A treat...for myself

After a busy month at work, I decided to reward myself with a shopping spree at Harbor Freight and picked up a 6 ton A-frame bench shop press. It was something I had been considering to buy used off craigslist, but after no luck in my search and Harbor Freight having a sale, I splurged and bought a new press.

It was a bit of a pain to put it together by myself as it took some maneuvering to get all pieces to happily come together in some 3-dimensional shape. And then after all that effort, I still had to spend some time to get everything square before tightening all the bolts down. The paint job is sub-par as many parts show paint drips, but overall, the press is pretty sturdy and that's what really matters.

Up next, testing it out...

If the wheel bearings are fine, I really really really should leave them alone

As I was typing the title in for this blog, the blogspot software provided an auto-complete option of "If it ain't broke...don't fix it". That blogged turned out to be related to replacing the front wheel bearings, in which I decided wheel bearings are better left alone unless broken. Clearly, I do not learn lessons well.

In the past month, I became so focused on removing the rear wheel bearing, since I had purchased replacement parts a while back and figured that since I have the replacement, I might as well use it. After trying to figure out how to gain clearance to the bearing, finding the jaw pullers to be inadequate for pulling the bearing, going to Harbor Freight to buy the bearing puller set that was current on sale for $39.99, FINALLY pulling the bearing off, but in the process grinding the axle head, I finally stopped and realized, "I really did not need to do this."

In the end, the bearing was fine, I didn't need to spend $39.99 and I could have moved along with the rear axle restoration without this step and saved hours worth of restoration effort. So now I think I have definitely learned this lesson, but just in case:

• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.
• I will not replace wheel bearings unless they are broken.

Just so this experience was not in complete vain, instructions on how to remove wheel bearings are below:

Step 1: Push the axle hub down using the rod and nuts method from Tuesday, March 13th's post. I went through a few rods getting bent in the process (fitting a nut on both top and bottom of the hub helped a bit). In the end, you just need enough space to slide the bearing guide plates in between.

Step 2: Assemble bearing puller around bearing. as you tighten the bearing plates, it will force itself to a better position by pushing the axle hub further down. (I spent too much time worried about spacing on the axle hub in step 1 and this step covered it.)

Step 3: Use something to protect the puller axles from the axle. I ended up grinding out some of the axle center before I realized this was happening and put a washer in between the axles.

(Picture on left shows metal shavings from the axle center.)

University Motors

During my youtube searches for how to do various car repairs, I stumbled upon University Motors. This shop, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, mostly focuses on MG's, but their youtube postings offer a lot of information on British car repairs. They have tons of videos posted (193 as of 4/2/2012) and continue to add more.

You can check out their shop and latest projects/postings here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Universitymotorsltd

An Electric Triumph Spitfire

I found this post on CNN and thought I'd share...

Dan Busby converted a 1964 Triumph Spitfire into an electric car using a 40-horsepower electric motor and 45 Lithium battery cells that take up the entire space under the hood and where the gas tank would be.

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/08/an-electric-triumph/?hpt=hp_bn6

Too short, back to the store

I found this youtube video a while back while looking into how to remove the hub. It shows a quick and easy way to remove the rear axle bearing. The Haynes manual says to push the axle hub down the axle to get to the bearing, but with no further instructions than that. The video shows a cheap way to remove the bolts using threaded rods.

Using the same idea from the video above, I purchased some nuts and bolts to try and achieve similar results. Unfortunately, the bolts I purchased were too short. I was able to push the axle hub back, but the bolts were not long enough to fully expose the bearing. I ended making a second trip to the hardware store to get longer bolts to finish what I started. Re-watching the video again, I should have bought threaded rods.

My ineffective setup: (threaded rods that fit through the flange holes would have been better)

Canley Classics

So I ended up ordering a hub puller from Canley Classics. I was planning to order the swing spring conversion kit at some point and figured I might as well get the hub puller while I was at it.

When ordering online with Canley, it doesn't tell you how much shipping would be and the exchange rate is approximate so it is hard to tell the total cost. That information came later after someone at Canley put together the order and emailed an order confirmation with the final price. Shipping for these parts came to 100 pounds which is much more than I thought it would be, but it did however come one week after ordering which was nice. The box arrived a little banged up, but everything came in good condition.

The hub puller is one solid piece of metal. The threads on the puller bolt make the Harbor freight jaw puller threads look puny. Even with the hub puller though, we still had a hard time pulling off the hub. We ended up using a 6 foot long breaker bar to get enough leverage to pull off the hub.

From watching the youtube videos of pulling hubs, I knew to expect a pop when the hub puller came off, what I wasn't expecting was what sounded like a gunshot when it did and so I ducked for cover when I heard that.

Gaining access to the hub space, the wheel bearings appear to be in good shape. The only items needing replacement are the hub gasket and the wheel studs, which is now do-able with the drive flange removed.

Making slow and steady progress...

Researching for restoration

This weekend I didn't physically work on the car, but spent time researching next steps for the hub puller and then this lead to researching for a swing spring axle. I was considering to check with AutoZone if they had a universal hub puller in their loan-a-tool program, but after reading some online forums, I found that even this tool was not always successful when using to pull on a Triumph hub.

It seems that the best solution is to use a hub puller, similar to the one for sale by Canley Classics, a UK-based British car tools/parts supplier. Unfortunately the cost for this tool is $101 and to make matters worse, this tool is so specific, it does not even fit on all Triumph cars, like TR's. On a positive note, the tool is CNC from one piece of metal so it does appear to be good quality (no welds that could break).

http://www.canleyclassics.com/?xhtml=xhtml/product/hubpuller.html&xsl=product.xsl

While I was on this page, I remember that I had once considered using Canley Classics to buy a swing spring axle kit. This was something that I read on the forums to help with handling and keep the rear wheels from caving in when cornering. So if I buy the hub puller, I would get the swing spring axle kit at the same time.

I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't rig my way out of this one with a tool I made myself, but after seeing how tight the hub is on by how it damaged the jaw puller, I think I may call myself defeated.