…… of painting that is! It has been a productive weekend. Saturday I stripped, cleaned and acid etched all the components for the nearside front suspension.
The only bit of bother was cleaning all the old grease out of the front hub. I had soaked it in POR marine clean (1:5 with boiling water) for a day or so but getting inside to clean it out wasn’t easy. Solution – take one nylon toilet brush and some scissors – cut down the bristles so the brush is about 10mm bigger than the inside of the hub. Cut off the end of the handle so it will fit into an electric drill. Next find somewhere dirty (Not the utility kitchen sink like me!) and in a couple of minutes it’ll be as clean as a whistle. (Must remember to buy a replacement toilet brush before the domestic authorities find out!)
Having a nice clean hub I thought I might as well paint it. So out with the acid, masked off the disc contact areas, wheel studs and then paint. I used VHT calliper/drum spray paint – 3 coats 10 minutes apart and 3 hours to cure – much quicker than using POR15! Result – nice new hub.
Sunday was back to laborious painting by brush – at least there’s not much left to do now and the end results are well worth the effort.
So that just leaves one final corner – front offside. Allthough at the minute I’m missing the lower wishbone. Despite being careful three of the four spring pan bolts and the two shock mounting bolts were seized solid and eventually broke. Despite attempts to drill them out it started to look like a bit of a write off. Now seeing as it was only 25 quid for one from Wards there seemed little point in aggravating myself any further. Which reminds me – I forget to ring them last week to see where my bits are.
Following on from my last post I spent some time following threads on the UK Cobra Club forum regarding differentials and gearboxes. I came to the conclusion that the open diff / LDS debate is far from over and will probably go on forever! There was a lot of good info / advice regarding gearboxes and diff ratios and I found that although there is no definitive answer there were plenty of do’s and don’ts. What I did find though was that the combination of top gear and diff ratio was perhaps more important for a predominantly road based car. In summary I’m happy with my intentions – the net result (I think) being a slight bias towards acceleration rather than economy – fine by me. With a 1:3.54 diff and a 0.64 overdrive 5th I should be cruising at around 2000 rpm. This also means that the engine mustn’t be too “camy” - anything with a lumpy idle or “muscle car chop” won’t be on cam until after 2000 rpm which means it will struggle to cruise at 70.
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