[Spridgets] Another day with Frank?

[crusaderchuck55@aol.com]

    Alright lemme explain...if I can?Along with the car came a little over 2 GMC Suburban loads of assorted parts , mostly body stuff.  Doors , trunk lids , a few fenders and assorted stuff like that.  3 rear axle housings ( 1 was a complete drum to drum 1/4 elliptic rear leaking gear oil from every place it could!) a couple of shocks And a bunch of just plain stuff like some wheels and radiators.  Now here's what I thought. I got a car...( really cool car!) and a ton of spare parts....How wrong was I!!Yes the car came home and is here.But little did I know , almost everything that came along with the car has somehow ended up being needed to assemble the car.  I'll try to explain what happened up to today.  I got a spare triumph steering rack.  No It was not spare I needed to install it in place of the rack that was in the car.   I got a couple of steel fenders...oh, I needed the one turn signal assembly and the one good grill surround piece riveted to the fender.   I needed everything for the emergency brake. One 1/2 elliptic rear had the center pivot with the remains of a cable...cut off.  One rear has the 2 rods , backing plate levers but the center pivot was somehow horribly bent beyond salvage.  The car had seriously seized brake adjusters....one rear had 2 viable backing plates....with free ( greased beyond what I thought possible) good adjusters.  I found a damaged rear hub from the car loosing it's left rear wheel at some time.  After pulling 3 hub & bearing assemblies I get a good hub and bearing.   Although I had to Chase the threads for all 3 axle & drum Allen screws to get the threads clean enough at the bottom of each hole so the screws would actually tighten up.   I got about 5 gear sets loose from axle housings.  The car had water in the rear housing , fearing water damage to the bearings....I changed the gear set after a new pinion seal was fitted.   See where any of this is going?  Alright.2 1/2 elliptic springs came with all the parts.   Today I attempt to remove the right rear spring.  It unbolted easily enough.   But when I tried to unbolt the front mount plate the bolt was seized in the bushings center sleeve.  In my attempt to get it apart I destroyed both the bolt and the mount plate.   So I grabbed one of the two springs that came with all the parts.  Well I had to cut the front bushing bolt to salvage the mount plate.   Ok all good right.  Now I need a replacement bolt.  But wait there's more!   The left spring's center bolt is not only bent but so ground down that the nut on it is ground away.   So I need a center bolt and the tubular bottom spacer.   I look at the spring that is rather complete to notice the center bolt has the bottom spacer.....and the nut has been removed .  So I start getting the center bolt freed up.  Spacer comes off , first leaf comes off and the next leaf shatters into 3 pieces!  I thought it must have been broken.  No it broke right before me !  No rust in the pieces, fresh clean steel.  I would have used that spring as a spare and it would have broken right after I put it in!  But instead it became the donor for the replacement of the dated mount plate and the needed center bolt & spacer.  I'm slowly using up what I thought were "spares" for some future need.  Now I know I felt Frank smiling at me today !   The car did not come with "spares"!   It came with parts it needed to be repaired and reassembled.   It's funny that I've had to rummage and pick through almost all of the parts that came out of Frank's collection for some of the oddest little bits!   Its been part detective work ,part archeology, part mechanical work.The car seems to enjoy testing me.And Frank smiles on.
Sent from my LG Mobile


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