Friday 20/1/2012

Hi

I guess yesterday was to good to be true because today didn't go quite as planned. 

It started quite well, I fitted the brake pipe for the rear brakes, I originally thought that I had lost the fitting for the connection yesterday but today with the spotlight on I realised that there wasn't one and that the copper just screwed onto the flexy via the bracket. Which leads me into the first problem of the day; I moved onto the front calipers which went on and connected up without a problem and looked great.

It was when I took the photo I realised that there should be a bracket bolted on so the brake pipes are secured, I checked thru my photos of when I stripped it and there was the bracket.

Original bracket

I have searched everywhere for them and they are gone without a trace, I think they may have been left at the powder coaters when I put my first lot in a couple of months ago. It was easy enough to get around this as there was no chance of me driving all the way to the coaters, so I made a couple of new ones, unfortunately its the nuts that are also missing that's the problem. Bet they turn up when I'm not looking.

One of the new brackets

The nuts are the fine thread of the brake nuts, no idea what these are.

New bracket fitted

Luckily there was a nut still attached to the offside pipe so I fitted the new bracket and secured the pipe. Will have to find a couple of nuts somewhere.
The next job was pretty straight forward and went without a hitch and that was to finish blasting the rear drums and give them a light spray to try and keep the rust at bay for at least a week.

Brake drums

I had been told by Floflex that my bushes were due today and they duly arrived, the Panhard rod bushes went straight in.

That's the last of my designed one's fitted and if I had the money I would have had a mold made of both sides of the upper arms because what I thought was a scale drawing from Floflex wasn't. 

This was a bit of a disappointment when I opened the pack but the biggest was yet to come.

I had to decide whether to see if I could return these and have a red face plus the fact I would have to figure out what else to order or I could try altering them. After yesterdays success and realising just how easy this poly is to alter I thought I would give it ago.

The sizes I required are:-

38mm OD instead of 46mm.

36.5mm between the flanges

44.5mm overall width instead of the 65mm.

As I no longer own a lathe I decided upon a vertical drive to spin centrally so attached the bush to my drill in its stand via a 12mm bolt with spacer washers borrowed from my bench grinder.

Bush fitted to vertical drill

I used a number of tools to reduce the bulk including a grinder with a sanding disk and a air file but I found the best tool for the job was an ordinary file.

This kept the diameter perfectly parallel and the size (I thought) came out perfect at 38mm, unfortunately a huge dose of stupidity lent a hand.

What a great accomplishment turning down a poly bush by hand to 38.09mm, think again!

I had forgotten to take into account the tightness of the bush on the spindle which as the bush got hot needed tightening a little more and a little more to stop it spinning. So great, success until I tried to fit it in the axle bush hole and found it over a mil to small, I couldn't believe it. After doubling checking my sizes I realised that as it was tightened it squashed up and as I released the nut it returned to its correct diameter.

Well you have to laugh.

I still have the other bush to do, so I will check the size by loosening the nut and allowing to cool before taking a measurement, of course I will have to buy another bush, that will be £10 for the bush and £8 postage.

Well over £200 for the rear bushes so far. £80 for the Teflon blank and the mold, so really only around £120 about the same as the front.

I had to give up after this disappointment so got the brush out and cleaned up.

I hope to get a little more done tomorrow but that will be my last day as I am off early Sunday for a 17 day trip this time, hopefully I will have a full 2 weeks off when I return, although we find out about redundancies at the end of the month so I may have more time than I thought to work on car.

See ya Paul