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TR3driver

TR3driver

Great Pumpkin - R.I.P
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Well, I never have been very happy with the steering on the 'new' TR3. It has just never been as easy, or as tight as the previous TR3A was before it got wrecked. I even considered swapping steering boxes, but the 3A had a split column and the 3 lacks the mounts for the supports. Plus I kinda wanted to keep it "as original" (even though I've made other changes).

Today I finally discovered the problem! Apparently the new peg I installed did not fit tightly enough in the rocker shaft, and the peg has been working back and forth. It's also been slowly getting worse as it waddled out the hole in the arm.

Oh well, third time's the charm, I hope! Fortunately the rocker shaft is the same, so there is a spare up in the rafters somewhere.
 
Lack of design mismanufacture.
Or not quite paying attention on install Randall?
 
DNK said:
Lack of design mismanufacture.
Or not quite paying attention on install Randall?
Click to expand...

The latter, I'm afraid. Looks like I didn't get the peg aligned with the hole just right, and it scraped off part of the inside as it went in. The arm is ruined now, unless I want to mess with trying to sleeve the hole (which I don't).

Basil, I'm just venting, not really asking for help. If that belongs in the TR forum, feel free to move the thread.

I've got the steering column out now; with any luck I'll have the car back together in time to drive to work Monday.
 
Sound like a good reason to call the boss and ask for that 5th day off
 
Yeah, probably would be, except I already took the whole week off.

Unfortunately I wound up wasting several days working on other things. The good news is that the garage speaker sounds really good after replacing the foam surrounds on the midrange and woofer. (I'll have to fix a Stag before I can get to the other one.)

And the nurse's POS Mazda 323 is apparently running better than it has in a long time. Evidence would seem to indicate that her mechanic does not consider replacing spark plugs to be part of a tune-up! The other weird thing is that just the ignition module inside the distributor costs nearly twice as much as an entire rebuilt distributor. List price on the module was some $450! I don't normally work on other people's cars, but she had driven it to my house (my stepson requires around-the-clock care) and it wouldn't start. I felt kind of responsible. And really, it wasn't that much work to install the new cap, rotor, wires, plugs and then eventually distributor. Kind of a fun project though, trying to troubleshoot the thing without any sort of manual.

Oh well, so it goes.
 
Hats off to you Randall. Really decent of you to help the nurse out like that. Around here that much work might have cost her close to $800.00 to $1000.00, when you add in the parts cost including that distributor, plus your labor. My favorite garage is at $90/hr for shop labor now and that is only average for this area.
 
Since the arm is toast anyway...there's always the option of tack welding the pin in permanently from the back...

Good for another 50k miles or so.

John
 
I need to move to Ohio and open a shop, when I worked at the Import garage around here we used to charge 36 an hour when I quit 5 years ago we had just gone up to 45 an hour. I probably couldn't afford a shop in Ohio though, or a house, or gas for the car.
 
Last edited:
Geo Hahn said:
Once you're retired you'll learn how to make a job like that last a month.
Click to expand...

Well, I didn't make it in time for Monday, but I drove it today. The difference in the steering is remarkable! Still not quite as light as I remember the TR3A being, but I can parallel park with one hand and the slop is gone entirely. Made a big difference in how well it handles rough roads, too.

Next project will be tackling the brake pulsation (probably a warped rotor) and vibration (which may also be a rotor problem). If I can solve those, I'll be ready for some long trips. Still working on the rear axle rebuild, but I'm putting that on the back burner for now.

The tack weld approach would probably work fine, but I would have had to hook up the welder and teach myself to weld again. I haven't done any real welding in some 40 years, and was never very good even back then. And since there was a perfectly good arm just lying in the parts bin ...
 
I hear ya! But save the arm just the same. As our cars get older, and parts scarcer, today's "not worth messing with" part is tomorrow's gold. It still kills me when I go look at cars that are worse than the ones I was pulling parts off in the junkyard 30 years ago...and they are trying to sell them for new car prices!

John
 
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