Well what a brilliant sunny day we have had here today, real hotrod working weather First job was to rebuild my Land Rover steering box, you can get any small part for these and for peanuts too, armed with £12 ($19) worth of gaskets, shims & bearings the rebuild commenced, 1 hour later it was done & mounted. Next up was to sort out the pitman arm, I had sorted these bits previously but now there is no rush i decided to get them chromed, the track rod end goes in from the other side on the LR box and I needed it the other way around, the answer was to drill out the arm and weld in a bung I had turned up earlier, this puts the rose joint i'm using back in the same plane as the trackrod end but on the other side, Pics of stock arm and my modified arm, I also removed the big lumps off it ready for chroming. Next job was to make the drag link arm up in stainless tube, 2 threaded bungs were turned up in 316L S/S and threaded. Then they were seam welded and rosette welded into the tube, finally it got a quick polish. Next I needed a steering arm, I've used a Speedway hoop arm and modified it to suit, as I have 32 spindles and the arm is designed for 37-41 spindles the arms needed to be slightly closer together, I warmed them up and tweaked them to suit, The threaded ends were cut off and holes were carefully drilled in the centre of each leg and threaded to take 10mm Hi Tensile countersunk bolts. Also added 2 small pieces of tube to the legs to give them more stability, i.e. larger area. Made an infill panel to weld in next time the steering arm is off for chroming, this is where I got a bit carried away and forgot to allow for the thickness of the caliper bracket so a small shortening modification was done to the offending leg Put it right quickly though While the pitman arm and steering arm are being chromed I will paint the calipers etc etc. .
Glad to see I'm not the only one using traditional steering. Looking good, as always. Weather is great here too!
Thanks, I thought about cross steering or side steer for ages before deciding which way to go, obviously cross steering is probably the best system but the side steer looks more in keeping, I've had side steer on quite a few cars over the years and once setup right have found it to be fine, especially on straight line cars. .
Somebody asked for a pic of how my discs are mounted on my spindle mount wheels, so here it is. Nuts holding the disc to the adaptor are metal locking nuts. .
Hey, Langy, it has been beautiful hot rod working weather here since Sunday as well - been at it all day Sunday and every night after work until the sun goes down!!!
Hi Tom, are you gonna start a thread on that project of yours ??? It's dry here at the moment but temps are falling pretty fast, autumn is around the corner 8-( . Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
Decided to give the drags a miss as the weather was going to be good this weekend and I could get a lot done on the car One thing thats been bugging me was the underside of the body, its just finished in fibregl*** and originally I was just gonna paint it black and call it done but its just been bugging me that it would look better with a half decent finish on it. The body is fairly light and easily turned by 2 people so Gomez popped over and we flipped the body onto its roof on an old mattress to protect it. Out with the DA and some 60 grit discs and the highs were knocked off the fibregl***, Next a thin skim of filler was put on and this was buzzed down with 80 grit discs then 240 grit discs, Next i put on 3 coats of satin black Epoxy primer and allowed it to tack off for an hour while i thought about which topcoat I would use I had a choice of gloss black or gloss white, thought about it and the black was out as I hadnt been that fussy about the quality of finish on the floor and the black would show any defect, Thought about the white and thought that would be a ***** to keep clean Thats when I remembered I had some Gravitex satin black stonechip laying around , This would give me a decent finish and would look tidy and be fairly easily cleaned and is very durable I put on 2 coats of the Gravitex as the first wasn't very textured, Not a bad days work but took from early in the morning to 9pm in the evening to finish but i'm happy how it turned out Epoxied Here finished in the stonechip, the camera flash has made it look grey but its actually black.
Very nice. That finish will contrast nicely with the gloss black frame. It'll also be very functional and durable. I love all the great details on your project.
Thanks for the kind comments, its appreciated. Getting a real cl*** finish in shiny paint would of been a lot more work and in my opinion would of looked out of place.
That looks really nice, Steve. What was the stonechip originally intended for ? I am not familiar with that product. Don
Its very common on every day cars here Don, Not sure if your cars have it but if you look underneath a fender here in england you will usually see it, Its very durable and doesnt chip off easily, easy to clean too, its a bit like the textured finish you get on flight cases.
Oh, ok. We call it "rocker guard" over here. Dan did the inside of his rpu with it. Nice stuff and it is tough as nails. Don
Was yours clear and had the ability to be tinted with whatever color you wanted ? The stuff over here is like that and I guess the idea is you can color match it to any paint on your car. I had a Crown Vic Ford and it came with that on the lower section of the body, any you didn't realize it was textured until you touched it. Don
I used the black Don, it comes in black, white & grey but most importantly is over paintable with any kind of paint. In the past when i have used it i have painted body colour over the top in both straight paint & Basecoat/Clear.
Thank you for the constant updates. Great project. You have a good eye and unreal (and enviable) skills, but the thing that really has me worried is your work ethic. Humbling.
I got them from the states mate, Let me know if you want me to order some more, they only took a few days to arrive.
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