This completes one rear hub. To complete the other one I’m waiting on the (extra thick) spacer and another inner oil seal.

So, out it came again and I’ll have to order a new one. No progress made today

…and greasing up the bearing.

After placing the housing on top of the bearing and filling the cavity with lots of grease, the inner bearing can be driven in, but not completely. Formally, a jaguar specific tool (J15 or something like that) should be used to put pressure on the bearing. This tools contains a machined edge with a specific height (0.152″ I think) which makes sure the bearing is not driven in completely. By leaving a little bit of room a (large) endfloat can be measured and from there the necessary spacer thickness can be calculated. Not having this tool I ordered the thickest spacer (0.148″) for an alternative procedure.

With this spacer on top of the inner bearing the whole hub was put under the press to drive in the bearing. When the spacer is flat with the bearing the endfloat can be measured.

In my case the endfloat was 0.016″ The target endfloat is between 0.002″ and 0.006″, aiming at the average 0.004″. So, instead of the 0.148″ spacer I would need a 0.148″ – 0.012″ = 0.136″ which is exactly the size I took out of the donor part, so I can reuse that one.

This result was expected for one hub only though. One of the hubs had to be replaced because of a crack. It is likely that this hub has different dimensions and another size spacer will be needed. Doing the same procedure for the other hub revealed that the 0.148″ spacer would lead to an endfloat of near zero ?!?

Hmm…

So, I would need a spacer with a minimum thickness of 0.150″ (leading to the minimal endfloat of 0.002″) This spacer used to exist, but apparently not anymore. Need to sleep on this one what to do here.

There are a couple of hurdles to overcome. First, when the thing gets hot gloves are mandatory which makes handling the piece more cumbersome and handling the thrower quickly but steadily over the hub proved to be quite a dexterity challenge.

Next, to much heat will ruin the passivation layer on the zinc, so I do not want to heat them up to the point where that happens.

And third, the heating will expand the part, but we’re talking parts of millimetres here; I figured about .5 mm difference between the cold and heated part. This means we’ll have to make sure the cold part is brought within that range. There’s also not much room for error.

So, first thing was to do a trial run to get some feel for the procedure and the measurements. The cold part inner diameter was about .8mm smaller than the diameter of the edge. Heating did not make it possible to fit the part but clearly showed a difference in size. I had the hub in the freezer overnight which may have helped a bit too, size-wise.

So, the only thing I could think of was putting the ring in a reference position (cold) and marking how far the circumference would go over the edge by pushing sort of in the same manner I would be able to do while handling the hot part. Marking the arc on the ring and then carefully sanding the complete inner diameter of the thrower to enlarge it a little, fitting the piece regularly.

After quite some sanding and trial fitting and two ‘hot sessions’it dropped on!

You can see the reference mark and some burn traces in the bottom part of the picture. I’m not sure if you can make it out on the picture below, but the hard work paid off. Nice fit I think.

Fitting the seating ring and bearing is easy with a press. There is a little bit of room between the bearing and the seating ring. I’m not sure if that is supposed to be there, but I do not want to push too hard with the press on the bearing.

It costs something like € 70,- to galvanise a box of parts. It does not matter if that box has 2 bits or is cramped full. So, I’ve been gathering things to fill the box with, but kind of struggled to get a reasonably filled box. As I do want to finish the rear end of the suspension soonish, the box was delivered to Galvin to process. It should be back here within 2 or 3 weeks or so.

Not sure how I am going to fit the throwers onto the hub though. There is a small edge on the hubs over which the throwers should be ‘clicked’. Obviously I do not want to damage the throwers so I’ll either need to find a way to equalize the pressure over the circumference or heat it up so it sort of drops over it automatically. The edge seems to be smaller at the bottom than at the top, so heating it seems a plausible way to go.

Once I get them back, I’ll give that a try first.

The other wishbone is even worse, something which I already noticed when fitting the GD brackets to them. I think I’ll have to construct some sort of temporary press to push the wishbone arms a bit apart to be able to fit the right side.

On the other hand, pressing the water deflectors on to the uprights was an easy job, using the press.

I’m running out of nordlock washers, so I’ll order a few next week. Once I have them I can finish the whole front-end I guess. I had planned to do the rear-end first, but I think I’ll create the same wheelbarrow as Andy did.

The steps to get to this are not that hard. Basically what you do is build up the hub around the fulcrum shaft mounted in a vice. In the picture you see the black space tube over which the hub slides down. In the jaguar parts catalog this tube used to be two smaller tubes with the shims between the two tubes. Now, the shims can be placed on either side of the tube.

To determine how many I need, hopefully an even number so I can put the same on either side of the tube, I put a known amount of shimming (on top of the tube in the picture), making sure it is going to lead to a positive endfloat. I just used the original shims plus a couple.

Placing everything on the shaft and filling the end up with some spacers and fastening gives a hub with a measurable endfloat which will be positive. Because I knew how many shims I had put in and I know what it should be, I can calculate what the actual number of shims needs to be.

I’m not sure how accurate this all should be as most of the fellow cobra builders tend to send their hubs to Ward Engineering or equivalent. In the final buildup you’ll need to grease the hell out of the whole fulcrum. I’m also going to use a modern style seal instead of the old 3 piece one. The felt piece in the classic seal feels a bit dated, although jaguar fellows keep telling me it works fine.

You’ve probably noticed I have carefully avoided mentioning the actual measured endfloat and the amount of shims in the above text. This is because I lost the post-it on which I had written those numbers down, and I don’t trust my memory so I have to do the whole thing again. Oh well…

I’m still wondering about that por15 stuff. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hard to capture the finish in pictures, but perhaps these two give an idea.

Especially in the second picture, the finish almost looks ‘metal-ish’The spots are the original welding spots. Quite happy with how it turned out.

I also pressed the bearing cups into the front hubs, that is, only the large ones. The smaller bearing actually turned out to be too big! What gives? This bearing comes out of the wheel bearing kit LM258, which contains a Timken LM12711. The old bearing had a LM12710 cup, which has an outer diameter which is about 0.7mm smaller. The inner size of the two is the same, so the roller from the LM258 kit can be used.

Looking at several sources on the internet, I’m not sure what to make of this. I am not 100% sure of the precise year/model of donor I have, but I can not match the smaller cup with a Jag model / year combo, whereas the larger cup is mentioned for several.

Shrug, best get the smaller cup next week and be done with it I guess.

First, with the help of an el cheapo gazebo, I created an improvised spray booth.

This worked much better than expected. After a bit of testing to get the viscosity of the chassis coat right and the spray gun adjusted, spraying the two bike parts was a quick job. The goal was to record the settings for the gun, the amount of solvent to use and, obviously, look at the end result.

The chassis coat, when sprayed, gives a unique finish, more matte than brushed. The breather is no luxury, this stuff is nasty.

The rest of the day was spent masking the jag parts. I’ll probably spent tomorrow completing the masking and re-assembling the bike, so I can get it out of the way (you can just see it behind the tent on the left)

For reference, when you buy this thing at a Jaguar Parts supplier it’ll cost you something like € 130,- (not sure if that would be a new or a used one though) The return-spring and some spacers were not included, so I had to order those separately.

Cleaning the parts and re-assembling was a quick satisfying after dinner job. Like Andy, I too like the clean looks without the plastic handle, perhaps a pressed on piece of stainless steel instead of the plastic?

Had a chat with the guy on painting the parts with chassis coat. Particularly on the surface preparation, “Do I use metal ready or not?” His statement was that the paint would adhere fine to the passivation layer and that any acid-like fluid would ruin it, significantly reducing the corrosion resistance of the part.

Interestingly, asking exactly the same question to a POR15 employee (in the US, not in the NL) he stated roughly the opposite. Metal-ready won’t hurt the passivation layer because it is in so short contact with it. His advice was to use the normal preparation procedure.

That left me with nothing else than to try it out. Took two parts, prepared one by just degreasing it and brushed chassis coat black on it. I prepared the other part by dipping it in metal-ready for like 5-10 minutes or so.

The first thing i noticed is that the passivation layer is gone in 3 seconds; that is the yellowish colour is gone from which i deduce the passivation layer must be gone too, leaving a zinc coloured surface.

I’m writing this on Monday, so the parts have been curing for a couple of days now. Everyday since I painted the parts, I did a little scratch test to see if there was a difference. There is not, as far as i can see. Both parts look the same and the chassis coat adheres well to both. It’s not excellent though, chassis coat is clearly a top coat and not as much a protective coat as POR15, the real thing.

So, this leaves me with one preparation step: painting them. I’m planning to spray them all in one session, so the next days, I’ll be probably busy masking them appropriately and building a spray booth somewhere in the workshop to spray them in.

I started to put in the bearing tracks. The fulcrum ones are relatively easy.

and the stuff is blue! I’m sold.

The n/s handbrake retraction fork seems a bit too long? Might just be the trial assembly, i’ll figure that out later.

One brake pad location was a bit smaller, making it necessary to shave a tiny bit of the pad. Scraping of the greenish paint turned out to be enough.

Having all the parts in place i tried to determine the necessary shimming to get the brake discs into the midlle of the caliper. It’s not quite clear where you should measure these. There are 4 places on the inside of the caliper which seem to be machined though, so i took those.

Being used to metric it means a little bit of converting back and forth but in the end it looks like i need one shim of ’10 thou’and one of ’20 thou’, o/s and n/s respectively. I’ll just order a bunch and see if on finaly assembly these numbers are still the same.

The ring top-leftish in the picture is a placeholder for the one part missing here, a hinge pin for the handbrake. I think it got somehow lost in the galvanizing sink.

After disassembly i turned the diff on its head and tried to determine the shimming for the diff bracket. Without the actual shims available that seemed to be impossible to do. The GD brackets are drilled to “fit original jaguar shimming” whatever that may be. It seems to imply there is ‘one correct shimming arrangement’here? Would that then directly set toe-in and toe-out properly? Need to read up on that I suppose.

So, there’s a little puzzle ahead on that. I’m not quite sure what the proper shimming order should be to a.) get toe-in/out and other measurements within specs and b.) minimize the number of times i have to lift up the diff (or any other suspension part for that matter).

1. shims behind the brake discs so they’re in the middle of the caliper;
2. shims behind the diff bracket so the GD brackets fit properly;
3. shims behind the drive axle so the camber is within specs.

Sounds about right?

After a while I fabricated a suction device from an old vacuum cleaner. That helped a lot, until the vacuum cleaner decided to short out and smoke a bit.

This morning I gathered all the parts and delivered them to Galvin where I had the hand brake parts treated too. This time the parts will be yellow-passivated, because that will provide a better profile for coatings than the blue passivation. Got some compliments of the guy at the factory, he said the parts he usually got to treat looked a bit different.

It makes the parts almost look like there is a paint finish on them.

I also got my hands on a broken bench drill. It’s a new machine but the motor does not start well. Bit of a gamble, but it sounds like the startup capacitor is either the wrong size or broken. It’s too big for my multimeter so i can not be sure if it is Ok or not.

Opening up the motor itself revealed a loose wire?!? Seconds before the motor ran smooth, so i must have torn it loose on opening up the motor. Other than that, the motor looked fine. I also noticed the motor got quite hot when trying to get it to run, but i’m hoping that is the abnormal load on the secondary coil during the testing. If I can get this fixed by a capacitor replacement, i got a really good deal! If not, i got a lousy one.

Not only was the pinion seal not installed properly, it was completely the wrong seal! On top of that the output shaft seals were also the wrong ones. A previous owner of the diff must have had the same problem as me.

Anyways, all seals replaced now by people who know what they are doing. The new pinion seal properly sits behind the flange now.

While they had the diff in parts I figured they could just as easily give it a spray. I rounded it off by installing the backplate with new stainless bolts and a diff we have!

I might give the base housing another spray, or use some POR chassis coat on it.

Upside is, trying to give a optimistic swing to it, I now have one less hub to clean.

Using the rivnut tool i bought a while ago, the little covers were repaired with a new rivnut and although i still am missing a bolt and some locking thingies, assembling the caliper was pretty rewarding.

I’m not sure about the inside, the clip i have seems different than what i can find in my manuals. Also the spring on the right seems to be in the middle of the path were the missing bolt should go to hold the covers.

The other caliper should not be a problem.

The galvanising was sort of an experiment; i found a company nearby which asks a flat rate for any ‘box full of metal parts’. They galvanise with blue and yellow finish (blue-ish and yellow-ish i guess). I asked what the limit was for the parts, but they didn’t give me one, so perhaps i should bring the whole set of suspension parts too?

Next to that, inspecting the donor parts in detail reveals some things which need some attention. The parts are mostly in good condition, but obviously show their age and use.

One of the parts showed a worn (broken ?) inner wall. The other shaft had problems too but those I managed to repair to satisfaction. This one will have to be replaced.