Back On The Road: One step forward, two steps(?) backwards....

I think this is a common feeling when working on one of these cars, they have had so much done to them over the course of their lives that it not surprising to find things that make you wonder "what were they thinking?". The answer is that when a lot of this happened they were not a valuable car and getting it running and back on the road was the first priority. Today I encountered several things that were questionable, in fact highly questionable. The first two dealt with the steering, the rack was mounted by just the rubber mounts and didn't have the safety spacers that keep the rack in position if the rubber mounts separate. On this car one of the rubber rack mounts was separating (shown in a previous post) and had it separated while being driven the car would have become uncontrollable. The second steering issue was that the splined U-joint had been opened so wide that it wouldn't tighten down on the pinion for the rack. This would have caused wear and eventually gotten sloppy or worse.

The other thing I spent time redoing were the bolts holding the picture frame to the engine frame, I assume that this had been messed with when the engine was pulled out(?), but at any rate the nylock nuts were not engaging the bolts and could have worked loose.

Any good news? well yes of course ;-) made some progress on the front end with the installation of the anti-sway bar, the rack and the shock absorber. SNG is sending out a new ball joint to me this week so should be able to wrap up the front suspension.

New anti-sway bar bushes

'New' Shock?

Picture of the nylock nut, beneath the wrench, if you look closely you can see that the bolt doesn't come all the way through. The upper ones show how it should look with a new bolt.