Chassis Cleaning

The full extent of the crap and crud on the chassis can now be seen since the suspension is removed.

A full 5 hours of cleaning this morning has revealed that the chassis is actually bright red! I thought it was oil coloured!

There is no magic method that I have found for cleaning oil and crud off. I resorted to Gunk degreaser (not sure if it's the best but it worked for me), a wire brush and lots of paper towel. Then it's just down to elbow grease and patience.

5 hours into the cleaning it looks better, but still plenty to go.

I think I will have to spend quite a few more hours on cleaning before its acceptable. I also think I might have to take the radiator out to complete it properly.

I also need to find out if it needs fully repainting or if cleaning and touching up is enough. There are a few very small areas back to bare metal so something will have to be done, either patch it up or full coat over the whole area. I'll take advice from the JOC forum.

While cleaning I noticed that one of the rubber hoses is damaged. It looks like it has been rubbing on the top right upper fulcrum bolts. There is quite a big area of damage so needs replacing. Another job to the list

Front Suspension Teardown - Catalogue of parts

Dismantling the suspension would have been impossible without the Interceptor parts catalogue. It is worth every penny that it cost to buy from the JOC website. The exploded diagrams are extremely useful, as are the tables of parts.

As each part (washer, nut, screw, plate etc) was removed from the car it was put in a plastic bag with a tag showing the workshop manual item number, description and code id. This will then be used to ensure re-assembly goes smoothly. Well that's the plan anyway!

The major parts (wishbones etc) will now go off for cleaning and powder coating and the calipers are heading off for a clean, repaint, rebuild and pressure test. The calipers will get new pistons and seals at the same time. The only choice is what colour caliper paint to go for, silver, gold, red or black. I'm thinking black at the moment but I've got a few days to decide.

Front Suspension Teardown - Upper Wishbone Assm

The first part I removed from the upper wishbone assembly was the upper ball joint. This is held on by 2 bolts and these came out with relative ease.

However, the remaining upper wishbone assembly is slightly more difficult to remove. Access to the left side nut  on the upper fulcrum bar is not possible due to a chassis post so I decided to remove the remaining assembly in one go by removing the bolts that hold on the upper fulcrum shaft.

These are not easy to access as they are on the back of the suspension mount and could only be removed using a spanner and turning at a 1/4 of a turn at a time. It was a very slow process and must have taken over an hour for the 4 bolts!

Once all 4 bolts had been removed the assembly could be rotated by 90 degrees so that it could be lifted over the top of the suspension mount.

The split pins and nuts could then be removed from the fulcrum shaft. I had loosened these while the assembly was still fixed to the car. The lower wishbone arms are then free to be removed from the shaft. Again the bushes will be replaced before re-assembly.

The workshop manual shows 1 packing plate on the left side and 3 on the right side of the fulcrum shaft mounting. For some reason there were only 2 plates, one on each side. I will have to do further investigation before re-assembly to determine if this is correct or if I need to source 2 more plates.

Front Suspension Teardown - Lower Wishbone

The lower wishbone is relatively simple to remove. The split pins and nuts are removed from each end of the lower fulcrum shaft. The fulcrum shaft can then be pushed through the chassis mount until the wishbone is freed.

The fulcrum shaft was pushed through using a length of bar and pushed from the front of the car to the back. The Wishbone is then free from the car.

The wishbone bushes will be extracted later and replaced when the wishbone is refurbished.

Front Suspension Teardown - Vertical Link

Now that the spring has been removed the vertical link can be taken out. The vertical link connects the upper and lower wishbones and houses the stub axel.

The vertical link was removed by undoing the nuts from the upper ball joint and the lower cap and socket. The cap and socket was then removed from the bottom and the vertical link is then lowered off the upper wishbone.

Bottom view of cap and socket

The stub axel could not be prised from the vertical link so it was removed still in place. I'll let you know later if this was a mistake or not!

Vertical link with stub axel attached

Front Suspension Teardown - Shock and Spring

The shock absorber was then removed by unlocking the top nuts on the shock and then removing the 4 bolts on the plate holding the shock to the spring pan at the bottom. The shock can then be dropped through the bottom of the suspension. The shock absorber is in pretty bad shape and will be replaced.

The anti roll bar was then dis-connected from the spring pan using the ball joint scissors.

Now to the tricky bit, removing the spring and spring pan. I was not looking forward to this at all and can safely say I did not enjoy one minute of the process! There is a lot of tension in the spring even when the suspension is in it's lowest position. There is not enough access to use conventional spring compressors so another method had to be found.

A conversation with Andy and Kevin at Appleyards determined that Jensen used to have a specific tool for this job which consisted of a threaded bar and large metal plate that sits under the spring pan. The threaded bar goes up inside the spring where the shock was and is locked off using the shock mounting on the chassis. There is a large nut under the metal plate that can be used to lower the spring pan when the pan fixing bolts are removed. 

Now, getting one of these original tools is pretty much impossible so I had to fashion my own. The plate was made out of inch thick circular aluminium with a diameter that fits snugly in the underside of the pan in the recessed area. This plate had a 17.5mm hole drilled in the centre. I purchased the threaded bar and nuts from a local fastener company. The bar was 1m long and 15mm diameter. I reasoned that I needed around 600mm for the spring to fully de-compress so I cut it down. The car had to be jacked up really high as the bar has to be inserted from the bottom up into the spring. I used a couple of large washers and then used 2 nuts to lock it off in the same way the shock is fixed.

The plate was then loaded onto the bar and held under the pan using a large washer and a nut. I only tightened the nut finger tight. 

Now, the worst bit. I then started undoing the 6 pan fixing screws. I unscrewed half a turn each and then moved to the next screw and moved clockwise around the pan. As more pressure was placed on the nut holding the plate I loosened it slightly so that it did not become too tight under the plate due to the tension in the spring. I followed this routine until the screws could be removed. Even with the plate there was still a lot of tension on the screws and I got a terrific shock from the noise as the first screw came loose and the plate moved. I slowly made my way back across the garage (from where I had jumped to) to inspect why. It then dawned on me that as the suspension is in it's fully down position the pan is not parallel to the floor so the back of the pan needed to be dropped down first. Knowing this made it a little easier so I continued removing the screws until all had been removed and the plate was taking the strain. The nut could then be slowly unscrewed which lowered the pan and removed the tension in the spring. When all the tension is out of the spring the lock nuts could be removed from the top of the threaded bar and the spring and pan removed.

I was really pleased with how this worked out as, although nerve racking, it was actually pretty simple to get the spring off the car using this tool.

Front Suspension Teardown - Process and Hub

So far it has taken around a month to strip down the near side front suspension. The main delay was due to having to find a suitable way of removing the spring. I'll cover this later in the post.

The teardown was performed in the following order:-

1, Remove hub assembly
2, Remove shock absorber
3, Pan and spring lowered
4, Remove vertical link
5, Lower wishbone assembly removal
6, Upper wishbone assembly removal

The first job was to remove the hub assembly. This involved removing the brake caliper which is held on by 2 bolts onto the brake caliper bracket. Then the hub cap and nut could then be removed and the hub and disk assembly pulled from the stub axel. The disk can be separated later and checked to see if it is suitable to be re-used.

The stub axel and brake caliper bracket can be seen in the above photo.

The brake hose was then removed from its mount on the vertical link.

Next job is shock, spring pan and spring.