When the manual doesn't cover it...

I'm trying to replace the rear wheel bearings while I have the access to them, but unfortunately, the Haynes manual only covers front wheel bearing replacement. Looking at the rear assembly unit, I was not sure what needed to be pulled/screwed off and where. Googling on this topic returned many results, below are the 2 resources I found most helpful.

1. http://www.mikeross-dds.com/rrbrng.html - only site I found with step-by-step pictures and instructions
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCd8kYI3HyY (video below) - good guide on how to remove and install the drive fland and stud assembly

Now that I understand what needs to be removed, I tried using the rear drum as a solid plate to pull the drive flange off - loosening the center nut and putting the wheel nuts back on. (The video warns against using a jaw puller directly on the flange since the plate could bend.) After many many attempts and methods, the flange still will not come off. I even built a wooden mount for the rear assembly unit so it does not roll around and I can apply full torque, but now the threads of the jaw puller have started breaking off.

Wooden mount for rear assembly

Damaged threads on the jaw puller

Not sure what I'll do next but I think it'll involve buying or making a hub puller.

A Few Good Whacks...

I stopped by Harbor Freight on my way home recently to see what kind of tools I could use to remove the brake drum. On Harbor Freight's website, I had seen a bolt puller on sale so I thought I'd check that out. The store had numerous tools on sale, so I picked up the bolt puller and also picked up a 4 piece, 3-jaw puller set for $24.99. The jaw puller set came with 4 sizes of pullers: 8", 6", 4", and 2" and cheaper than anything I had seen online.

After arriving home, I realized I had no idea how to use the bolt puller and the 8" 3-jaw puller looked like it could work so gave that a shot. The 8" puller fit right over the brake drum but after a few rotations on the center bolt to force the pulling action, I could not turn it anymore. Frustrated with being stuck on a task the Haynes manual passed over quickly as a trivial task, I whacked the outer edge of the drum with a hammer a few times. I went back to turning the center bolt and found it to be super easy to turn and had figured that the jaws had probably slipped out of place, but upon closer inspection, I saw that the drum had popped off!

Under the drum:

I'm still in the process of disassembling and cleaning, but as I'm doing so, I'm using soap stone to mark on the new parts where springs and screws go (not all holes are used) so that I can avoid some confusion during reassembly.

P.S. - The nitrile gloves were great for this task - brake drums are filthy.

Random post about staying clean

While I'm on a blogging roll, this is a random post about disposable gloves that I had recently purchased...

After sessions of working on the car, I could never clean my hands completely to get rid of the grease that found it's way around my finger nails and would always find later in a more public setting, an area of grease that I had missed while washing up. I always sort of dealt with this as something that happens when working on cars until I started watching this British show available on youtube.com called "Wheeler Dealers". (The premise of the show is that they flip/restore old cars for a profit.) On the show the mechanic, Edd, used orange disposable gloves when working on the car and thereby keeps his hands clean.

Doing a google search for mechanic disposable gloves, there are nitrile gloves that rip less easily than latex that can be used to keep your hands clean during tougher jobs. I ended up buying a box to try them out and so far, I'm really satisfied with these gloves. I re-used my first pair 3 times while scrubbing and cleaning parts and only threw them out after the thumb got snagged and the hole eventually grew too big to keep the grease out. In the closeup below, the fingertips are textured, so you can still get good grip to pick up small things like screws.

In summary:

• Disposable gloves - worth the cost to keep hands clean.
• "Wheeler Dealers" - worth watching if you ever need some motivation to go work on your car.

Triumph Pictures

Below are pictures showing the latest progress.

Front brakes complete with new calipers painted red.
Frame with the engine and transmission removed. The original red paint was in good shape in some areas thanks to the thick layer of engine grease that had covered and protected it.

This is where I'm currently stuck. I cannot remove the retaining screws holding the rear drum in place. In this picture, you can see the hole where a screw is missing.

Long time no blog

Sorry, it's been a while since I last blogged, but things at work have been hectic and I've only had a few weekends to work on the Triumph. In one post, I'm going to try and list everything that I've been up to with the Triumph.

In my last post, I had ended with having to buy new brake calipers due to problems removing a bleeder screw. The new calipers arrived (with new pistons and seals which I had previously purchased to refurbish the old calipers..oh well) and I decided to brighten them up with some red caliper paint. Everything connected smoothly with the new calipers and I can check the front assembly unit as complete.

The front engine and transmission have been removed and I am only one part away from having a bare frame. The differential is the last that remains on the frame. I was hoping to finish restoring the frame this year before winter, but it looks like I'll have to wait until next year.

For this winter, my goal is to clean, sand, and restore the rear assembly unit (including rear drum brakes). I'm currently stuck on how to remove the brake drum screws that are being quite stubborn. A forum online mentioned using a centerpunch to tap the screw counter clockwise, but I do not have one in my tool kit. On the plus side, instead of having 4 screws that need to be removed, 1 screw was already missing, so there's only 3 to tackle.

I'll try to update with pictures when I get the chance.

Good effort, but thwarted by a 99 cent piece

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It was slow progress to restore the front brakes. The pistons were a bit tricky to remove and installation was just as difficult. Parts kept aligning just off enough that the caliper could not be mounted over the rotor. Eventually after a few cycles of attempting to mount, disassemble, adjust, reassemble and then mount again, the brakes finally came together.

The remaining front brake tasks were to replace the brake hose and bleeder screw. It took a bit of muscle power (not mine, but Chris') to remove the brake hoses and replace with new ones, but this was quickly done. The first bleeder screw went similarly and all that was left was the other bleeder screw.

Of course, the last bleeder screw had to snap off. I thought we were making good progress in unscrewing the bleeder screw but it turns out we were only turning the top part off. I checked forums for advice on this matter and attempted two solutions that were listed.

The first idea was to notch a slot in the top so that flathead screwdriver could be used to unscrew the bleeder screw out. After overnight soaks of B'laster, I tried to unscrew the bleeder screw with a screwdriver but the metal was so soft that the screwdriver just peeled the screw notch apart.

The second solution was to drill out the bleeder screw. We drilled out what I thought would be safe enough without drilling into the caliper itself, but the metal seems to be solidly fused to the caliper.

And so...after all this work - the cleaning of brake calipers, painting brake calipers, buying new pistons and going through the difficulties of brake assembly, I'm looking at buying new calipers.

Sad day for the dremel

Today, my dremel has stopped functioning properly. It still rotates when turned on, however, the button used to change dremel bits no longer properly grabs the bit and I am no longer able to change dremel bits. Right now, I am stuck with a small wire brush on the dremel, when what I really need to change to a differently angled wire brush.

The good news is that I found the part needed to fix the dremel online for $1.38. Bad news, the company charges a minimum $5 order fee plus $6 for shipping. So this part is now $12. I really don't want to buy a new dremel so I'm stuck buying the $12 part.

Below is a picture of the dremel taken apart. The new part needed is the locking bit at the top of the picture.

Brake fluid eats paint?!

Unfortunately, this is common knowledge that I was not aware of... but brake fluid eats paint (at least the brake fluid that was in the Triumph). I had spent a good amount of time prepping one of the brake calipers for paint, making sure to clean off as much rust as possible and properly cleaning any grease for the surface. I left the old rubber seals on for paint. Since I was going to replace them anyways, I would not care if paint got on them. The paint job came off without issue and I was pleased with the results.

The second part of this restoration task was to replace the piston seals. Using a bike tire floor pump to push air through the brake house, one of the pistons popped out. With the piston however came a flow of brake fluid that got all over the work surface. I cleaned up the mess with a rag and proceeded to clean and replace caliper parts. After only a few minutes, I started noticing silver paint residue on my hands and certain caliper metal was starting to appear through the paint. This is when I learned first hand that brake fluid eats paint. I tried to make sure the work surface and caliper was cleaned of brake fluid as much as possible, but the damage was done. I would have to redo the paint job.

In the picture below, if you look closely at the caliper on the left, you can see where the brake fluid ate awaythe paint.

This task is proving to take longer than I thought AND there is the problem of the other piston being stuck. Now I understand why auto shops just replace stuck pistons with new calipers.

Front Assembly (part 1)

We finally finished (and assembled) the right front assembly. It took about a month working here-and-there on it, but I am quite pleased with the results. The restored assembly has a new ball joint, bearings, and brake rotor. Everything else was reused after being wire brushed and repainted. The picture above shows the initial condition of the assembly on the left and the restored results on the right. It definitely looks much better now, although you can't see the paint drips from the rushed paint job. (I need to work on my painting patience.)

We planned to only disassemble one front assembly unit at a time and this decision proved to be valuable. While we were reassembling the parts back together we had problems seating the felt oil seal. Initially we had put it on backwards and did not have enough space to slip the stub axle bolt back on properly. We had to reference the old assembly unit on how to put it together correctly and only then realized we had to flip the oil seal and tap it into place so that the stub axle would have enough space to slip the bolt back on. Now to repeat the process with the left front assembly...

If it ain't broke...don't fix it.

Back when I went through a shopping spree of new car parts, I had purchased wheel bearings assuming the wheel bearings on the Triumph needed to be replaced. It turns out they didn't.

The bearings were in rather good shape, but I figured since I had bearings that were 40 years younger than those currently on the car, I might as well change them. In hindsight, I should have just left the bearings (more trouble for something that was fine), but for posterity, below is how I replaced the bearings.

Removing the bearing race was easy as it could be tapped out, but installing new bearings was a bit of a pain. At first, I tapped as far as it would go in with a scrap piece of 2x4 and hammer, but since the bearing race sits below the face of the hub, I needed something to tap it even further. I tried using the old bearing to help hammer the race in even further, but I found this left the slightest scuffs on the race where the rollers on the bearings were.

I found bearing installers online but they were 50-plus dollars, so I checked with AutoZone, but they did not carry any bearing installers in their loan-a-tool program. For bicycles, Chris had used quick-release hubs to install bearings on bike wheels and so we decided to build a homemade bearing race installer hub that functioned similarly to the quick-release hub.

I bought a long bolt, 2 nuts, and multiple sets of washers (I couldn't recall what size I needed to fit over the bearings properly - in actuality, you only need 2 washers) from Lowe's. The plan was to thread the bolt with a nut, followed by a washer of the correct size, followed by the old bearing, then the other side's old bearing, washer, and a nut. The idea was was to tighten the bolts and gradually squeeze the bearing races into place.

This setup worked really well. For less than $4, the bolt/nuts/washers pushed the races into place and did not leave any scuff marks on the races like the hammering method.

The picture below shows the setup on a hub. Two wrenches are needed - one to hold the back bolt in place and the other to tighten and squeeze the bolts closer together.


Next up...remove rust from the hub and stub axle carrier and paint.

Good weather = spray painting outside

I had been meaning to publish this post for a few weeks now, but it took me a while take the picture I was going to include with it...

The holidays have been a good time to relax and leisurely work on the Triumph. With the weather being uncommonly warm this week, I spent some time cleaning up the front lower suspension arms so I could do some spray painting outside. Using wire brushes, steel wool, sandpaper, and a lot of elbow grease, I spent about 2 hours cleaning off the surface rust from the arms. Another hour or so was used to prep, prime, and paint the arms to a glossy black. The dremel worked great for this project as the dime-sized wire brush attachment cleaned hard to reach places.

For this project, I used Rustoleum auto paint and primer that I picked up at the local hardware store. The reviews online seem to be ok (not great), but should be ok for this purpose.

The result...(for reference, see previous post on what the arms looked like before cleaning and paint)


Next up... clean and re-paint upper suspensions arms