2 March 2006
Session 57 - Front uprights and Hubs
Received some more bits for the car today. Hubs from a company called Compbrake which I actually bought from Ebay; a right bargain at £99 for a pair of CNC alloy hubs cut from aluminum billet. I also received my alloy front uprights from westfield along with positive battery lead to enable me to mount the battery at the rear of the car. The battery is best placed in he rear for V8 as space is tight under the hood and saves valuable space and also better for weight distribution. Thought I'd weight the hubs and uprights. The hubs are light, only weight 1150grams each and the uprights aren't bad either at 2350grams each. I also received two runs of fuel lines, for injection you need a line to supply fuel to the fuel rail to the injectors and a return line back to the fuel tank to recycle fuel not used. Only actually spent 20 minutes in the garage just trial fitting the uprights, they will need to come off to install the hubs and bearings.
Here is a photo of the said uprights, left one from the back and right from the front. The bit sticking up is the steering control arm that connects to the steering rack. The upper and lower ball joint connect and act as the fulcrum. The long bit on the front, the spindle is known as the stub axle and this is where the hub attaches with its bearings of course. The two bolt holes you can see on the bottom, which is actually on the side when installed is where the brake calipers are bolted to. These only weight 2350grams each, they look heavier but trust me my kitchen scales do not lie!
Here is a picture of the hubs, again front and rear. The front face is where the wheel studs are inserted, but from the back and then of course you know that the wheel fixes to this face. The reverse side is where the brake disc is attached. These hubs do not have bearings inserted yet. These only weight 1150grams each:
Here is a picture of one of the uprights trial fitted to the lower and upper wishbones via the ball joints and connected to the steering rack ball joint. You can clearly see the two bolts holes facing the rear where the brake caliper will attach. You can see the spindle with the castellated nut and washer which which the wheel hub will attach to:
3 March 2006
Front Wheel bearings
Did not actually do anything in the garage today. Spent about 30 mins sourcing where I can get my hub bearings from, calling motor factors and asking for bearings for a car that has not been in production for at least 22 years is not funny. In reality these bearings are probably quite common and generic and used on many cars! Several manufactures make them and there all use different part numbers. Quinton Hazel are quite common and their code is QHWB515C.
Alternative product codes obtained from the WSCC web site:
301280 OPTIMAL
4031185212809 OPTIMAL
5 007 026 OE Ford
505 SKF
5208 RUVILLE
7814 HK
GK0026405 SPIDAN
HK7814 HK AUTOTEILE
I actually got these relatively cheaply for retail, cost me £21.00 all inclusive for two kits. In the kit you should have two taper bearings and the associated races, an oil seal ring, the hub grease and the split pin to go through the castellated nut.
Suffice to say I got my vernier calipers out and measured the stub axle where the bearings will fit to get an effective i. d. of the bearings and also measure the ID of the hub to obtain the OD required of the bearings. As far as I can tell to the nearest mm it is spot on, phew! For those of you that are interested. The larger bearing goes to the rear of the hub and stub axle, ID is 27mm, OD is 50mm. The smaller bearing goes to the front of the hub and axle and the ID is 17mm, OD 40mm. The oil seal is OD 50mm and I suspect the the ID is 27mm, i.e. same as the rear bearing dimensions.
I have not fitted these type of bearings before so made a posting on the WSCC asking for advice, Fraser came to my rescue, his handle is Nikpro:
Take the outer race and identify which is the inner and outer (usually they are different sizes and will only fit in to one side of the hub - the inner or the outer).
If you look at your hub there will be a 'shoulder' inside it; you have to drift the outer race into the hub and onto the shoulder so it sits square on it.
When drifting the race into the hub make sure it goes in square as it's made of hardened steel and will easily damage the hub.
Once the races are in place take the needle roller part of the bearing and pack each individual roller with wheel bearing grease.
Place the inner bearing on its race then drift the oil seal into position over the top of it.
Again, be careful when fitting the oil seal not to damage it in any way; I always soak mine for 24hrs in oil before fitting.
Next fit the hub onto the stub axle (after fitting brake disc to it). by sliding it into position. The inner part of the bearing is usually an interference fit over the stub axle so it might help keeping the upright in the freezer overnight.
Loosely pack the space between the inner bearing, stub axle and outer race with grease.
Pack the needle rollers on the outer bearing with grease and slide this into position over the stub axle and into the outer race in the hub.
Next is to fit a large washer and hub nut; I don't know whether the hub nuts on Cortina Hubs are torqued but standard practice is usually to tighten the hub nut whilst rotating the hub until you feel the rotation being hindered then back the nut off by one flat.
Fit a split pin if its a castellated nut then fit the hub grease cap (presumably supplied with hubs) to stop all the grease flying out!
I cannot wait to try this! I shall probably do this, this weekend along with finishing off attaching my wire loom to the front of the car.
speaking to Westfield about getting front wheel studs to insert into hubs and it was brought to my attention that I need to be careful when getting extended studs as the ford standard studs have a 20mm should length usually used to locate the disc bell in the case of the rear anyway. On the front hub the disc brake bell is bolted to the back of the hub, this means that even when taking into account the depth of the hub at the stud (10mm) means that 10mm of shoulder remains the wheel side of the hub. The depth of the hole in my alloys as measured is 10mm so close. I decided to take an exact measurement with a depth gauge when the wheel but is inserted through the hole and I discovered with the 60 degree nut that the edge of the nut will only be 8mm from the hub. Oh dear bottoming out by 2mm! After thinking about this for a while and trying to get hold of studs where the shoulder is less 20mm, I am going to order standard extended studs and use a lathe to turn down the shoulder down by several millimetres.
4 March 2006
Session 58 - Wire loom - front
Spent 1 hour in the garage this morning. Had other things to do and commitments today otherwise would have spent longer in the cold garage, oh well. Anyway I have finished attaching the main loom to the chassis. Drilling the holes in the top two diagonal cross members was quite tight because of the angle I needed to drill, I actually managed to break two drill bits in the process. The only wiring I have left to do now, well what I know of at the moment is the positive and negative battery feeds and the engine loom which connects to the front main loom. I shall include a photo tomorrow. Noticed whilst I was crouching down to drill the chassis the the bolts going through the aluminum steering rack brackets do not come to the end of the nyloc nuts underneath, close but not right! I decided to out the the M8X25mm standard bolts that westfield supplied, I think this are okay for the standard steering rack bracket but mine are aluminum and thus thicker. I have installed M8X30mm and now the bolts just protrude a little out of the nyloc nuts, which is good.
5 March 2006
Session 59 - Positive battery feed
Spent about 30 minutes in the garage pottering about. Decided not to install bearings in my hubs, I want to get the proper tool for the job, i.e. bearing drifts for 40 and 50 mm bearing races. Probably try and get these tomorrow locally if possible. Anyway installed the battery positive feed from the back to the front. Also went round the loom at the front cutting of tie wraps I left yesterday. Anyway see photographs below.
Photo from near side looking toward the front. If you look carefully you can see the loom attached to the chassis in the foreground and various tails of it to various future electrical components. I am particularly happy with it, now it is installed tight against the chassis, offshoots for items such as left and right indicators, left and right headlamps, appear to be exactly the same length, which is good!
View from the front. If you look dead centre of the chassis rail, you will see the loom is on the edge of the tubular cross member, rather than underneath, this is because underneath lives the brake pipe and T-piece which splits the left and right line to calipers. I have also installed the tie wrap bridge rivet offset because a stud is welded to the chassis for the T-piece and I do not want to risk weakening. Also think twice before drilling!
Rear of the loom again with various offshoots to future various components: left and right rear lamp cluster, reversing lamp, fog lamp, fuel pump, speed transducer, inertia switch used to cut of fuel supply in an event of an collision (I hope not this does not happen!), fuel tank sender, number plate lamp. I have probably missed something. You can of course see the thick red wire placed on the diff at the moment; this is the positive battery feed. Battery is installed in the rear as I said before.The positive feed travels down the transmission tunnel down to the front and attached to the starter motor. Need to install a battery tray and battery. I am going for a gel battery, the type used on motorcycles, advantage - light and small. Probably going to go for an Oddessy PC680, so named because its specification for starting motor is 680Amps, wow! Anyway, more on that later.
6 March 2006
Gloomy Monday!
Oh today was black Monday. Spoke to Hub manufacturer about my problems with installing the bearings and my concerns regarding the bore tolerances. Apparently if this is the problem then this is the first hub in a production run of 2000! They requested that I send both hubs back along with the bearings that I purchased from elsewhere. I rushed to the post office to send immediately. Await to hear what they have to say.
I also discovered today how nylon bushes should work in my wishbones. I have torqued the wishbones up a little and it would appear that my wishbones are too stiff and are suffering from something known as stiction! Apparently I should have removed most of the powder coat from inside the bush mounting on the wishbones! This means I need to remove all the wishbones and remove the bushes from their housings and fettle down the powder coat and re-insert the bush with the sleeve. Apparently the sleeve should be loose enough that it would fall out of the bush. The sleeve protrudes out of the side of the nylon bush by a fraction of a millimetre, meaning that is is held tight between the chassis mounts but the nylon bush can rotate around the sleeve. This will probably take about 8 hours to sort out in total, I am keen to get this right.
8 March 2006
Session 60 - Nylon bush rework
After much debate on the procedure of installing nylon bushes on the WSCC forum, we have a procedure that should be followed when installing nylon bushes. Members have requested this be made available as a much needed FAQ. It would appear that I am not the only person that made this mistake.
The procedure goes something like this:
- Clean out the powder coating from inside the wishbone bush housing on the wishbone. Use of a Dremel is good, anyhow, use sandpaper rather than emery cloth. Sandpaper will remove the powder coating but not the metal!
- Now insert the two nylon halves into the mount and check that the hat part is not fowled by the end of the mounting, you may have to remove power coat from the edge also. Also check welding will not interfere.
- Insert the nylon inserts, you may need to use a soft faced mallet to help.
- Now check to see if steel insert will go into the nylon bush, note by hand only, should be easy.
- If the steel insert will not insert and this is very likely then get a M14 bolt and wrap with emery cloth, one or two layers and turn to fettle down the nylon. Note this may take a while. Took me 1hour per bush. Use power tool at your peril.
- Repeat step 5 until the insert can be inserted in. Please do not take file too much away. The steel insert should not move around in the bush, should only be able to rotate it by finger and thumb whilst in the nylon. A good test, insert steel insert, turn wishbone so insert faces down, it should not fall out, but a very light tap on the wishbone with your other hand and the insert should start to fall out. It is important that the fit is good, too tight and stiction will occur, too loose and the car will be all over the road!
- Use cooper grease between the steel insert and the nylon part. Also grease inside the insert itself.
- The steel insert should be just proud of the nylon face, so that when bolted to the chassis mounts the steel sleeve makes contact with the bracket and face of nylon bush barely touches the chassis.
- Cooper grease between the nylon face and the bracket.
- Torque up and check for stiction. The wishbone should move up and down freely with no stiction (with damper disconnected first!)
Now as I had not done step 1. other than to make sure that the powder coat was level, i.e. not lumps of the stuff, then this resulted in the inner bore of the bush being reduced, we are talking something like 0.2mm but that was enough to cause a problem. To try and remove the nylon bush at this stage risks damaging the bush. So I decided to remove the steel insert only. Now this was extremely stiff as I had pressed it in with a vice! do not do that! To remove I got a piece of 2 x 2 wood and drilled an 18mm hole through it. I then Placed the wood in my vice (damn thing!), this meant I could place the wishbone bush mount over the top and this would provide the support but allow the steel insert to drop through (make sure your hand is underneath at the critical point!). Get a short M14 bolt and place over the steel insert, this is just the right size so that it makes maximum contact with the face of the insert but smaller than the inner bore of the nylon bush (16mm). Now hammer the bolt a couple of times followed by lighter blows and there you have it. Now I started from step 5. above.
I spent about 2 hours today removing one of he rear upper wishbones and fettling down the nylon bush. I think this is going to take me longer than I expected but worth it.
I will do the lower wishbone tomorrow and include some photographs so you know what the hell the bush looks like.
9 March 2006
Session 61 - Nylon bushes continued
Spent another 2 hours today fettling the nylon bushes in the other rear upper wishbone. I now have blisters on both hands and my skin is source from abrasion. I really must get some gloves! I have taken any photos of the bushes yet, my trigger finger is too sore!
11 March 2006
Session 62 - Yep, nylon bushes still!
Spent 4 hours today fettling the nylon bushes on both rear lower wishbones. Halfway there now, just need to make a start on the front wishbones.
As promised some photos the wishbone bushes so you can see what all the fuss is about. In this demonstrates a metalastic bush installed. Even though I have upgrade to nylons from the word go, you still need a metalastic bush installed in the outboard rear lower wishbone. The metalastic bush is required to allow the play required with adjusted the rose joint which you can see in the background of the photo. The metalastic bush is basically an outer steel sleeve and inner steel sleeve with rubber bonded between them. The inner sleeve protrudes out of the bush housing at the sides but the outer sleeve is flat to the housing. Metalastic bushes are a precision press fit, apparently requiring up to ten tonne of pressure and they have to be inserted exactly right!
Here's a photo of the same wishbone but the inboard side that connects to the chassis. These is where the nylons are installed. Here you see a picture with the steel inserts removed to show the nylon installed in the housing. These can be inserted by tapping in with a mallet of pressing in with a vice but only light pressure is required. This nylon is very hard. I needed to increase the bore size by 500 microns, armed with 100 grit emery cloth would take 1 hour to remove the required amount! Again the sleeve protrudes the nylon bush, again by a very small amount. These sleeves are free to move sideways and can rotate in the nylon bush but there is no play in the bore or at least shouldn't be as this would change the suspension geometry in a bad way!
Here's a final photo with the steel sleeve inserted in the foreground bush:
12 March 2006
Session 63 - yep, yes guessed it, bloody nylon bushes
Spent just 2 hours working in the garage today. 1 hour spent attaching the rear wishbones and they are superb, very smooth and no stiction.
Started fettling the bushes on the front wishbones. Finished the upper wishbone on one side. I am not doing anymore fettling of bushes today, my fingers hurt, they need a rest, its not the blisters that's the problem but the abrasion from the emery cloth. Yes I have tried gloves, well I only have surgical ones, and they do not last long. I torqued up the front wishbone and it is not as good as the rear wishbones, seems to have a little bit of stiction, I know this will not be from the inserts, I think it must be the surface of the bush onto the chassis mount, I suspected this actually before I torqued up because it was tight getting the wishbone in between the brackets. I shall remove tomorrow and take off about 0.5mm total from each bush, i.e. 0.25mm per side and try again. I think I will take measurements from the brackets and the bush. The bracket should have an inside measurement of 38mm. The other thing to bear in mind is that these wishbones are the smallest (smaller leverage) and lightest and any stiffness in the bush will be more apparent than say the larger and heavier wishbones at the back or indeed the lower wishbone on the front.
13 March 2006
Session 64 - erm, a little boring, bloody bushes!
Well didn't spend that much time in the garage, about 60 minutes, in which I sorted out the upper wishbone stiction. I measured the chassis mounts inside measures 38mm as suspected it should. The width of the bushes are 38mm and the inner sleeve, you guessed it 38mm. I think now is the time to get more accurate vernier calipers, ones that I can measure in micrometers with! Anyway I discovered a number of factors which contributed to the wishbone stiffness: i) the front headlamp bracket which goes between the nut and wishbone chassis mount was pulling the bolt tight, I had to adjust the headlamp bracket!. ii) the shank of the bolt was a little tight on the inner sleeve, I remedied this by simply turning the steel sleeve the other way! again ID measured the same both ends, but it sorted it so I am happy. iii) As I suspected yesterday removing a small amount of the nylon bush from the ends that contact the chassis bracket would help. Now its perfect. Well that's the fifth wishbone done, just three left, which I hope to have done during the course of this week.
My front hub 12mm extended wheel studs arrived today. Here's a photo of what they look like before being installed in the hub. These are 47mm long from under the head to the tip. They are M12 course thread (1.5mm) The shank has a splinned section, the shank length is 20mm.
14 March 2006
Session 65 - nearly there with bushes
Yes, still doing them. At least I can fettle the bushes in the warm whilst watching television! Spent 90 minutes with the emery cloth inside the nylon bushes on the offside front lower wishbone. Phew I have now completed wishbones on all three corners of the car, just two left. I am glad I did not know the amount of effort for nylon bushes before I decided to upgrade from metalastics, I probably would not have gone for it!
16 March 2006
Session 66 - Raw hands
I almost did some more bush work yesterday but thought better of it, promised myself I would do a wishbone today. Which I did, although today was both busy from a work standpoint and commitments and Gym so I ended up starting fettling my upper wishbone after 22:00hrs and I would have rather gone to bed! Anyway took 1 hour to complete. I know only have the lower near side front wishbone to do.
Oh, I almost forgot my hubs came back yesterday from compbrake's. They have pressed the races end and sent the rest of my bearings back. Looks good, hopefully will prove good when fitted.
17 March 2006
Session 67 - Finally end of bush fettling
1 hour tonight spent on my last wishbone bushes marks an end to sore hands, I hope anyway. Only took over 14 hours!
18 March 2006
Session 68 - wheel studs front wheel hubs
Spent about 1 hour re-attaching wishbones that were fettled last night, very nice movement. I am sure this will be worth the effort. Anyway now wishbone bushes are out the way I can continue with other no so mundane tasks.
Decided to cut the extended front wheel studs that I purchased. Much like the rear studs I have calculated the required length as thus:
Wheel nut length 24mm
Hub thickness 10mm
Wheel thickness at stud hole 10mm
Note no need to take into account the brake disc thickness, as the front the disc is attached behind the hub, unlike the rear. As you can see from above the required stud length is 44mm. Cutting down the studs which are heat treated is done using the usual hacksaw affair but with a supply of blades!
Pulling the studs through the hubs is much easier than the rear ones, this is due to the front hubs being alloy. Basically with the use of the stud itself and three washers you can pull the stud though using a 17mm spanner on the wheel nut. The splines on the shaft are 0.1mm larger than the bore in the hub and cut into the material as it is pulled through. I estimated this only took about 30ft/lbs of force on the nut to pull through. If you were installing studs through a new steel hub I think the required force would exceed the maximum safe torque limit of the bolt, about 65ft/lbs. If a steel hub has been used before then you can align the splines and get away with it, like I did for the rear. If you do get new steel hubs then you will have to get an engineering company with a hydraulic press to insert the studs.
Took me 2 hours to cut down the studs and install through the hubs and spray the bolts ends with silver paint. Here's a photo of the finished hubs. If you look closely you will see the outer bearing races installed. Bearings themselves are not installed, which is just a simple grease and drop. I will install the roller bearings nearer to the time when I install the hubs on the car, when I get the brake discs.
Go to April 2006