2118 replies to this topic

[MictheAussie]

Heath,

If you can find the bearing in the US and they only ship it inside the country, you can have it shipped to my house and I'll forward it to you.

 

DM me for my address. I'm in Colorado.

[Smog]

Hi Heath,
I’m assuming you have tried Bearing Wholesalers in Bayswater. They seem to carry just about everything.

Cheers Tim.

[Smog]

…… or try 360 gearboxes and diffs ( also in Bayswater) as they rebuild TREMEC boxes.

Tim.

[Rockoz]

I remember trying to source an obscure bearing with a friend for his Norton.

There was nothing available in the right size in Australia.

But the bearing supplier found a local bearing that was the right outer diameter, and very close to the right inner.

The supplier got the bearing inner ground out to suit the application.

Took about a week to get it, and wasnt a heap more expensive to get done.

This was back in the days before internet, so importing one would have been a lengthy process.

 

Maybe that might help?

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[Heath]

Mic, I probably should have jumped on that offer earlier, thank you, that's very kind (and I might keep it up my sleeve for the future).

I certainly did try Bearing Wholesalers and a few others... the problem is that Timken don't bring it into Australia, and every bearing shop just buys from Timken I guess.
Grinding out the I.D. may have been a go'er, you were the first to suggest it. I also considered making up an adaptor sleeve, but then the shoulder wouldn't have sat on the right area and the axial location may not have been precisely right.

It looks like I've got one coming from the USA directly to my door, now. It'll probably take a while so time to finish off some other bits.

 

After getting it off the trailer after the Nats, I was driving it into the factory and the car started making a bloody awful noise... like a scraping/screeching sound coming from the motor. I thought something had fallen onto one of the pulleys in the engine bay or something. Anyway, I started pulling the car apart and saw that the exhaust had fatigure-failed. Too many flat un-supported flat surfaces of stainless steel work-hardening from the pulsations in the exhaust. Shit. This is what it looked like when I built it years ago:

 

And what I found... two welds starting to crack.

 

Bought some new stainless sheet and marked out some areas that I could roll some beads into to stiffen up the panels:

 

Cutting this thing apart was a real pain in the arse... it was certainly never designed to be a serviceable part... but didn't have many options haha. So I cut the whole guts of the chamber out so it was just an empty frame, and now it's loaded onto my adjustable height welding table (lol) and getting new tubes, baffles, and top & bottom panels installed. Have to set it all up with shit clamped in a few areas to keep it straight... it's dangerously flimsy without all that structure in the central section.

 

Hope like hell this provides some durability!

[madtoranajzedded]

Looks trick heath.car looks great painted too.ive been gone too long and missed it.

[Bruiser]

Whats your theory behind that box, Heath?
Is it sort of Hybrid h-pipe/ expansion chamber
setup?
Did you get to compare before and after to
see if it gave you any gains?

Nice bit of work, by the way

[Heath]

Yeah so it's an expansion chamber and it's located at the point at which the final merge should happen.

The theories are around scavenging, and increased pumping efficiency in the downstream part of the exhaust.

Does it work? No idea. My motor has never even seen WOT with a car exhaust on it, lol. I have zero data at the moment.

 

Cheers!

[rexy]

Hi Heath,

That seems like a lot of issues in that gearbox for very little use. Was it new or second hand when you bought it?

[Heath]

It was a second handy. 

All the gears are mickey mouse.

The synchros have seen a bit of heat but were not badly worn.

There was some wear on each of the tapered roller bearings.

The rest of the bearings look good as best I can tell.

And yeah, all the shift pads were in very bad shape.

And the reverse gear dog is in poor shape as well. 

 

The price was good but I think whatever life it had was hard. I think you'd have to be a bit of a drongo to get a gearbox into this condition, but it actually drove totally fine apart from not engaging 5th reliably and reverse working best with a bit of muscle (being a bit of a muscle car to drive anyway, I have no issue with that). It's a strongly engineered gearbox and I'm sure it'll serve me fine, but while it's apart I may as well address everything I see that isn't right.

 

Maybe buying new would have been wiser, but I've saved a lot of money on this built by buying used (and selling used) parts where possible. Not that I consider myself great with mechanical stuff on cars, I must say my experience with the motor and the box does dissolve some of my trust in other's abilities to take care of mechanical systems a bit, lol.

[Rockoz]

With the exhaust box, the tubes you have coming through, rather than having them flush, it might pay to have them protruding a couple of mil.

That might change the dynamic load of where the weld holds it strength if that makes any sense to you.

It works in my head but perhaps not yours. lol

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[LhMusL]

So your saying it has seen WOT without the exhaust?

 

Yeah so it's an expansion chamber and it's located at the point at which the final merge should happen.

The theories are around scavenging, and increased pumping efficiency in the downstream part of the exhaust.

Does it work? No idea. My motor has never even seen WOT with a car exhaust on it, lol. I have zero data at the moment.

 

Cheers!

Edited by LhMusL, 29 April 2022 - 01:25 PM.

[Bigfella237]

Well it was on an engine dyno so you would assume it's seen some WOT passes?

[Heath]

Haha, yes, it's seen W.O.T. with a four barrel on it and some dyno shop Tri-Y's (and one of the valves only opening part way). Not necessarily the best benchmark, but it's something!

[Bruiser]

Still made impressive numbers, didn't it?
I'd be grinning, there's more in there

[Heath]

With the exhaust box, the tubes you have coming through, rather than having them flush, it might pay to have them protruding a couple of mil.
That might change the dynamic load of where the weld holds it strength if that makes any sense to you.
It works in my head but perhaps not yours. lol

I find it a little hard to know what the best changes I could implement were to make it stiffer. Having the tubes a bit longer would certainly allow for a bigger weld if nothing else.

I made up and stuck on four of these these little plates to strengthen up the hell out of that area with the two crush-tubes that sits out in the open with no baffles... this means I having a much more substantial weld and the material is much thicker where it might bend around that join between the flat & tube. These bits are also at the inlet of the chamber and are most exposed to the exhaust pulses. The skinny leg of these plates that I stitch welded on also thickens up that more open area that doesn't have much support otherwise:

As you can see better in this second photo, I also plunged into the edges of the box with a cutting disc and you can see a lot of short welds on the outside now, these are a small triangular gusset on the inside to stop that edge "flexing".

[Rockoz]

Harmonics can be a real bugger creating vibrations.

Flat surfaces will create their own secondary vibrations.

Was looking at your end plates too, but can see that you have strengthened them as well.

But in reality you are in your own territory there.

Suck it and see, and if it doesnt work, suck it some more. lol

Excellent work as usual.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[ozyozyozy]

Jesus, fighting some battles there mate.
New car gremlins

[SHEEL]

How is it Going Heath? 

[Heath]

Hmmmm... nothing earth shattering.
 
The blue zinc was not looking great on the bonnet latch, and I deeply regretted leaving that ugly square-ish profile (circled in red) around the two bolt heads, front and centre in the engine bay:

 
Ripped it off and shaped it a bit nicer, and coated it with some black zinc. Hopefully it stays looking alright.




 
The oil cap on the KC rocker cover was weeping and leaving a vertical stripe of wet oil residue, which looked terrible. I bought a proper cap with a rubber gasket (& weld-on neck) similar to my washer bottle cap. I cut the neck down on the lathe and modified the cap itself on the lathe a bit to match the other one in the engine bay geometrically.

Cut the old boss out with a die grinder:

Welded it on, and then battled for a few goes in the middle of winter to get a nice wrinkle finish done.

 
When I was putting the console together, I just sprayed a nice original "Slate" trimmed console lid in black vinyl paint. I think I went a bit heavy, and accidentally used a can of gloss instead of satin, anyway, it looked out of place being so shiny and was already starting to crack off after like.... no use.

I bought a reproduction one from RestoCountry. It isn't quite the same as original. It's 265 grams lighter, which is nice, but the quality is poor. It has some buckles in the trim at the front that aren't all that pretty (the vinyl on the original sits so beautifully by comparison), the rear plate is super thin, and is distorted from the messily cut-off edge of the vinyl that's gathered up behind it. 
 
I learned this the very hard way when I bolted it onto my console and when I gently went to open it, it locked up against the top of the console and made a minor crack in the plastic. :(

Many expletives were projected at this time.
 
The hinge pulls this area in as it bolts up, and the rest folds out, ripe for fouling on the plastic console. Shithouse.

 
I cut the vinyl back so it wasn't gathered as "thick" and made a little ally spacer:


 
Straightened the reproduction lightweight plate out and re-installed that. Now it works fine, saves a quarter of a kilo, and has the right finish/colour to match the rest of the interior. I hope the buckles in the material (not pictured) relax out over time, but I won't hold my breath.

 
I made these little stainless brackets to hold the spark plug leads last year, and thought they looked pretty sweet.

But on the driver's side of the motor, there was one separator bracket that was not supported, and the tension of the leads pulled it out of position and that looked no good. 

So I made a longer 1pce bracket for the driver's side, that holds them all nice and parallel.


 
There are some other things on the go, but not complete enough to post.

[claysummers]

You've tried the heat gun on the console vinyl I take it Heath. Nice tin work by the way.

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

[kudu]

Its disappointing to hear about that arm rest.. As I have a console lined up. But it is missing and arm rest and I was going to order one from them. I'll still probably have to though....

[SHEEL]

cool update! 

 

I like the oil cap upgrade and the Drillium on the bonnet catch and support...

 

new console lid vinyl looks delicious 

[FLY_LX]

just read 68 pages, took a couple of days. ha

Wow brother you have some mad skills. That would have to be the most modified Torana ever.

All the time, effort and no doubt money put into your build really shows. 

It's a credit to you and sure you are proud of what you have achieved. i can't wait to see it in person

Great to see you work through set backs and sure you will be enjoying your car as intended soon enough

[Heath]

Thanks so much mate, that is some heavy reading hahaha.

 

Regarding the heat gun on the vinyl, no I have not tried that yet... I suspect it's more related to the pattern being a bit shit compared to the original one, but 

 

So I had a problem where the lightweight trampoline springs on the bonnet hinges were still putting so much force into the bonnet, that it was being distorted in the closed position. The fibreglass bonnet is just so weak at resisting the torsional load from the bonnet hinges, that it was opening up the panel gap (bonnet to front guard) vertically, and that just looked terrible.

 

Aaaaaaaand... I made a video of what I did:

 

In written form, I looked around for a nice stainless lid stay of some description but couldn't find anything suitable, so I bought a pair of zinc plated "Cam-Stay" lid stays off RS online. These are designed for big commercial electronic server rack cases or something I gather. And I dug out a sacrificial bonnet hinge that is a bit bent and all of the pivot points are flogged out.

The stay locks in positions as it gets longer, and then when you pull it to the maximum length, it stops engaging in the cam and allows you to retract it to the short length. This needed to be reversed. So I dis-assembled it and started planning out how to do so:

Welded a bit of flat out one end so it could be mounted in reverse:

Then actually a bloody involved job of trial and error to figure out what lengths, shapes, stroke, etc. would make the thing function. Making the red bit of plastic slide the right amount relative to the other pieces, what shapes wouldn't jam the mechanism up, etc. But I got there:

 

Removed the spring "hooks" and the limit stop from the old dunger hinge, and tacked some little mounts on for the stay. Tried a few different spots until the stroke was just right... so it would sit at the original angle when opened in the top spot, but also extend far enough to reach the end position, and have a bit more travel up its sleeve when it is closed so nothing binds.

 

Then pulled the bonnet off the car and modified the actual hinges:

Yes, the speed hole here had to be welded up and replaced with a smaller one, hahaha.

 

 

 

Turned a bit of brass bar stock into a pair of bushes:

 

Before and after:

 

 

The other side I just left the mechanism off... one side seems to be adequate.