1983 GL, project: Cheap Thrills

Important bit of work done, but nothing that look spectacular in pics.

I finished fitting the steering shaft. I "hybrided" a fox upper shaft with and sn95 lower coupling. Took all day to get it fit as I had to clearance the headers. This was a pita as Everytime I had to remove the headers I had to pull the steering g sandy out and jack the engine up.

Long tubes can be such a massive pain in the butt sometimes......
 
It is back to the old pain vs gain conversation. Long tube headers help the engine exhale that's for sure. Great for HP gains - but sometimes to work around them is downright painful. you have had some amazing finds when looking for components for this build. I'm wishing you tight bolts and no header gasket leaks for the life of the car.
 
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Please excuse the messy garage. Lots of stuff in there and lots of work going one. That's what you get working over winter in a 1 car garage...

That's the passenger side door with the power window regulator installed. You can see the special reinforcement strip installed on the door frame top. I've got two more that run vertically to install. It's all put on with 1/4" rivets. OEM used aluminum rivets, I'm using stainless. Same rivets that I used to put the t-roof frame in with.

The window in there right now is a correct t-roof side glass, but it has a small chip in the upper edge. Mostly a cosmetic issue, but I have another set of doors in the back yard with a clean window. I'm going to install that one tomorrow. I slide all this together with the shipped glass mostly to make sure all the power stuff went in without issue.

But I won't be messing about much with getting the "new" window out of the spare door. Angle grinder with a cut off blade and I'm just whacking the back frame off. It's a scrap door with not much else besides the window any good, so no loss there. I'll remove the bracing pieces first though. No sense wasting them.

Work is going slow. Depression is in full swing so not much motivation to do anything these days. I force myself out into the garage to get me out of my head and into my hands. It's therapeutic for me....
 
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After slicing up two rusty doors to get the glass out (doors were rusted out junk), I spent my morning taking two windows from this:

52C7301A-525D-416C-8F00-1AC770680CB8_zpsoamcj97s.jpg


To this:

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Took a clothes steamer, a razor blade and a lot of patience. It was on there good, likely very old.

I despise window tint.

Others may like window film, but I don't. Serves no purpose for me and sends out the wrong message imo.

I also want that tempered glass to shatter like it's supposed to if ( heaven forbid) I ever get in an accident. My years in star have taught me that when you need out, you want nothing getting in your way. Panic does strange things to even the toughest guys, I don't want anything stopping me or confusing me in an emergency situ.

:)
 
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driver side door done:

BDA43AE0-5B3F-439A-B983-334E23359A68_zpspnajo7zq.jpg


installed the power window regulator, glass and the door reinforcements.

Still have to cut and shape the door at the mirror and rear openings. I left them a little long when I cut the hardtop window frames off so I would have enough to properly shape them. Hard to describe, easy to understand when you see it.

:)
 
Really slacking off these days. Depression is making it hard to get anything done. Its an effort to just drag myself out of bed.

But, i dragged my sorry butt out to the garage today and did some metal work:

D3E1BE47-E73A-4837-A245-3FBE2B36B9E8_zps3kwxplgv.jpg


I had repaired the rusted out a pillar many moons ago when my skill level wasnt quite as good as it is now and only had a crappy welder. It resulted in a very large "dip" where i overlapped the patch piece and body filler covered all my sins.

So i sliced the crap weld open, leveled the panel as much as possible and stitched it back up. Its still far from perfect, but it shouldn't take a 1/4" of filler to cover it now.

I also had filled the pillar joint with body fill where there was originally body lead. It worked for about 10 years, but it eventually shunk and seperated which started the rusting process all over again.

I have no idea why ford was still using body lead in the 80's but i'm not putting it back in.

So I ground the metal clean, hit it with weld through primer and built a little filler panel for the gap. Welded it in and thats what you see in the pic.

Also ordered my pinion crush sleeve eliminator kit today. Once it gets here, i'll pull the axle out and set it up for the last time.

Slow, but still moving forward...
 
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Haven't touched the car for a while now. Ive had lot of balls in the air recently.

But found some time this weekend and getting back to it.

Working on the rear axle again [IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"http:\/\/i1174.photobucket.com\/albums\/r618\/justonepict\/EF775297-A255-48EF-9DE0-2160EA86F3CE_zpsuffh79s3.jpg"}[/IMG2]



Thats the 31 spline axles in, the crush sleeve eliminator, 31 spline diff with trac lok and 3.73 gears. I only have setup bearings in it for now as im setting pinion depth and prelaod still. I just dropped the center section in so i could finally at least slip the 31 spline axles in. Ive had them a long time now and wanted to at least see them in the housing.

tomorrow i'll pick up new pinion and carrier bearing for the final install.

:)
 
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Not bad for used gears:
[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"http:\/\/i1174.photobucket.com\/albums\/r618\/justonepict\/A1FDC32C-4DCB-4CD4-9BA4-1C51D7BED513_zpsww2hqahg.jpg"}[/IMG2]
[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"http:\/\/i1174.photobucket.com\/albums\/r618\/justonepict\/53149D6C-A85B-47DB-A627-2178F8D33FC6_zpsw0ccvrwk.jpg"}[/IMG2]


coast side looks good and thats where i tend to put more weight on the pattern with used gears as the coast side sees much less wear than the drive side.

The drive side is centered heel to toe, but is low on the tooth. Still acceptable as the gear will move towards center (ie:up) under power.

Backlash tolerance is .008-.012 and im between .0010 and .011, checked in 4 spots around the ring gear.

Now to set bearing preload and then i can button 'er up!

with any luck, i'll get to the subframe connectors and torque arm rear suspension this weekend.

phew, this one was a real pita...
 
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Damned solid spacer!

After chasing it for two days (and cutting new ones on the lathe) I just could not get the pinion bearings preload to come within spec.

So I went to the crush collar. It was as much of a treat as I remember it.

1/2 breaker bar, a bar bolted to the flange, and two 3 foot lengths of pipe were required to crush the spacer and it was still a major effort. Supposed to be around 300-400 ft/lbs to crush the spacer and it felt like it took 500 ft/lbs! I must be getting old.....

It was also as fickle to get the proper preload torque as I remember too.

Took forever to get the slack out of the pinion, then got it up to 5 in /lbs where it hung for a while, then popped up to 12 in/lbs. Since they are new bearings, I needed 15-28 in/lbs preload. Less than an 1/8 of a turn from 12 and it shot right up to 30 in/lbs.

Cripes!

But it's only 2 in/lbs over the spec and to be blunt, I'm damned tired of F'ing with it so I'm just going to run it and what I get is what I get.
 
great white;n14614 said:
Damned solid spacer!

After chasing it for two days (and cutting new ones on the lathe) I just could not get the pinion bearings preload to come within spec.

So I went to the crush collar. It was as much of a treat as I remember it.

1/2 breaker bar, a bar bolted to the flange, and two 3 foot lengths of pipe were required to crush the spacer and it was still a major effort. Supposed to be around 300-400 ft/lbs to crush the spacer and it felt like it took 500 ft/lbs! I must be getting old.....

It was also as fickle to get the proper preload torque as I remember too.

Took forever to get the slack out of the pinion, then got it up to 5 in /lbs where it hung for a while, then popped up to 12 in/lbs. Since they are new bearings, I needed 15-28 in/lbs preload. Less than an 1/8 of a turn from 12 and it shot right up to 30 in/lbs.

Cripes!

But it's only 2 in/lbs over the spec and to be blunt, I'm damned tired of F'ing with it so I'm just going to run it and what I get is what I get.
Click to expand...

Now just a good thump on both ends of the pinion with a block of hardwood and a 10lb sledge to make sure everything is seated and the preload does not change and you are good for another 10 years !
PS: I hated that spacer as well 2 years ago when I did mine - housing was still in the car
 
I couldn't stand leaving the preload at 30 in/lbs.

so this morning I did what you're always told never to do: I backed off the pinion nut.

the preload eased to 25 in/lbs, the nut torque is still up over 200 ft/lbs and the bearing rolls much nicer. No play in the pinion bearings, everything is still tight and solid.

so I'm going to call that good and reassemble the axle. Worse case scenario I end up buying another 6 buck crush spacer and do it with the axle in the car.

but I'm pretty sure it's going to be good. I figure the 1/16-1/32 turn I made on the nut probably just let the crush sleeve spring back a c-hair and is still loaded fine.

now to start work getting it all back under the car and installing the torque arm rear suspension.

:)
 
Did my final checked an sure enough, the backlash was just a bit too tight. Had reduced to about .006

spec is .008-.012

:mad:

a bit bit of work and a quick shim swap side to side, four ring gear measurements later: 0.0095, 0.0102, 0.0106 and a 0.0102

good to go!

this thing sure is being fussy....or maybe it's me being fussy.

:lol:
 
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