Sunday, August 9, 2009

Lotus rear hub bearings, pt. 6

The big excitement around here has been the approach of hurricane Felicia. On Friday it was a Cat 4 southeast of the Islands, on course to roll right over us. As it moved north the ocean temperature fell, so it is now a tropical storm. By the time it gets here it may well be a tropical smoothie.

My goal for today was to get the suspension assembled and in. I knew it was a stretch, and it was. I got as far as getting it ready to install. Even so I'm not disappointed.

I have some pics from previous work. First off are two pics of the backing plate installed, and at last is a shot of the RH side ready for its wheel. Think of it as closure.

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Removing the RH hub was a lot harder than the left. I had to use a heat gun to heat the hub to break the Loctite (as described in the workshop manual). Even then, getting it off was a battle. I did not want to use my lug nuts with the puller for fear of damaging them, so I dug up some junk nuts and washers. The washers were destroyed in the process. In the last pic the remains of the Loctite is clearly visible on the splines.

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Today I took a few more pics of the u-joint removal, because the last ones I took did not show the best technique. It works better to clamp the press in the vise. Each time a bear cap was almost out I stopped pressing, clamped the cap in the vise, and tapped the yoke up and off. Another trick was to use a socket to take the place of the first cap removed, so that pressing back against the second cap doesn't push the spider off-center and crack the cap. Which it was.

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Lastly, a few pics of the painted trailing link and hub with the bearings in, and a pic showing how I pulled the drive shaft into place.

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Next time will begin with installing the brake pipe -- I'll need to buy some long cable ties -- and installing the new braided steel hose.

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