New member hello & APD rebuild

[Goldnrust]

Update time. Progress has been pretty good, I've was feeling motivated having seen the rear axle all back in the car

Ok, so front suspension! Picking up from last time, I was waiting on new spring shackles, spring shackle bushes and king pin bushes.

I started with the king pins. After measuring the bushes, I had decided otherwise change only the upper bush. The lower one was in spec and knowing I would be trying to make this work with a standard reamer, rather than a specific kingpin reamer I had read lots of the challenges of doing so with the lower bush. It was simple enough to drive the old bush out, I considered driving/pressing a new bush in from above, but that would mean driving it past the threads for the top cap, which left me a littler nervous. So I used a piece of threaded rod and some nuts and washers to draw the bush up from below. It was a bit slow going, but I got there. Once I'd run the reamer through it, it was a nice snug fit on the pin, and I could assemble the axle stub.




The spring shackle bushes were an easy enough swap over, I once again turned up al little drift to help my drive the old ones out and the new ones in.



And so now it was time to bolt all the pieces of the front suspension puzzle back onto the car. I haven't bolted the front damper on properly yet, with my modifications and no weight on the front end it's not locating the axle correctly laterally. It's offset to the drivers side by 1/2" or so. With no weight on the front suspension, the damper arm is sitting at quite an angle, so I'm hopeful that with the engine and gearbox in (along with the rest of the car!) the front suspension with come down a little and it will sort itself out. I've read about variations on this modification in several places, but I'm wondering if It's often done with lowered front suspension and I might have to go back to the drawing board and re-think my modifications. Until I have the car much more assembled it's too early to tell. 



At the same time I fitted a new steering arm. As mentioned in my previous post, I decided it was well worth ordering one of David Cochrane's stronger steering arms. 

The muddy/rusty front wheel bearings and felt seals were replaced by new sealed bearings and rubber lip seals.



And then I was ready to sit the car back on 4 wheels for the first time in a few months, which was a nice little morale booster.



With that done, theres only really one thing left on the chassis to do list, and that's deal with the brake cross shaft.

The 3 spherical bearings were all jammed up with paint, underseal, mud and old hardened grease, and so it was hard otherwise know what condition they would be line underneath. Once I'd chipped it all away and with the help of plenty of penetrating oil and brake cleaner got the bushes all moving and turning, I was pleased to find that they are in reasonable condition. So I cleaned up all the important surfaces on the cross shaft itself, which also came up well, put on way too much grease and slid the cross shaft back under the car.



It needs all the excess grease cleaning off, and the cables all hooking up, but that shouldn't take long really. I'm looking forward to being able to call the chassis done soon and get on to the engine and gearbox.