Lots of interruptions and "fires" to distract me today.
Finished the day late mocking up the new headers and intake on the chevy 250 straight six (on the old damaged head). Also ran a hot coolant supply tube to the heat block under the carb on the new manifold.
Rear brake inspection mostly. Thought we had shoes to throw on, and new wheel cylinders. Upon inspection, found we also need drums and hardware kits. And drums seem to be cast from pure unobtainium.
No pics today. Today was day two on Leia (1961 Vanden Plas "4 Litre Princess" limousine with Rolls Royce bodywork) front suspension, steering and wheel bearings. Got the right side "Armstrong lever hydraulic damper" off the car and off the kingpin carrier. Some numb nuts booger welded the top fulcrum pin to the arm on the damper. I'm going to have to grind off the welds and knock that pin out before sending it off to Peter up at World Wide Parts in Madison WI for a rebuild to "better than new." Now I'm working on the right side today. It's also going to have issues with the upper fulcrum pin once I get it loose. The pin on this side is about 2 inches too long, and booger welded to the arm as well.
I've also been slowly working the remaining thermostat housing bolt back and forth on the GM 4.3L Vortec V6 in this one. It turns about a quarter turn now before hitting a "stop". Been soaking it in Blaster for an hour or so while working on the suspension, then going back and wiggling it some, spraying it with the Blaster again and going back to the suspension. I do not want to break that stud off in the intake on this one. BTDT, and it's no fun to fix. Not horrible, but not something I want to repeat.
I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to release the tension on the coil springs safely to get the lower wishbones out. There's a Vanden Plas special tool, 18G76 Front Suspension Spring Compressor. Might be in the Austin special tools as well, but I don't have one of those, and I don't think I can source one. Today I got some longer bolts for the lower spring seat plate. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to lower the lower spring seat a little at a time with the longer bolts until the tension is released (hopefully all the way released). I'm hoping that will do the job.
This is from Saturday. I finished making new king pin bushings for the Vanden Plas DM-4 4 Litre Princess Limousine.
I had to turn down the OD on some 954 Aluminum Bronze bushing material, drill holes for the grease passage into the bushing, and use a lathe to cut grooves for the grease on the ID of the bushing. That last part was a challenge.
I couldn't exactly duplicate the original groove pattern with the machinery I had access to, but I did manage a "triple figure 8" using the lathe I had available to use. The major challenge was that the grooves are not supposed to go through the end of the bushing material. Here's a closeup of the top of the grooves showing that.
The guy who owns/manages the machine shop where I did this says that on a difficulty scale of 1-10, these were 11s. It took me 3 to 4 hours per bushing to do this. For the grooves, step 1 was to unplug the lathe so you don't accidentally turn it on when turning the chuck by hand with a wrench. All the operations for those grooves were done by manually turning the chuck with a wrench, and cutting only about 0.002" at a pass.
Tomorrow I'm making molds for the rubber place to use to make new lower wishbone bushings (on metal cores I made from scratch) and upper trunnion (outer) bushings. On this car, like many Austins, Morrises and other British cars of the 1950s and 1960s, the bushings are tapered pairs at each joint, with flanges to keep the parts centered. More lathe work to make the molds for this.
Seems like every "wear part" in the front suspension and steering on this car is no longer available, and most of what I found in this "rebuild" of suspension and steering has been worn beyond any possibility of reusing it. Some parts literally fell apart and can't be reassembled because the wear was so severe.
I've been off with personal/family issues this week. But I just got pix in from the industrial rubber place that's making me some new lower wishbone inner bushings and upper trunnion bushings for the Princess (Leia this time).
After searching for over a month, I was unable to locate any bushings to fit this car. It's got the tapered half bushings like an Austin Healey, but bigger than the Austin Healey bushings. I finally gave up looking. I had to make new metal cores (from tubing and washers), and I had to make the molds for the tapered bushings. I sent those off last week. I shipped molds and cores up to an industrial rubber place and they're making the parts and curing and vulcanizing the rubber. I also sent them a pair of actual Austin-Healey bushings so they could match the durometer and other physical properties of the rubber. The first set came out of the molds today (I'm a little surprised they're working on a Saturday), and they sent me these pics. The guy up there says these look just like the factory made Austin Healey Bushings, only bigger and the right size for our Limousines.
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