The parts are all cleaned, painted and ready to go back on the car.

Prior to cleaning and refurbushing

After, looks a bit better IMHO.

That's it for this week, hope y'all have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Lynn

6 hrs

Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning-front suspension.

Evening folks,

Yesterday did most of the cleaning but had to do a bit more today, one of my least favorite tasks in refurbishing an old car. Good thing I'm passionate about E Types?

I'll just let the pictures do the talking tonight.

Lower control arm with bushing that has seen it's best days 

Same bushing

Front suspension parts cleaned and painted 

The disc brake shield and sway bar, both painted black

The cleaned control arm supports, cleaned and ready for their new bushings

Had to remove the steering rack to replace the old steering rack mounts, will clean it up a bit and install new gators.

front sans steering and sway bar

New mounts in the fore ground, bushings in the support arms.

Well that it for today, will be taking a Grandfather day tomorrow so won't be back till Friday.

Cheers,
Lynn


7 hrs

Passenger side front suspension

Evening Ya'll,

Bet you wondered what happened to me?  Well, we went on the Atomic City Tour with the Idaho British Car Club. The tour was fantastic, once again a destination that one might turn up their nose too turned out to be FANTASTIC!  We stopped at INEL and saw EBL1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor 1), well worth the drive all by it's self-have you ever seen a nuclear air plane engine?  256 tons!  Just the engine, can't imagine what they had in mind....

Then on to Craters of the Moon for a spectacular view of some incredible country.  Then on to Idaho Falls where we stayed in a very nice hotel.  We went to an aircraft museum on Friday and had our only 'incident', we lost our license plate and almost took out a motorcyclist according to our friend who was following us.  Thank Goodness that it missed him!   Then we had a car show on Saturday Morning, great turn out from the locals but about noon it started to rain, first time that we've ever been rained out!   Then Saturday evening we had a catered dinner in the Idaho Museum where they had a very fun "Steam Punk" exposition.   

RJ went on to receive 1st place in our group and I received 2nd, couldn't have been happier to see Michelle take first!!!!

The drive back on Sunday was an adventure, Rick who drives a very nice TR6 started having fuel pump problems and after several stops he was able to get it to work once he sorted the wiring to it.  Well he must have had bad Karma or he was just so unhappy with that fuel pump he 'decided' to take it out by running over a large rock!  I happened to have the exact same type of fuel pump in the boot so after a bit of a struggle for Rick he was able to install the new one, after a couple more false starts we got back on the road and had a late lunch in Stanley-Thanks Rick! and then back on home.    

Monday was a recovery day but got back to CD today and disassembled the passenger side front suspension.  Then spent the afternoon minus a couple of hours for a Mtn Bike ride cleaning the parts for painting.

That's it for today, will paint tomorrow, pull off the steering rack so that I can replace the rubber steering mounts. 

"That's All Folks"

Cheers,

Lynn

7hrs

Front suspension, sway bar, splash guards....and something completely different :-)

Evening Ya'll,

Another short day and maybe the last of the week.  I installed some of the splash guards on the drivers side but can't install the rest of them until the bushings are tightened up and they can't be tightened until the weight is back on the front end.  Tightening them without weight on them would lead to early failure of the bushing.

The driver side with some of the slash guards installed, below there is a before and after picture.

The sway bar, not yet cleaned. 

Took a break and went for a bike ride, I thought it was kinda pretty.

Sway bar link, wonder how this one got bent?

Used my press to straighten

Better, did a little bit more after this picture but it looks pretty good.

Passenger side, caliper off and tie rod end removed, a lot of cleaning to do-Yech!

Looks like a different car doesn't it?

"That's All Folks"

Cheers,
Lynn

4 hrs

Front suspension....

Hi Folks, hope you all had a nice weekend.  Today I continued the installation of suspension parts on the drivers side, got stalled for a few minutes trying to figure out how to proceed with the shock absorbers.  The new shocks have a different type of spacer so had to remove them from the old ones and install them in place of the new ones. I think I'll just let the pictures tell todays story.

Went shopping for new wheel bearings today but couldn't find them locally so stalled on the assembly till we can get the wheel bearings.  

Looks a bit different than the passenger side

Cleaned and painted the heat shield, looks better with a little paint and it seals it up.

The heat shields and reservoir bottles for the brakes and clutch are now installed.

Well that's it for today,

Cheers,
Lynn


4 hrs

Front suspension continued.....

Hi Folks,

A long day on the drivers side front suspension,  Removed the old bushings and pressed in the new ones.  New upper and lower ball joints then on to installing the lower control arm and torsion bar.

New lower ball joint, had to cut off the old bolts and tapped the holes to take full advantage of the full thickness.

Fitting the lower control arm with the torsion bar setting bar, had to fit and refit the TB to get the bolts to line up on the TB adjuster plate.

Lower control arm with the TB in place and both bolts/nuts in place on the TB adjuster plate (only had one when it arrived here) and now the heat shield back in place underneath.

Well folks, that's it for this week, hope to finish up the front suspension next week.  The right side may be just a touch easier as the exhaust isn't in the way as it was/is on the left side.  Have a great weekend ya'll!

Cheers,
Lynn


9 hrs

More suspension, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning....

Evening Folks,

Today the high was in the mid 70's where as yesterdays was in the mid 90's.  Interesting weather....

I was hoping that I would be able to start reassembling the suspension but I decided to paint the metal bits and that required a bit more cleaning be done.  I think they look better with the silver paint but if someone wishes to have them plated in the future it should be relatively easy to remove the paint and then plate them, but in the mean time they are protected.

I also worked on removing 50 years of grime from the engine frames and suspension mounting areas, it will be a lot more pleasant to reassemble the fresh parts to the cleaner frames.  Now on to the pictures....

The control arms prior to painting

Cleaned and ready for paint

Brake shield ready for black paint

I was going to clean the bearings up and re-use them but that's not the way it's going to go.  The irregularities you see in the bearing rollers isn't dirt!  This is probably the worst bearing I've ever seen that wasn't seized to an axle.  Very rough!  Jennifer, you wouldn't have gone much further  on these.

Cleaned up the frames, probably can't tell but a lot of grease, dirt and sand came off these rails.  Interestingly I found a crayon marking on the top rail under all the crap.  This marking appears to be the chassis number and is marked on the assembly line.  Tomorrow I'll try to get a picture of it.

The upper control arm after painting, next picture with the lower control arm and axle carrier.

Tomorrow I'll start the reassembly process, really looking forward to cleaning the passenger side parts now,  maybe looking over at the clean drivers side will give me renewed enthusiasm ;-)

"That's All Folks" 

Cheers,

Lynn

5 1/2 hrs

Front suspension 2

Evening folks,   

Worked on the drivers side front suspension today and it was painful ;-)  To drop the lower control arm one has to release the associated torsion bar which is under a load and if it got away from you could be deadly, really.  Well at any rate I thought it would be pretty simple to release the adjustment plate from the reaction plate but I had forgotten that the two bolts are hidden from access by the exhaust pipes etc.  Needless to say a lot of stuff had to be removed to get to them, now I'm sweating how I'll get them back in place*.  

Doing one of these cars is often like an archaeologic dig, some times you find the strangest things.  Todays discoveries included the fact that some one had been here before and ran into problems with getting the nut on the torsion bar mount so they didn't bother to put a nut on the end of the bolt that locks the TB in place.  The other thing I found today was that the front mount for the lower control arm was held in place by 4 loose bolts, they had not been snugged up.  Accidents happen, but these two little things could have lead to one.

I'll leave the rest for the picture captions.

Partially disassembled front suspension

Brake rotor, caliper, and shield have to be taken off

taking the control arm apart, TB tension held by the shock absorber, once the axle carrier is removed then I'll put the jack under the lower control arm to hold it then release the shock and drop the control arm down relieving the pressure on the TB

Just the various tools and BFH's required for this job

Almost there, one additional comment-the lower ball joint was very worn/loose

Going...

Gone

Control arms before cleaning

Control arms after cleaning, will need to decide if I should paint them....

Well folks, it's been a long day, I worked in a nice Mtn Bike ride and got the AC working on Pearle my 73 2+2

'That's All Folks"

Cheers,

Lynn

5 1/4 hrs

Clutch Slave and disassembly of front suspension

Evening folks, a beautiful day here.  Today installed the clutch slave cylinder and flex hose.  I had to have Jan hold the head of the frame bolt that holds the flex hose at it's upper position.  

New slave clutch slave cylinder,  ordered a new clevis pin for the clutch. The old one was not designed for the standard clutch cylinder.

New flex hose, shouldn't have to mess with this for many years.

Disassembling the front suspension, the lower ball joint was quite loose and the bushings are coming apart.

Some of the parts, the rotor, brake caliper and shield. Will need to clean all this stuff and clean inspect and grease the wheel bearings.

Stopping point for the day, will need to remove the upper and lower control arms to replace the bushings.

"That's All Folks"

Cheers,

Lynn

6 hrs