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.