You Have to Roll With It

Having finished the assembly of the front and rear suspension, it's finally time to get the wheels on the chassis and push it out into the sunlight. I realize this post is appearing in winter, however, this work was originally done in May, so yes I’m a little behind with the blog posts, but that explains the sunny pictures

Chassis with front suspension installed.

Installing the Brake disc and calipers 

As shown before I have serviced and repainted all the brake calipers. So before adding the wheels, I will quickly mount the finished calipers. These, of course, will not work yet, for many reasons, but most importantly and obviously, because there is no brake pedal! 

Each caliper is secured to the upright/hub carrier by a pair of M12 bolts. For additional security/old fashioned-ness, to keep these bolts in place, locking wire is paced through each pair of bolt heads and twisted tight. This is recommended by Jaguar for the XJ40 and is the reason for the hole through the bolts for my rear calipers. However, oddly, the bolts for the front caliper carrier were not predrilled. So the first job is to buy some new sharp 2.5mm drill bits, and carefully drill a single hole through each of the four front caliper bolts. Luckily this is a simple job, which if you take your time and keep the drill vertical (ish) it is easy to do. 

Caliper carrier bolt in the vice with a hole drilled through the bolt head. 

With the bolts drilled, its finally time to mount the brake calipers to the chassis. Starting at the front, slide each of the old brake discs over the 5 wheel studs. Once each brake disc was correctly seated on the hub using a little help from a rubber mallet (a few excess paint issues easily overcome) it is secured in place with a grub screw (SNG part number: SF605047J ). I will be replacing these old parts out for new discs (and pads) before I drive the car on the road, but for now, I’m simply using the old ones whilst I gain confidence in my homemade brake lines and brake bleeding (next steps).  

Rebuilt caliper mounted to front upright.

The calipers carried then slide on around the brake disc and fasten to the front uprights with the freshly drilled bolts. 

Calliper bracket mounted to rear hub carrier (forgot to take photos of the fronts).

The caliper (with brake pads fitted) then fits over the brake disc and is secured in place with the slide pins, which pass through the rubber collars and into the carrier. The slide pins are given a small counting of silicon grease to ensure they slide freely. There is also a long metal 'spring' which fits into the two small holes on the front face of the caliper and loops around the bottom brake pads and holds them in place.

Rear caliper fitted, again forgot to take photos of the fronts.

It's then a case of lifting the wheel and fitting it to the hub. The wheels are secured in place with the cleaned donor wheel nuts. Since this fitment is only for moving the chassis around the garage and that I’m sure I will need to take them off in the near future for another job, I am not going to torque these to the correct specs. 

Offside wheel mounted to chassis.

Nearside wheel being expertly fitted.

As for the rear, I have already fitted the brake discs so it is simply a task of repeating the process of fitting the brake calipers, and then the rear wheels! For the rear, as I had already fitted a new brake disc I also fitted new brake pads as well.

Rear wheels on and the first sight of a rolling chassis.

It finally Rolls 

Next comes the simple task of pushing/rolling the chassis out of the garage for its first short little journey. To aid the steering at this point the steering rack was disconnected from the front uprights. Then with one person per front wheel, the chassis can be guided back out of the garage... minding the garage wall. 

First time sitting in my Fred Flintstone style AK Cobra.

After the obligatory selfies sitting in the rolling chassis, it was clear how dirty the garage floor had become over the last 6 months of work. 

The state of the garage floor below the chassis.

After a quick clean and mop, the chassis was pushed back into the clean garage ready for the next stage of the build process, the brake lines or the fuel tank… not sure yet. 

Rolling chassis back in the clean garage!

Going Round and Round

With the front and rear suspension built, the chassis is now waiting for some wheels to get it rolling. A rolling chassis feels like the first tangible step towards a real car, so i'm very excited. There are a few snagging jobs, which I want to do first, mainly clean the donor wheels and grease the new UJs.

Donor Wheels 

When I purchased the donor parts from Simple Performance they sent me five (one original wheel was an odd odd size) donor wheels. Since these arrived they have been stacked up in the corner of the garage under the plastic wrapping which they came in. This was quite some time ago, and hence there is now a pile of boxes and assorted items stacked on topo them. Whilst I will have to find a new home for all the items on top, for progress this has to be tidied up. 

Donor wheels under a pile of boxes

With the wheels laid out on the driveway, it is clear that they are very dirty. A quick blast with the pressure washer got them looking a lot better, at least from the curbside of the wheel. 

The cleaned wheel face 

My larger concern was the state on inside of the wheel rim, which was heavily corroded and dirty. I appreciate that these are only donor wheels and so are only used for the build stage, but given the amount of effort I had gone to clean, paint and rebuild the hubs, I didn’t want to put a dirty wheel on them.  This was mainly because the dirt will soon travel around the garage and car as I touch/move the wheels. A good scrub with hot soapy water got a large amount of the grim off. 

Very dirty donor wheels!

Cleaned wheels, now showing the flaking paint.

Whilst this got a lot of the grime off, there was still lots of flaky paint and encrusted dirt. Nothing a quick light sanding couldn't resolve. With the inside of the rims sanded down they were looking a lot more respectable. 

Sanded inside surface - looking much better.

To then finish the job they had a wipe over with white spirit and a quick coat acid etch primer, to avoid any further corrosion.

Wheels ready for a coat of primer

And hey presto the inside of the wheel rim, (which no one will ever see, and won't even be on the finished car) are now painted and looking much better. As they are only donor wheels I won't give them a top coat of silver, as even for me that's overkill!

After a fresh coat of primer.

Note that there are only three wheels above. My fourth wheel (which I am using) must have been a full-size spare as this was in remarkably good condition and didn't need this treatment.

Greasing Prop Shafts 

An important job which I had omitted earlier was the greasing of the UJs. This should be a quick and slightly messy job.  To start with I got out a grease gun which I brought off GumTree a few months back and gave it a good clean. I wasn’t sure what type of grease was left in the gun or its age to I decided to give it a deep clean to remove as much as I could. 

Grease gun.

With the grease gun cleaned it was time to fill it with some NGLI bearing grease. This was a simple case of putting the opened gun into the grease and pull the lever at the back to suck in a good amount of red grease. 

Bearing grease for gun

With a nipple end attached to the grease gun, if the internet is to believed, this should be a simple as pushing the gun end over the nipple and giving the gun a few good squeezes. When it came to practice, getting access to these nipples was challenging and whilst I was able to get at one, the other 3 proved a lot more difficult. 

One greased UJ, with prop shaft on the car.

Therefore at this point, to make my life easy and because I didn’t yet have a rolling chassis I chose to remove the prop shafts and do this on the bench. In hindsight, it would have been worth doing when I originally built the shaft, but oh well, lesson learned.

Greasing UJ on the workbench.

With the shafts on the bench, it was a very quick job of connecting the grease gun to the nipple and applying a small amount of grease. 

Seepage from greased UJ

With the gun removed there is still a small amount of excess grease around the nipple which can easily be wiped up. Then its time to re-assemble the rear suspension again.... oh joys! 

With these jobs done the next step is to fit some wheels and roll the chassis out of the garage.