Quote:
Originally Posted by FETorino
 That is some impressive work  |
Thanks!
Alex came back to the states last week, so he's started putting in some work on the car. Here's his update, along with some photos he snapped:
Together with the steering rack rebuild kit I ordered back in January and the new gland nuts and spanner wrench I made up the rack was ready to go back together. Assembly was relatively straightforward and the ~$180 savings over buying a re-man rack was money well saved.
I just taped over all the oil and breather holes since the updated steering rack mounts I've designed will need new hydraulic lines. That's a project for later though.
Here is one of the new gland nuts in action. Really made assembly a breeze, much more convenient than the old castellated nuts:
Test fitted the bellhousing on the torque tube. Looks like the hole pattern was absolutely spot on, it snapped right onto the dowel pins:
Time to transfer the bolt pattern on the engine to the bellhousing. I started by removing the hollow dowels on the mockup engine block and replacing them with some brass bushings I turned earlier:
The reamed hole in the bushing accepts a length of drill rod that I turned to a point. That way I could center the bellhousing on the crank and tap the punch from behind to get the proper hole positions:
Centering the bellhousing was really easy with this plate I made up. The ID fits snugly over the crank snout and the OD goes inside the bellhousing
I snapped the bellhousing onto the centering plate and rotated it to the correct orientation using a protractor and a spirit level, then I transfer punched the dowel positions:
That's as far as I got today. I don't have a 16mm reamer, a matching drill bit, or a drill chuck big enough to use either so I decided to drop the bellhousing off with a local guy named Keith Fenner, the owner and operator of Turn Wright Machine Works, to have the drilling and reaming done.
If anyone is at all interested in any kind of machining, welding, brazing, or general shop practices I can highly recommend Keith's youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/KEF791
He is truly a talented machinist and his videos are some of the best out there.