Dismantling the rear uprights

This is a job I have been dreading, because, having read up on it, I know (i) it's all too easy to cause a lot of damage with too much enthusiasm (ii) I know just about everything needs unseizing and half the studs and bolts have already been broken off in the ally casting. So it might turn out to be a bit of a bugger.

I've been looking at these uprights every time I got into the shed, for months. So, today I finally bit the bullet, got out my 1 1/4" socket and stripped down the first upright. Everything has been comprehensively soaked in WD40 so it all pretty much came undone without fuss. It had already been stripped to the backplate, so the brake mechanism was not in place. The catellated nut on the rear flange came off with ease; the quill shaft is supposed to come out fairly easily after this, but it did need a bit of a firm tap. The back plate itself came off pretty easily. It may have been off before because it was held in place by a mix of nuts and studs.

The casting cleaned up relatively well with a wire brush, but you can see where one cotter pin and a couple of the studs are sheared off. Its also sufferd a little from electrolytic corrosion between the backplate and the flange, which had expanded and, quite amazingly, bent the backplate out of shape! There had also been some electrolytic damage between the handbrake bracket and its mounting by the look of it.

The flange looks a little rough, but once the broken off studs have come out, I am going to get the whole casting checked over. The rod also looks bent, but I was planning on replacing that anyway.

This is the second upright. It also looks pretty poor.

The bolts that hold the handbrake bracket have also sheared off on this oneand the rod holdng the shocks wishbones and track adjusting arm has been cut, but as for the other upright, I plan on replacing it anyway. One of the cotter pins also seems to have sheared off.

The brakes were siezed fast onto the drum, so I thought I would first try slackening off the adjuster to allow them to loosen up.  No such luck of course, the adjuster had virtually fossilised after 24 years gently corroding, and it just sheared off.

In order to get some purchase on the drum, I undid the nuts holding the adjuster to the back plate and tapped the adjuster into the drum. Then I removed the clips holding the slave cylender and pushed the slave cylender free. This gave a little free play on the drum but not enough to free it off, so finally I undid the castellated nut, pulled off the flange, replaced the nut to protect the thread and tapped the quill shaft. This finally freed the brake shoes and popped off the drum, but now I need a new castellated nut!.

Here are all the bits:

Broken adjuster bottom right.

The quill shaft was still held in place, but it comes out with a firm tap and here it is complete with the front bearing, oil seal and crush tube, whcih you can just about make out on the left side of the shaft, covered in grease.

The bearings will be replaced of course and, obviuosly, the shoes, pins and clips will also need to be replaced. Fortunately, to my great surprise, the slave cylender was fine once it was cleaned up and will need only a recon kit. Unfortunately there appears to be some play between the quill shaft and the flange on this upright so they will probably have to be replaced too. Not sure about the studs; someone has sawn them down .....

Despite the brake pads being siezed onto the drum, the drum itself looks to be in reasonable condition. It just needs an internal clean and visit to the shot blasters to clean up the outside. The other drum will need the same attention.

The casting of this upright looks fine. There is no electrolytic damage between the backplate and the casting, although there are a couple of sheared off studs.

Thanks to the authors of this http://www.zen11896.zen.co.uk/vixen/parts/vixen_rwb.html for the expanation of how to dismantle the hubs.

Odds and Ends

I had always planned to do this restoration systematically, by starting with the front suspension, then rear suspension, get the wheels on to produce a rolling chassis and so on. The problem is that a few small things are holding me up on the front supension at the moment. So I can't resist tinkering with a few of the other bits and pieces that need doing.

The first part I "had a go at" was the steering column. It's from a Spitfire and relatively simple to dismantle and play with. It looked pretty grim when I got it:

But it just needed a clean up and repaint. I tracked down a new light switch on E bay, to replace the old rusty one with no toggle, and now it looks like this:

The next assembly I tackleds was the dashboard, whcih was also in a pretty grim state:

I stripped it of all the metal work and derusted and repained the demister vents. The side air vents were all gummed up, but a soak in warm water sorted them out, and now they even swivel and the covers move! The ash tray was pretty far gone. It cleaned up OK but the lid spring was broken. It took a while to track down a repacement but, by searching Google images I managed to work out that it comes from a pre "Air Flow" Cortina Mk1. I found a good one on E bay and repainted it, so that was all the metal work done.

The bit I was dreading was re-vinyling the dash top. But when it came to it, it was actually quite simple.  Having stripped the dash, I found that the glass fibre panel was cracked and the lip, onto which the dash panel screws, was not in good shape; so I repaired all that with new fibre glass. Then I attached a 10mm foam sheet to the top with contact adhesive and over layed it with new vinyl. The vinyl is available from Woolies Trim. Grained Black 25 was the one I used, and the match is pretty good. The secret is (i) use really strong contact adhesive to hold the edges down; the spray stuff is too wimpy to keep the vinyl attached while you stretch it over the dash top. (ii) warm the vinyl with a hair dryer and it will stretch and conform to the fibre glass panel with no problem. In order to clamp the front of the vinyl, while it dried, I screwed the dash panel to it.

I am really pleased with the result.

On the subject of the dash panel, I have a collection of switches that look like they have been stored on the beach for a couple of years!

 After a clean with a spray contact cleaner, and a little WD40, the toggles at least move. I am in the process of tracking down new switches, but I may have to rely on renovating the old ones. If any one knows another car that has this type of switch, I'd really like to know about it.

A Little More Progress

Progress has been slow in the last couple of months.

I have made no further progress on the question of the anti-roll bar, so I pressed on with the front suspension. The hubs are rather grubby and have odd sized studs. One looks suitable for steel wheels, the other is the right size for wire wheel splines. No idea why.

Miraculously the brake discs came off relatively easily after an overnight soak in WD-40

At this point I had to decide whether to go for wires or not. I must admit, I do rather like the look of the period "Minilite" wheels, but these cars do look good with wires.

Amongst the oily and rusty bits I found  a set of 4 wire wheel splines. These look like they were bought new at an early stage of the car's restoration, but subsequently allowed to deteriorate, so they were covered in surface rust. Likewise, a set of  new nuts to attach them to the hubs was found in its original bag, but again, all covered in fine surface rust. The car also came with a set of shabby looking, painted wire wheels. The splines don't look badly worn, but no doubt we will see later! Since I don't have anything else in the way of wheels, this is the way I intend to go. So, I ordered a set of correct wire wheel studs.

I finally got the grotty hubs off to a local blasting company.

The result was not as good as I had hoped; the pits still held a lot of rust:

But they cleaned up well will Deox-C paste and I managed, finally, to get them painted.

Pressing out the studs went much smoother than I was expecting. I pressed them out using a vice and a 3/4" socket. I pressed the new ones in the same way and I now have two sets of identically sized studs. I then painted up the hubs with two coats of POR-15 and they are ready to accept the new bearings. Then  they'll be ready  to go back on the car. Before I do that though, I have to sort out the brake back plates, which are quite badly rusted. More on that later.