Rear end assembly.

With a full day in the garage at my disposal I decided to carry on with the rear end trial assembly. My aim is to build it all up as it will be, set camber, toe and thrust and then remove the axle from the chassis. Then I can strip it back down again to finally assemble it with correct torques and lock wire.

Having mounted the diff. 8" off the floor I proceeded to mount the first lower arm, this fairly easy with care being required to stop the inner bearing tube popping out of the small thrust washer.

The other side proved more of an issue however. The bearing tube refused to go into the bearing, both side of the wishbone were the same with either of the two remaining tubes.


This is not what I need! So after a bit of head scratching I realised whatever happened those bearings had to come out so I carefully removed the bearings again.

With the bearings out the tubes fitted easily so the problem must be the bearing journal crushing the bearing down, on closer inspection the problem became apparent.

I have failed to clean all of the POR15 from the casting, hence this small amount was reducing the ID by enough to crush the bearing and prevent the tube from fitting. Out came the paint stripper again and after a fair bit of work on both side I was happy the paint was gone. Of course this involved removing the grease nipples and cleaning it all again.

With the bearing tubes now nicely fitted I applied the inner thrust washer before offering up to the pivot bracket. Ill get more pictures of the bearing setup at final assembly time.

So both lower wishbones now on and 2 3" fence post sections placed under the end as per GD's instructions. You can see in the picture that Ive fitted the GD carrier brackets and torqued up the pivot shaft nuts with plenty of washers to protect the nylon section of the nyloc.


In this picture you can just see the hub and drive shaft assembly, these I pre-assembled for both sides.

Here's everything ready to go.

Two things not to forget, the wheel bearing shim which came with the hub and the seal track.



With loctite on the splines the drive shaft dropped easily into the hub, apply new washer and nut and torque to 100 lbft. Used Simon's trick of a bit of wood to stop the hub from turning.

Job done,just repeat for the other side!

Next step was to fit the hubs to the wishbones, Ive already tried this once but that was without the drive shaft fitted, now the assemblies a bit heavier!

Anyway both hubs fitted OK at first without camber shims.

Measured the camber and it was a bit out, unfortunately I have no picture but I had over 1 degree negative camber. So I applied 5 shims in the end to arrive at this setting.

Not too shabby!

Procedure repeated for the other side where two shims were required to achieve as near zero camber as I could get.

So that's it for the day, I must admit that shifting these bits around has taken its toll on my somewhat unfit frame and I find myself embarrassingly tired! How pleased am I that I installed the chain winch!

Next job is to check what toe Ive got on the setup as it stands.

Sort of progress.

Well having dropped the diff onto the floor it has become obvious that there is insufficient room to actually get on and build it up. So a solution had to be found.

I have enough room to move the chassis to the front of the garage and work on the diff under the chain winch however with the front end built up there was no way I could shift the chassis. Until the logical approach dawned on me (it does some times!)

After cleaning off a couple of the donor wheels which are stored under a tarp in the garden I fitted them to the front and lo a wheel barrow!


I was then able to lift and drag the chassis back by 1 meter to give me the extra space I needed. The next logical thought has dawned and I may turn the chassis round so that I don't have to shift the completed axle to the other end of the garage. This will also allow me to shine lasers
onto the garage door to set up the thrust etc.

There will be a bit more of a break now as I'm out of garage time for a bit. Oh and the new thrust washers turned up, much better!

Rear End fun and games.

Ive deciding that I will replace all of the rear thrust washers and seal retainers for new ones as mine are pitted and worn. I'm confident that a couple of them would not have sealed up properly due to the excessive pitting and may even have worn the seal away.

So that's held up progress a little though Ive ordered the new ones (£104!!).

Following GD's build advice Ive set the diff up 9" off of the bench to get the drop on the lower axle correct, with that done I trial fitted the lower arm with the bearing tubes in place.


Then I fitted one drive shaft after cleaning the bolt holes of paint.

At this point I noticed that the diff had gone off of the level and it turned out my "bench" was bending under the load so I swiftly took it all apart again and have now set the diff up on the floor ready to go again.

Next step is to install the drive shaft to the hub and select appropriate shims for the outer wishbone forks.

Now its starting to look a lot better!

One thing which I may need to attend to is the diff pivot brackets. Ive noticed that I have not yet cleaned the paint away from the surfaces where the thrust washers thrust against! Therefore Im thinking the pivot brackets are coming off again (looking after the shims this time!) to clean them up. Hey ho!

Discs all set.

Spent a bit of time today finishing off the disc shimming. Ive wound up with 20 thou on the right disc (viewed from rear of car) and 25 thou on the left disc. This brings both gaps well within 10 thou of each other on each side. As you can see from the picture below the disc is bang in the middle of the caliper.

So thats it both discs set and the calipers fit OK, I will take them off for the next few operations to reduce weight and improve access.

So next step is to lift the diff up such that it is supported high enough to get the required drop on the lower arms to match road attitude. May need to beef up my work bench as the work mate has a 160 Kg limit!