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It's been a while since our last update together; lots has happened, of course. Life moves on when one's working on a restoration project, particularly if yours (like mine) is a slow project. I'm sure some people with skills and experience can get these things done in a matter of weeks, but I'm a long way from that. Let's take a look at what we accomplished over the summer, shall we?
I was able to spend some time painting. After all that cleaning in the last segment, the next obvious step was to paint! In addition to the rear axle, I knocked off the rear propshaft as well.
The method here was similar to the axle: rather than sandblast, I mechanically stripped it with a wire wheel and then degreased. The entire thing was disassembled and the bearing surfaces were masked. Then, it was hit with POR-15 and the POR Top Coat product. Again, it has a tendency to drip if you don't apply it really thinly.
Not easy to do if, like me, you're not a great painter (more to come on this, I'm sure.)
A while back I bought a cheap 6t shop press -- just a bench top version, as I'm working in a small, modern-dimension double garage. This was used to press the u-joint bearing cups into place on the newly-painted yokes:
There are some tricks to this. First, getting the whole thing together is a bit like one of those little finger-puzzles you played with as a kid: You have to get the u-joint to go into the yokes such that you can press the caps on straight and securelike. You will need a pair of snap ring pliers (splurge and get some good ones) to set the base for your bearing cap. This can be pushed into place from the outside, allowing you to insert the circlip. Then things get interesting.
The first one of these I did I managed to catch the edge of one of the needle rollers while pressing the other cap on and, no doubt, the grit it has left in the bearing cup will cause this joint to fail at some point in the future once I start driving it. Short of pushing it all out and starting over with a fresh u-joint there's not much I can do now, unfortunately.
I did figure out a method to avoid this problem in the future: just hold the u-joint up off the bottom of the cup, so that it's fully inserted (by hand) and floating nicely between the two cups before you press the final cup in.
Irritatingly, I pressed in the u-joint before tapping in the grease cap that sits and the end of the sliding joint. F*ck! I have no idea how I'm going to get that in place, now. It can't easily be wedged in place with the u-joint installed. I'm wondering if I can sand it down so it's not such a tight press fit and then, like, red loctite it in there...
Sigh.
I took some time off to do some touristy things:
... And I went to Jeremy at Rocky Mountain and bought a suspension. Since I had some random mix of super-heavy-duty stuff on there before, I figured it was all due for a replacement rather than an overhaul. If you've been following along you might remember I had some kind of coil-over shock on the front in addition to the leaf springs.
Anyway, with the rear axle complete I was pretty eager to get started and finally bolt something to the new chassis.
Of course, I'd forgotten that I needed to first find (lol!) and clean up the base plates. Oops.
But find them I did. A quick trip to Langely U-Blast and they were ready for primer and paint. Since they were media blasted, I elected to just expediently prime and paint these with a rattle can enamel paint. They turned out okay. The finish isn't nearly as tough as the POR, but it sure is a lot easier to work with.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that I've put the brake backing plates (which I got from YRM metal) on backward. In my defense, I did spend some time digging around the Internet for pictures on how these were supposed to be mounted. The green bible clearly states that they're to be pointed inboard but it's surprising how many photos from builders I've seen showing them with the extension outboard. Maybe it's different on, like 88s or something... One more thing to redo when I get the time in the next few days.
I've become fairly concerned about the alignment of the shock mounting plates on the Salisbury. As you can see, the shock is well below the mounting eye at the top -- like 6"++ below. This is not great. I figured it would be out by a little. After all, it's a 1-ton chassis with parabolics; however I'm not using the extended height shackles at Rocky Mountain's suggestion.
It has been suggested that with a little weight on the wheels it should line up much more closely. I sure hope so. The alternative isn't great as it would likely mean cutting off the bottom mounting plates and re-welding them to the axle at a more shallow angle. This is much more difficult to do once the axle is all assembled. :/
😐 I hope it works out okay!
Oh! One note for anyone else working on a Richards chassis: The Land Rover parts catalogue number for the long bolts to mount the top of the shocks is a 7/16th or 9/16th bolt that's, like, 7.25" long.
Save yourself some trouble: Go to your local parts retailer and get 2x 7" and 2x 8" 1/2" diameter bolts. They fit tightly and are the correct lengths. The front mounting tubes are shorter and the rears are longer than stock, so the 7 1/4" length on the rear won't give you enough length to get a nut on properly, and you would have to drill out the mounts to get a 9/16th bolt in there for sure.
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