I took out 2 leaves, the 9th and 8th, but I also installed a 32nd axle, which adds another 1inch. Greetings Harald
Got the front spring greased, assembled and painted. I decided to move the top 3 leaves to the bottom of the pack. Then I bought a reverse eye spring for the rear, just 30 min from home. It's 3 years old and I got it for 1/3 of the price of a new one.
After that I kept on disassembling the front end. Got the perches, wishbone and brake drums off. Happy to see that the brakes appear to have been recently rebuilt.
Made a mess and got the rest of the front end disassembled. Time for cleaning, painting and rebuilding.
After some cleaning and painting things are finding their way back to the car. Still need to install some cotter pins here and there and new grease fittings for the shackles. Next up is painting the spindles, install new bushings and find someone with a reamer for those. Can't wait to see it back on the ground with the new stance.
Yes I've seen those. I'm just not sure on how to solve the payment since I live in Sweden and I believe you don't do Paypal?
Brought the spindles to work today and spent the lunch break with sandblasting them and pressing in new bushings. Now I just need to find someone with the correct reamer for these.
I took mine to the local machine shop to have them honed instead of using the reamer. Came out perfect!
I spent 3 weeks looking high and low for the self-piloting reamer .8125". I gave up and did them on a piston pin hone. Snyders antique auto has it for around $300
Dropped off my spindles and king pins at a well known early Ford experts shop today for reaming. On to something else, awhile back I mentioned that I cut 2 inches out of my windshield stanchions. Well, earlier this week I had a coworker who can weld aluminium put them back in one piece and then I smoothed out the welds. I'm very happy with the new height, would just like them leaned back a tiny bit. I might try and make a pie cut in them, heat them up a bit and bend them, hoping they don't crack since they are cast aluminium.
Got some more cutting, welding and grinding done on the windshield stanchions and now they have a little more rake to them. Hard to tell in the kinda close up photo but it looks much better than they did with just the chop.
Picked up my spindles today from reaming. Just need some paint now and I can get the front end back together. The gentleman who reamed my bushings was doing some cleaning in his parts stash when I came by and he offered me two 17" wire wheels for a vey low price so they came back home with me. They look worse than they are, just need to find two more and we are in business.
Went on a roadtrip today to pick up a 28-29 commercial grille shell. I already bought a chrome/nickle one a few weeks back but I do prefer the look of a painted one.
Touchdown. Garage is a mess but got my newly reamed spindles installed and just had to do a quick mock up of the brake stuff so I could check out the new ride height for motivational purposes. Tomorrow I will have to pull the drums off again to try and figure out why the brakes on the right side aren't working, they did before I took the front end apart and now when I pull on the brake actuator arm it is barely moving at all. Hard to tell from the picture in my small garage but I like the new stance of the front end.
Got the right side brakes working. Was an easy fix, the operating pin for the brakes wasn't correctly seated in the wedge on the bottom of the backing plate. So I went on and packed the wheel bearings with grease and got the drums installed. Also installed cotter pins where they are needed. Next up is to do some refurbish of the steering linkage and the front end is done for now I think.
Thank you. Step 1 is to get it nice enough to pass title and safety inspection. Step 2 is to go back and replace some more sheet metal, like that rear floor that is kinda crusty, and I would also like to put a 32-36 front axle under it in the future.
Got the tie rod and drag link hooked up and now we have steering again. Tomorrow I'm gonna start on the not so fun job of installing my reverse eye rear spring. Borrowed a spring spreader from a friend so hopefully all will go somewhat smooth.
Got the old rear spring out without any accidents. Luckily the center bolt was not cut so I could release some of the tension on the spring during removal. And of course the bushings in my new spring are too small for my shackles so I'm gonna remove the bushings from the old spring since they are in good condition and install them in the new spring. Perfect lunch break project during the upcoming week. Since I wasn't ready to call it a day just yet I decided to do something fun, so I brush painted my rear wheel wells with some satin black Rustoleum and I'm liking the result. The whole car will eventually get brushed with the same paint but this gave me a motivational boost for now.
Reverse eye rear spring is in, have a few small things to finish up before I can put the wheels back on and see if it got any lower. It was quite the task to install, no fun at all. Had to install just the main leaf first to even have a chance of spreading it enough to get the shackles in.
The Jalopy Journal
