The start of something big. Frame off restoration

[tdskip]

LOL Justin.

Richard makes nice stuff for sure.

 

[swift6]

The uprated shock suggestions are not just for ride comfort. They need to control the springs. Uprated springs with those original style weak shocks will not work very well. You don't have to go to the expense of the spax or Koni though, especially since changing their settings is a total pain on a TR6. I found that the KYB's can work very well in the front with lower stiffer springs.

Also, the rear ride heignt may not change with the new springs if the old ones were sagged. The rears had a tendency to go soft but not the fronts. Quite a different story from the wedges in that regard.

 

[justin_mercier]

My new rotors arrived today, and so I installed the front hubs with rotors. They look real nice, drilled and slotted rotors from Good Parts, stock size.

Now I've run into one issue, that I'm wondering if others who have used the uprated spindle kit have also run into, and I'm wondering how they solved it.

The dust caps that go over the castle nut at the front of the hubs does not fit over the larger castle nut for the uprated spindles. Did people who use this kit not use the dust cap? Did they modify the little metal dust cap somehow? I know that my TR6 didn't even have dust caps on the hubs originally, and I ordered some from VB after I got it on the road.

 

[justin_mercier]

It's a minor milestone, but a milestone none the less... the front of the frame is sitting on its own wheels now =D This weekend my major project is to see if I can get the whole rear suspension assembled (with the RATCO shock in coil kit) and get the frame down on all 4 wheels.

First putting the KN Minator wheels on

Then, I lowered it to the ground, resting on its own weight =)

 

[Brosky]

Justin, that is looking really good. If I am not mistaken, my uprated front axle kit from TRF came with new dist covers.

https://www.zeni.net/trf/TR6-250GC/index.php?menu=A&page=119

 

[justin_mercier]

I have new dust covers, but they just dont fit over the large size castle nut. Cant push it all the way in so that it's fixed in place. the back end of the dust cover would have to be a lot longer for it to grab on with any friction.

 

[Brosky]

JM,

You need new dust covers made for those, which should have come with the kit. Where did you get it? They may have sent the wrong ones.

 

[justin_mercier]

My kit didn't come with dust covers (ordered from Richard Good) so I ordered new dust covers from VB, which dont fit.

 

[justin_mercier]

All is not happy in rear suspension land =(

First the good parts... (pun intended)

I installed Good Parts' nylatron rear bushing kit and adjustable trailing arm brackets. As per the recommendation, I first drilled and tapped for grease fittings on the bottoms of the trailing arms.

Then I installed one side at a time with the bushings to check that the steel sleeve could still pass through without binding. You can also tell that your grease fitting is in the right place because the nylatron bushings are actually short enough to leave a gap between them.

Here you can see the gap from final assembly of one side. First from the inside

and then by looking through the grease fitting hole

Finally I installed the grease fittings themselves once all the pieces were pressed into place

Next up was drilling for the Rat-Co shock in coil kit. Here, I first marked and then drilled one hole, then held the bracket in place with one bolt.

I then used the bracket as a guide to drill the other holes

With all the modifications that needed to be done finished, I took the arms and the adjustable trailing arm brackets down to the garage. Here I got the right sized spacers for the rear bushings, and put them with the trailing arms

I ran into a slight hitch when installing the trailing arms, as the through the chassis bolts that were provided were a fraction of an inch too short, so the nylock would not catch on the threads. A quick trip to the hardware store and 8 new nuts and bolts later (store had no fine thread grade 8, so I used standard thread, and had to get new nuts too) I had my trailing arms attached. I then raised the trailing arms to more or less where ride height would be, and roughly dialed in the camber before torquing down the pivot bolts.

 

[justin_mercier]

Now the bad parts... Installing the Rat-Co shock in coil conversion kit.

One side worked fine, although I had to file out the holes larger than the instructions mention, but the cup on mine is also deeper for 'lowered springs' so I'd expect to have to file out more since you're further from the pivot point so more motion. Working with a large rasp and taking the bracket and shock on and off, I opened up the holes a whole bunch.

One side, after a lot of filing, moved through the motion alright, so I installed the spring and tightened everything down, and it looks good.

The other side however has been a nightmare. The bracket angles the shock way to the outside if used as is

and then the shock binds not only on the inside of the trailing arm when bent over, but on the bracket itself. As can be seen, I tried filing the hole extra large, going so far as to remove half the lip, but that didn't help.

Here, you can see how it has to be pulled all the way to the center of the car, and binds on the edge and the bracket both.

I'm going to insert spacers under the inside bolts, and use longer bolts, to aim the shock back towards the center of the shock tower, and get it working like that. It's been a very frustrating morning trying to get the other side done. I think i've got it mostly working now with 1/4" spacers between the bracket and the trailing arm on the inside, but it's not quite moving fully up through the full range of moment yet.

 

[tdskip]

Thanks for the update and the pictures, haven't done this so all I can do is watch how it turns out and suggest that you have a bit of clearance there. Let us know how you get on.

 

[justin_mercier]

With some 1/4 inch shims between the TA and the bracket on the inner side, and more filing (almost getting rid of the ridges, and making the trailing arm look like a TR4 trailing arm instead of a TR6 arm [TR4 irs arms didn't have ridges in the center https://www.tharkis.com/images/temp/tr4trailingarm.jpg ]) As well as some filing and grinding on the inner lip of the bracket, I think I've eliminated all binding, and am ready bolt it all in place.

 

[HerronScott]

Justin,

Love the note on the TR4A trailing arm.

Are you going to call Ratco? Someone else should have run into this problem before.

Here's a picture from their website showing it mounted with a TR6 trailing arm.

Scott

 

[justin_mercier]

I'm going to write Tony at Rat-Co tomorrow with my photos. I may be one of the first people using his brackets that are extended in length on the bottom for use with lowered springs. When you lower the pivot point another inch+ by making the bracket deeper, you need a bigger hole, and a lot more space for the shock to move. The one side went together pretty much fine, just a lot of filing of the hole to make it large enough, it was the other side that drove me batty.

I have it assembled now, but I'm not 100% happy with it due to the shimming and extra large hole filed out, but it looks like it should work fine now.

Here's the passenger side assembled now

and both sides together

and finally, it's actually starting to look something like a vehicle. Need to disassemble the rear hubs and arms and stuff next (amongst many other things, like the steering rack, which I'm still having problems with due to severe rust on the end rods and tie ends) so that I can get it sitting on 4 wheels.

 

[NikolausConrad]

Excellent Job! Keep up the great work!

 

[justin_mercier]

I went to work on the rear brakes, starting with the left side.

Here is what I started with, the hub rusted to the back plate, and everything pretty filthy.

A few hammer blows and I was able to separate the hub and axles.

The brake adjuster is rusted completely in place, so I'm glad that I ordered a new pair 'just in case' I'll have to get these un-frozen and cleaned up at a later date.

Here's some 'creative' british car repair for you... one of the springs to hold down the shoes was cracked almost entirely in half... and held back together with a tiny zip tie

Everything now disassembled (except for the adjuster, which was frozen, as mentioned above)

After some sandblasting, painting, etc, and getting a lot of new parts from various manufacturers, reassembly!

Getting the bottom spring plate in to hold the new cylinder can be quite a pain. The lock plate goes on fairly easy, and then the last plate took me 10 minutes of fiddling just to get under there, but everything is held in place now

I then put the new adjuster on. I had to pause and run to the hardware store here, because the adjuster didn't come with any nuts, and the 1/4 28tpi size isnt something that I keep around in stock.

Next I had to get the shoes and springs installed. On this side you can see that I'm using a larger cylinder. This is the 7/8 cylinder that Good Parts sells. These new springs are FAR stronger than the worn out old ones that I removed

Finally I installed new springs and retainers, and everything is assembled, I took care to make sure that the retainer springs face the right direction as indicated in the Bentley manual

If anyone notices anything that I may have done wrong, let me know!

 

[DNK]

What, you don't keep 1/4 28 around.
A lot of stuff on that car is that
I keep nyloks and regular in my nut case

 

[justin_mercier]

The front sway bar, radiator protector, and a bunch of other parts from up front are drying after a coating of paint. In the mean time I finished up the other side of the rear brakes. I've got a set of new brake drums as well, that I need to paint. I'm thinking red caliper paint for the rear drums and the front calipers. They'll be the only red things on the whole car >_< (sorry, no red engine Paul!) But I'm not sure if the red looking through the rear wheels would look out of place or not.

 

[HerronScott]

Justin,

Any feedback from Ratco on your shock problem?

Rear brake assemblies look good.

Scott

 

[rlwhitetr3b]

If anyone notices anything that I may have done wrong, let me know!

Working on car parts on the hard wood flooring would be deemed as wrong by my wife.