"Underneath", installment #12
The front crossmember is back in the car now, and most of the
front suspension with it. I'm finally feeling well enough from whatever
I caught to resume working on the car, even though it's so hot and humid
that after an hour my hands are too slippery to hold the tools. I should
have had the garage air-conditioned, eh?
There have been a fair # of posts on how to install the front
suspension; I combined bits of several and added my own experiences.
First, I ignored at least one recommendation to install the x-member
"bare"; mine went in with almost everything but the calipers and
hubs/rotors. The steering rack is on, but loosely-- I rear somewhere
that if the rack is bolted on tight before the x-member is under the
strain of holding up the car, that when the car is back on its wheels
the rack binds up. So, those bolts will be tightened later (I sure hope
I remember!) and they won't be easy to get to, if I recall. Oh yes; I
had over-drilled the holes for the aluminum wedges, but I found that
3/16" pop rivets, 1/4" long, work just fine.
I had two hydraulic trolley jacks, and I borrowed a third. This
way each outboard corner of the suspension was supported, plus one in
the middle. Then I just started jacking, one at a time, and I was
hopping about all over the (smallish) garage between the three jacks and
the wheel wells where I was looking to see what would 'foul' next. The
real issue there was keeping the steering rack clear of the radiator.
Yup, I left the radiator in, despite common practice being apparently to
remove it. But it worked. A couple of boltheads on the rack may have
"touched" the fins on the radiator, but there are no coolant puddles
under the car. This whole process would be a lot easier on a gutted car
being restored, with less "stuff" in the way. Oh; someone asked about
clearing the frame. Yeah, the rear of the upper control arms, back where
the attach to the fulcrum pins, want to snag the flange of the frame
rails (if ya wanna call them that). But you can get around this: raise
one side over the flange shove the suspension on that side up, inward
and rearward so the rear of the control arm is in the little "pocket" on
the fenderwell there, and then the other side will clear. Barely.
Once I was close, I decided to try the recently described, by
Dave Binkley (thanks!), method of using threaded rods. I didn't use them
so much to lift the x-member; I did it more to locate the holes and get
them aligned. With the gap above the wedges at < 1/2", you can see the
rods and estimate from the angle they're hanging at which way to move
the x-member. Also, you can knock off at the end of a day and leave
everything there, and the rods will hold the assembly in place. I guess
the neatest method might be to find some giant allen-key setscrews, and
grind a chamfered surface at the allen-key end, and install them in the
frame first, to act as locating pins. Then, after getting the x-member
in place, you can back them out, one at a time, to replace with the
correct screws (Hey! why not leave 'em in, and put nuts on them????).
Now, I've never seen set-screws that big...
Then came the part I don't like. I _really_ don't care for being
under the car, especially when it's on the stands under the frame on
such a small 'footprint'. But I found there was no substitute for
getting under and sighting the final alignment of the holes by eye, so I
got under there. If the car had fallen, with me wedged between all of
those jackstands and the three trolley jacks, no way could I have rolled
out from under in time. And there was no one home to hear the squishing
sound when it landed on me. Well, anyway, I'm writing this, so it didn't
happen. BTW, I recommend using a socket (bolt heads are 3/4")
transitioned down to a 3/8", or better yet 1/4", drive extension. This
will come really close to the lower control arm as you feed the bolts
upwards and you need all of the "wiggling room" you can get. The old
trick of taping the bolt into the socket might be a good idea, so you
don't lose any inside the x-member (I've done that before), but I forgot
about it until just now.
Good news: the holes all lined up. The recent warning about the
frame "spreading", requiring the car to be lifted by the engine to take
its weight off the frame and allow the frame rails to "spring" inward,
didn't apply to my car, the holes lined right up. Probably dumb luck on
my part. So the bolts all went in. I used the old thick washers on those
bolts as I couldn't find new ones, but they had cleaned up well with a
wire wheel and a coat of paint.
Right now the bolts are just snug. The x-member can be moved
around a bit, and it occurred to me I could affect the alignment of the
suspension by where the x-member is with I torque it down. Should I be
looking to a specific point on the car as a benchmark for taking
measurements ("he asked optimistically")? Or should I just shove the
whole things rearward, especially in light of recent discussions of
clearances -- or lack -- betwixt steering rack and engine fan? There's a
bit of paint worn away from the very center of the rack, and it occurs
to me now that this could explain the worn paint on a rack rebuilt just
a couple of years back.
One part not on the x-member is the brake line going to the left
caliper. I got a set of bendemyourselfs from TTMS, and tried to match up
the bends in the old line, which I had found dangling from the car still
bolted to the so-called "5-way" connector. That looked neat until I
started looking at where it attaches to the car. the old line, and my
copy, follow the inside curve of the x-member where it's clipped in
place, and then comes upward, reasonably sharply, and then ends facing
rearward, in the vicinity of the RR x-member mounting bolt hole. The
problem? The "5-way" on the car is directly above the RF x-member hole;
what, 6-8 inches further forward? How do I route the brake line all of
the way up there? The manual doesn't have a picture of the brake lines.
I really could use a bit of advice on this.
It got just too hot yesterday afternoon to work in the garage,
but my basement workshop was comfortably cool, so I was cleaning up the
hubs and bearings. I had painted the hubs, had the machine work done,
and attached the new ventilated rotors _without_ cleaning the old grease
out. A toothbrush and some kerosene -- I have a crude parts cleaning
container -- did the job w/out making a mess of the outside of the hub.
The bearings cleaned up nicely, as well, after a good soak. I bought
synthetic grease and a grease gun, I don't know if it'll make any
difference or not.
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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