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.