One Wheel On My Wagon... Part 2

Welcome back!

So this update covers a few (every!) evening's work during the week, and a full-blast Saturday.

Having finished off the drilling, and thus getting as far as I could with the panels I had, I then turned my attention to the matter of the suspension...

I did some reading on how the rear hubs were dismantled as I'd had a go at getting the rear axle driving member out and not really had much joy

I spent a bit of time with various threaded bars, wheel nuts, jacking devices/pullers etc and couldn't get it out. I wandered over to the unit opposite (who is a car mechanic and now good friend of mine! He's a really great help to this project, gives me loads of advice) and slightly annoyed when he managed to just give it a firm tap and it dropped straight out!!! Not to worry, it was out though. although the inner bearing race came "free" on the passenger side. Only real way around this is to gently angle grind through (but don't score the surface of the member) and then split it with a chisel. Which is what I did



After this, a hard morning's work, my beautiful and supportive wife (did I mention she's beautiful and supporting? Oh, you are reading this dear... good...) brought some sandwiches up for me and dutifully posed for a photo


She was actually pleasantly surprised and in her own words "it looks more like a car now" :-)

I then set about pressing the various bushes into the various holes using several techniques:

Vice and socket method, fairy liquid is a big help


Partially assembled wishbones


Then when the vice wasn't man enough (or, more accurately my arms were getting tired) I wandered over to my aforementioned friend and borrowed his press. I wouldn't have been able to do the wheel bearing into the upright any other way

The wheel bearing was a little tricky as no amount of anything would get it to go in straight, so we ended up having to do the first couple of strokes on the press in a sort of "12, 3, 6, 9" o'clock fashion, when it was about a third in, it was then OK and we sent it home. Then put the circlip in.

I then pressed in the driving member, and because of rushing/not paying attention managed to press the inner race of the bearing out the back of it (oops). It does say not to do this in the build instructions... only myself to blame... luckily, I noticed before any damage was done to the bearing or it popped all the balls out of the race, so no harm done.

Fully assembled suspension components

I then offered them all up into position (finger tight)






and just before I had to dash home to get ready to go out... I managed to get One wheel on my wagon (yes folks, long build up for that pun... hope you're still with me)

So there you have it! Quite excited and really enjoyed this last week, and very pleased with the results so far. I need to torque everything up, and I'm still missing the rear track adjusters which are on back order, so I can't put any weight on the wheels yet as they might wobble around and bend stuff... but still, looks more like a sports car every day.

Next week I'm going to finish off the other side and make a start on the front suspension.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Steve

P.s. sorry for the image rotation issues I'll go back later and fix them. Combination of iPhone and blogger being too clever for its own good, and windows being too stupid...