[Spridgets] Car-nage...A-La-Frank

Sat Jul 28 16:00:17 MDT 2018



    Today I finally disassembled the left rear spring , lowering "stuff" and cut off both rear axle to spring U bolts and hammered the spring center bolt straight enough to get it out of the spring.  Yes, You read right...cut & hammered.As mentioned in previous posts , this car lost it's left rear wheel at speed " somewhere" .  it slid on the ground fast enough and long enough to grind off all 4 threaded ends of the 2 Ubolts AND over half of the nuts threaded into the U bolts!   The Ubolts actually were bent rearward during this catastrophic slide.   Along with everything else the leaf spring center bolt's nut was ground down to what looks like a misshapen washer next to the bolt & bottom spacer in the picture.  The picture with the bolt on one of the 5/8" thick lowering blocks is next to a proper sized hole to locate the center bolt IN the lowering block.  Looking at the 2 blocks , notice the other block had a center hole....too small to fit the center bolts head to positively locate the axle and block/bolt assembly.  Neither side was properly located in the center of the axle!   This is now corrected.  Previously , the way it was, the axle could move foreward and rearward about a half inch under acceleration or braking!   This interesting design feature has been discontinued!   What you see are washers!  Yup....lots of them!   Try 32 of them!8 per corner of the lowering blocks as part of the equation in getting the car into the weeds!   Plus on the right side the added piece, the anchor for the panhard rod.  If this does not make you scratch your head and ask "why"....here's the "rest of the story"!The car has a pair of anti-tramp bars in it.  They are attached to the studs that the axle limit straps should be on.  They go forward up towards the rear bulkhead and attach just above the rear shocks ( original Armstrong, not tube shocks) to the same panel That the shock is bolted to.My best guess is this:   The amount of distance between the rear axle housing and the leaf spring made The rear axle unstable.  Between the sliding fore & aft and the height of the combined lowering hardware I am guessing the anti-tramp bars were an effort to positively locate The rear axle in the car.  Since I've raised the rear of the car just over an inch, and positively located the rear on the center of the springs , my initial feeling is the anti-tramp bars are not needed any longer.   Also I'm guessing the former set up was heck on universal joints and the tail end of the transmission too.Doing all the carefull disassembly , attempting to understand what was done and...correcting it has been extremely difficult.   Since I DO intend to eventually race this car, I have NO INTENTIONS of creating something dangerous.   The last " what the heck happened" is the panhard rod body end mounting piece was literally shattered about half way along the part that goes across the front edge of the factory gas tank.  Its shattered in half .  not cut or simply bent.  That is a very odd area to have transferred stress to in order to crack a substantial piece of steel into 2 pieces. ..so once I finish the left spring and lowering hardware reassembly ( everything was just painted & is drying now) , then removal of the panhard rod mount to delve further into why it broke.Oh also an interesting side note!   Both rear shock links were snapped off at the rod to round end welds on the spring mount plates. If only this car could talk.....Next will be attempting to identify the under dash wire harness that Frank had with the car...Chuck
Sent from my LG Mobile


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/spridgets/attachments/20180728/55978504/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 0728181723_resized.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 326028 bytes
Desc: 0728181723_resized.jpg
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/spridgets/attachments/20180728/55978504/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 0728181716a_resized.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 344692 bytes
Desc: 0728181716a_resized.jpg
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/spridgets/attachments/20180728/55978504/attachment-0001.jpg>