Chris Williams' Journal

I'm back at school now so the progress will be slower. We've done a fair bit and I've taken some photos, but I'm a bit slow keeping this up to date. There are lots more photos at my Photobucket site so I won't put to many here.
http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n255/sweep_2006/
We've put the rear axle together minus the brakes. I've decided to get new brake cylinders for them and I haven't got them yet. The shocks seem OK but the links are well and truely shot. $68.00 each, ouch! I did consider making up a rubber bush assembly to replace the spherical ones which are so worn that one of them almost comes out. However one of the threads on the other end is stripped so I've decided to get the new ones and be done with it. I actually stripped the thread myself getting the taper to break loose. Too heavy handed with the hammer on the spindle. I had a nut on it and I was using some heat with a propane flame but I got too impatient and laid into it before I had got it hot enough.
The rear springs aren't exactly the same. One appears to be much older and rustier than the other and they have slightly different curves in them. I'm not going to worry about them at this stage, I will put the one with the higher curve under drivers side and see how they are. Interestingly this is the one that appears older.
I'm a bit worried about the diff. It's a bit 'clunky' when you turn it over by hand. I didn't inspect it as thoroughly as I should have and I'm hoping that it's because there's no oil in it. But I hope that it doesn't whine.
I cleaned up the bits for the Ubolts and springs and silver POR'd them. Was going to black POR them but the shackles looked right when I cleaned them so I kept them silver and for convenience painting I did the other bits silver also. They go against the black banjo and the Ubolts are black over them so I think it will look pretty good.
I could put the axle and springs together and attach to car but this means that it would have to come off the roto. so I want to put as much of the lines back before I do that. I cleaned up the brake lines which attach to the banjo and silver POR'ed them. I'll see how that looks tomorrow when they are dry. The little bracket and the brass 3 way connector got the treatment as well so I could assemble these tomorrow as well. I think I'll use big cable ties to hold them against the banjo at this stage. the metal straps were really daggy when I took them off.
A 'before' photo I forgot to take was the underside of the shock abs. and spring support bracket. You may remember the UBolt wear saga. The ubolts and plates had obviously been allowed to loosen and it had been driven like that. Everything was worn and holes elongated etc. Well the nuts holding every thing together had worn large craters into the underside of these support brackets. I would have been difficult to tighten up the new nuts into this hexagonal shaped crater so I welded them up, ground back and redrilled the holes before I POR'ed them. You can just see some evidence of my weld in the shot below.