September 20, 2003
Day 8 - rear differential
Obviously getting cocky now as I'm ignoring bits of the assembly guide thinking that I can 'improve' the instructions! First job for today was to sort the boot cover out - I should have done this before the harnesses (before the cage, before the rear suspension) but luckily the new style cage still lets you get the harnesses out. The guide says to remove the metal strip inside the boot cover and discard it as the harness bolts have to go through the cover and the metal strip isn't wide enough to drill holes big enough. Instead, I just cut the metal strip into smaller strips so that they would fit either side of the harness bolts - much better! I also ignored the advice to drill new holes in the centre of the harness mountings rather than use all the existing ones. I may come to regret it if I come to fit a tonneau but I've got no intention of doing that ;-). Didn't quite manage to finish it off because I ran out of poppers so I'll come back to it sometime.
Onto the rear diff. I'd centered it with washers last week and double checked, with two different measuring devices, that I was happy with it. I already knew that the bottom bolts would go into the diff without problem but I just couldn't get them in when it was suspended in the car. I removed the diff and checked and they definitely would go in. I hung the diff from the top bolt again and managed to get the offside bolt in. It took me around an hour to then get the nearside bolt in, eventually removing the top bolt and supporting the diff from the bottom, and then wiggling it around whilst trying to screw in the bolt. Once the two lower ones were in, the top one (suitably spacered) wasn't too bad - thank God for soft faced hammers.
Started trying to do up the special blue propshaft bolts but there is very little room as you can see in the picture below. I couldn't torque them up because the prop just turned. The advice from Blatchat is to wait until the wheels are on the ground, or attach the prop to the diff first but it's too late for the latter.
Successful day so far - onto the rear brake pipes. After carefully attaching the 3-way union the right way round I started with the short pipe. I was a bit unsure of the radius figures given in the guide as I assumed that a 1" radius meant that it shouldn't be bent round anything smaller than 2" in diameter. This obviously isn't right as there would be no chance of getting the pipes in the right place so I just used a 20mm socket as my bending device. After a while I had something roughly right but I hadn't been positive enough with it and had ended up with a bit of a wavy pipe.
I briefly thought about whether to get another pipe and start again but instead I moved on to try the other side. This time it was much better and I had the pipe sorted in no time.
I then got suspicious of whether I'd fitted the union the right way round. After studying the guide text again, I was pretty sure I was right (mounting offset towards the centre). However, the pictures indicated I was wrong and a quick peruse of previous build diaries didn't help. I bit the bullet and swapped it round without too many problems. The long pipe was now a bit close to the radius arm mounting on the De Dion but I decided to sort that out when fitting the calipers. The short pipe looked much better with the P-clips rivetted in place.
Slid the De Dion into the car, my nicely bent brake pipe catching on the diff as it went in and bending out of shape! Oh well, they're pretty forgiving luckily. Fitted the radius arms - decided on the lower 'track' chassis mounting. Finished the day mounting the A-frame.
8 hours today, 30.5 hours total.
Posted by charles at September 20, 2003 8:11 PM