"Underneath", installment #16
Just a few short points and questions on the past weekend's
attempts to make some headway on the rear disc brake conversion and the
rear axle.
I had forgotten to remove the handbrake lever and the cable
assembly earlier; now I have it out and have cleaned it up some. Last
time, a few years back, I had merely daubed it with Rustoleum Industrial
coating, and it looked rough. A few minutes on the wire wheel and it was
down to bare metal, and I sprayed it with primer, black paint, and
clearcoat. I don not even know what color it was supposed to be
originally, but it certainly looks better now. I saw a can of bright red
spray paint in my paint closet, but resisted using it. :^)
There are a couple of thick bushings behind the level assembly
where it's bolted on and they got the same treatment. The bolts were
rather rough in appearance and I had not thought to get replacements.
Interestingly enough, in my series of additional-hardware-packages for
the rear disc brake kit, I had ended up with several extra bolts of the
size to attach the caliper brackets to the axle flange, and they were
the exact same thread and length. Well, whaddaya know.
After the paint was dry (taking time off to attend the TE/AE
crab feast, had a great time) I figured it would be easy to re-install
the brake lever. No. I had, prior to painting, drilled out the cable
attachment hole in the lever to 3/8 to accept the cross-pin supplied
with the kit's dual cables. Easy enough, but installing the cables to
the lever brought another surprise. The center-to-center distance on
that cross pin was too close to allow installing a cable (plus the nuts
on the threaded ends of same) on each side of the lever without
squeezing the ends of the lever's two halves together. I did that, now
it binds despite liberal amounts of synthetic grease. Anybody else use
one of these and, if so, how did you deal with it?
So, I thought to shift over to a dry-fit of the rear-hub,
bearing, etc., assembly. I had, the previous day, went to see the
assembled axle of fellow Lister Larry Paulick, whose axle looks
ready-to-go. The LR caliper is installed at the 3 o-clock position,
directly aft of the axle. Well, that looks like the rear caliper on the
4 wheel disc cars I've seen; it seems logical enough. So, I started
bolting up my LR caliper in the same position. It looked good, but I
discovered that the supplied handbrake cable was waaaay too short.
There's no suggestion in the instructions _dictating_ the position of
the caliper, and I found that the cable will reach if the caliper is
installed _ahead_ of the axle (LR brake at the 3 o-clock position), but
it looks really strange. Who has whose rear calipers where, and does it
make a difference? It seems weird to let the cable's length decide the
caliper's position.
Also, I thought I'd start dry fitting the rear axles and
attendant parts, even though I'm not prepared to set the end-float
myself. The left rear shaft, with its pressed-on bearing slipped right
in to the point that the bearing was 100% nestled in the cup at the end
of housing. The inward-facing race outside of that didn't want to slide
in, so I left it alone for now. So I went around to the other side. The
right shaft slid in, engaged the splines (those clean up fine with a
Q-tip, BTW) and stopped about 3/4" out from where the left axle did.
I tried pulling it out and rotating it, no good. I tried
rotating the pinion flange to see if it was an alignment issue, no good.
It just won't go in. So, I removed the diff cover (note: Permatex Copper
sealant grips _really_ tight, I had to drive the cover off with a
screwdriver and a mallet), only to discover there's nothing to see. The
Power-Lok rear end fills the diff's space completely, you cannot see the
tip of the axle to determine what might be blocking the axle's progress.
And I also pulled out both axles to compare length, they cannot be more
than a millimeter different in length, if that. So I am curious if
anyone has run into this before and knows what might be blocking the
axle's fit.
Lawrence R. Wright
Purchasing Analyst
Andrews Office Products Div. of USOP
larry.wright@usop.com (new)
Ph. 301.386.7923 Fx. 301.386.5333
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