1 February 2006
Session 46 - Rear discs
Received rear discs today and fitted to ascertain if my calculations where correct regarding the stud length, unfortunately I was right, 5mm of thread left at the end of the wheel nut. Okay, I have ordered some longer studs from Rallynuts. I then have to remove the hub from the upright which will mean also disconnecting from the outer drive shaft, also I have to disconnect from the the bar shaft CVJ. Then I can go about whacking the existing studs out of the hubs with a heavy hammer. I am sort of looking forward to this. not!
Actually if you are careful you do not have to disconnect the stub shaft from the CVJ, the hub can be removed from the upright and the splines of the stub shaft left sticking out of the upright but you should really remove disconnect the stub shaft when coming to install the hub again as I discovered when inserting the hub it is possible that the rear bearing half can fall off, as this is kept in place when the hub nut is tightened. Beware because I have found reports where this had happened to people and they were unaware!
Also unfortunately I ordered the wrong studs, they were GM, I ordered them late at night and the description of the GM stud said like ford! I have sent back the GM studs and ordered the ford ones. Rallynuts said I could have drilled out my hubs and have new splines cut in! No I think I will just exchange the studs, thank-you.
3 February 2006
Session 47 - Rear hubs/ Front ball joints
Received upper and lower ball joints from Westfield today so fitted them to the upper and lower wishbones. Quite straight forward, took me 15 minutes to complete.
Removed rear hubs from uprights. The left upright posed a problem as it was difficult to remove the hub and I noticed the the play in the bearing front was much more than the right hand side. I decided to remove the upright from the car (top wishbone anyway) and to my horror the inner bearing sleeve had fallen off, I guess this happened whilst removing the hub. Appeared to be no damage and simply squeezed back together. The front bearing is held in place by a circlip and when the hub nut is done up this will naturally squeeze the inner and front bearing halves together. It is therefore worth while after inserting hubs into uprights to check that the rear bearing halve is still located correctly. I hammered out the wheel studs from the hub. This is achieved relatively easily with two blocks of wood placed underneath the hub and then hammering out the bolts from the reverse side with a metal hammer (yes have to be careful when you finally clear the splines not to hit the hub! I swapped the metal hammer for a rubber mallet when I sensed this was about to happen). The whole operation took about 1 hour. Now I hope those studs turn up tomorrow then I can finally put the whole rear suspension assembly to rest.
Picture of front end with ball joints installed, wow, ready to accept the uprights.
4 February 2006
Session 48 - Studs
Excellent my studs turned up today. They are the correct ones, note though that they are described as 63mm studs, that's actually the length to under the stud head, they actually measure 67mm in total. The standard ones are described as 51mm but that includes the stud head, this just goes to re-enforce measure twice and double check! As I had worked out before hand that I would need to remove 5mm from the studs, also do not expect the bolts to be exactly the same length, I checked and they were out, as they appeared to have been cut in the manufacturing process already. I decided to calculate the required stud length by adding up all the components:
Wheel nut length 24mm
Hub thickness 10mm
Brake disc thickness 9mm
Wheel thickness at stud hole 10mm
This means I need a total stud length excluding the head of 53mm. I went about measure the bolts with calipers and marking in the thread with a hack saw. My next problem was how do I ensure that they are cut exactly level, if I going to this extent in the first place, worth doing well right? For this I took a piece of 2"x2" wood and drilled a 12mm hole and then countersunk 14mm to tack the profile of the stud, this held the bolt very secure so that it would not turn whilst cutting. I clamped to block of wood into my bench vice and there you have it. Now cutting the bolts with a hacksaw took a long time and I need a break half way to! God, studs are hard, I got through three hacksaw blades to cut eight studs. Yep I do have grinders and alike but decided that the finish would be more accurate if I did it by hand, after all I have plenty of time anyway! I filed the ends smooth which didn't take a lot. This task took me 2 hours to complete. I am going to insert the studs tomorrow and hopefully get the hubs back on, install brake discs and wheels. Well the studs be the correct length? Erm..
5 February 2006
Session 49 - Studs continued
Today I set about inserting the studs into the hubs, phew bloody hard work, took me about 90 minutes for eight studs. The procedure was push the stud through the stud hole, yes make sure the correct side. The splines run to the very edge of the hole on one side only, so in theory the stud would not insert the wrong way. Anyway push and rotate until it feels like the spline is aligned. then on the front of the hub place three M12 washers of the stud and a M12 * 1.5 (coarse threaded) nut and wind down until tight with a 19mm spanner. Equipped with blocks of wood under the hub start hammering the stud down and then tighten up the nut again and repeat until the stud is completely installed. This will take a while, about 10minutes per stud.
Inserted all the studs and ensured they were all level by using the stud as feet on the floor and trying to wobble, no wobble, great. See photographs below.
Now I went about re-installing the hubs in the uprights or carriers as some call them. I decided to completely remove the uprights from the car and pressing down on the hubs through the bearing is easier and you can visually check from the reverse side to make sure the rear bearing is still in place as there is no circlip at the rear of the bearing unlike the front. The bearing is held together when all assembled but the stub shaft as the rear and hub bolt on the front with the front circlip also. Took me less than 1 hour to install and place on brake discs (held on my wheels and studs) and wheels. And yes the studs all the same length and come to the end of the wheel nut, phew!
left hand hub installed:
Right hand hub installed:
Photograph showing placement of brake disc, it does not fix down, hence why my hand is in the photo. This is held tight by the road wheel and obviously will not spin as the studs pass through it.
And finally road wheels attached, demonstrating that the studs are flush with the end of the wheel nuts. Click the image to enlarge to see the detail:
8 February 2006
Session 50 - Wheel stud ends/ wire loom
Spray the end of my wheel studs with chrome effect paint so that it matches the open ended wheel nuts, how sad is that? "Why not go for closed wheel nuts in the first place?" I hear you ask. Well, with open ended nuts I have been able to not only measure exactly the required stud length to take to the end of the nut but also visually know that they are at the end. Also a safety feature because I will be able to see if wheel nuts are coming loose. Took me 45 minutes to spray, about half of this time was spent masking a large area of the car to catch any over spray.
I also made good headway on installing the convoluted cable protection over my wiring loom, at least at the front of the car.
9 February 2006
Session 51 - Pedal box/ wire loom
The pedal box ali panels were playing on my mind, the manual suggests riveting them down, but I know better. Access to this is required later in the build and I think a good idea to use fixings that can be used easily. First time round I decided to use self tapers, well I did not have a rivnut tool so had no choice. Course I have a rivnut tool so I decided to do this job tonight. Drilled out the holes in the pedal box to take the rivnuts and drilled out the ali panel to take the M5 bolts I intended to use. Only six rivnuts but took about 30 minutes.
The wiring loom I think is going to be on-going for a while. Spent another 45 minutes installing convoluted tubing at the rear of the car. That's it tonight, a little at time, don't mind that.
12 February 2006
Session 52 - Torquing up
Spent 90 minutes in the garage this afternoon just torquing up some bolts. Applied thread lock (loctite 243) and torqued up the 24 drive shaft allen bolts to 34Nm. Torqued up the lower ball joints to wishbone bolts to 34Nm. I would include photos but of course looks no different!
18 February 2006
Session 53 - Handbrake lever
Cannot believe I have gone 6 days without doing anything on the car. Well I spent about 1 hour in the garage tonight fitting the handbrake lever, well drilling the holes took most of the time. Drilling two 8.1 mm holes doesn't sound to taxing does it! I do not know what type of steel Westfield use for the two straps that span across the transmission tunnel for the handbrake but god it is hard!! I nearly made a bo-bo I had placed the ali panel with the pre-cut hole on the transmission tunnel as a guide for the handbrake and marked the hole positions with the handbrake in the middle of the cut over in the panel. I clamped the handbrake into position and noticed that where the cable attaches to the handbrake would not be in the middle of the transmission tunnel. I made a post on the westfield car club web site and fellow builders had mounted the handbrake in the middle of the tunnel, so I have done likewise. This does mean that the handbrake will be about 12mm off centre toward the passenger in the cut-out in the panel but I guess the handbrake gator will accommodate this. Anyway, the handbrake will be smack bang in the middle of the transmission tunnel in the car rather than closer to the driver which I thought it should be looking at the panel. This is a good example of measure twice, double check you know what you are doing and triple check before drilling holes!
25 February 2006
Session 54 - Handbrake cable/ wire loom
Spent 3 hours in garage today fitting the handbrake cable and attaching to handbrake lever and doing some more wire looming. I have covered the handbrake cable with 12mm convoluted tubing as the shielding around the cable is metal and will wear against the wishbones. I have not tie wrapped the handbrake cable to the wishbones yet as I do not have the rear calipers yet and therefore do not know the required final position of the cable.
Also managed to get some more convoluted tubing to finish the covering of the wire loom and therefore started drilled and attaching to the chassis. I have completed attachment down the entire length of the transmission tunnel. I chose to lay the cable underneath the top chassis rail as much as possible, boy some holes were difficult to drill. The worst one was underneath the right hand side chassis which connects to the diff mount but is very much required in order to ensure that cable does not move out of the slot between the chassis and the bracket which holds the handbrake adjuster. Confused? Hopefully the following photos will explain:
Look at this perfectly level and central handbrake:
If you look carefully you will see the handbrake cable exiting the transmission tunnel left and right and going over the upper wishbones and looping down to the lower ones:
and working down from the rear of the transmission tunnel you can see the handbrake and compensator attachment to handbrake lever. You will also see the wire loom as I said attached underneath the chassis member where possible to maximize the room in the tunnel. The more observant or more bothered web browsers will notice I have removed the brake pipe, I decided it had to go from this position as it would foul with the loom. I may go underneath the car after all, I think I will give this some more thought later, maybe when I have the gearbox as I could located the brake pipe on the bottom chassis rail but not sure about the clearance with the gearbox. I Know lots of photos but haven't got my camera out for a while:
Next picture down the tunnel. No the loom is not loose it is attached the vertical chassis rail as it needs to clear it:
Nearly there now, honest. By the way I am going to attach the top transmission tunnel panels with rivnuts so that any future access is not going to be a problem:
And for the totally confused, here is a picture looking down the transmission tunnel from the engine bay:
I haven't attached the loom at the rear or the front of the car. Here's a picture of the front:
26 February 2006
Session 55 - wire loom and brake lines
Boy, when will this part be finished. Okay I have been putting this off for a while so I spent 3 hours in the garage this afternoon drilling the chassis, inserting brake line clips and tie bridges for the loom. It is looking rather neat now and no ugly tape holding brake lines to the chassis. I torqued up the handbrake lever bolts; a tip do not have the radio blasting out when torquing bolts, I sheared one, thank good I have a spare bolt.
You will see that I have started attaching front loom. I have stopped going down the side as I need to find out the exact route from here, I ensured that I have put plenty of tie wraps under the scuttle, I have heard other builders fail the SVA for insufficient fixing:
Here you will see the brake line attached to the outside of the chassis rail, yes looks strange and this is correct for the V8 as there is not enough room to have the line going inside and also next to the exhaust manifold which would not be a good idea:
More clips!
And brake pipe attachment at the rear of the car, you cannot see from this photo but the other side of the cross member has part of the wire loom attached. I could have finished the attachment of the loom at the rear but the loom differs from the manual, not such a big problem usually but the loom is formed in such as way that I think I am going to have to bend it through 180degrees which I do not think is good practice. I am going to check with the factory and/or WSCC:
27 February 2006
Session 56 - Rear wire loom
Spent 1 hour in the garage tonight. I had an answer regarding my concerns with bending the loom on the o/s rear. I am indeed right that it has to bend through 180 degrees but this is enough loom to form a sufficient radius. I have therefore finished attaching the loom to the chassis at the rear. Just need to finish the front part of the loom now.
Go to March 2006