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.