1971 HLS30-14938 "Lily" build

[charliekwin]

7 hours ago, Patcon said:

Ok, I am working on getting the headliner installed while I can still rotate the car upside down. I bought a new headliner from MSA and it looks much better than any of the others I had. Since I'm an idiot, I threw away the other ones before I compared them for size!

So, do I need to trim the MSA headliner some. Do I tuck all the extra in to the ceiling, which seems really difficult from my experiments? How much should extend under the flange?

Need some input here...

I made my own headliner, so YMMV with the MSA one, but I cut mine about a half inch or so big and tucked it under. (I was actually going to make it a little bigger, but didn't account for the curvature of the roof. Oops.) A large plastic panel removal tool worked really well for that.

[Patcon]

12 hours ago, charliekwin said:

I made my own headliner, so YMMV with the MSA one, but I cut mine about a half inch or so big and tucked it under. (I was actually going to make it a little bigger, but didn't account for the curvature of the roof. Oops.) A large plastic panel removal tool worked really well for that.

Was 1/2" enough to not be seen once the rest of the vinyl trim is installed?

[charliekwin]

Mine was in good shape, so I left the existing trim in place and only did the headliner, but yes, 1/2" was enough. Not much room for error though!

[Patcon]

5 hours ago, charliekwin said:

Mine was in good shape, so I left the existing trim in place and only did the headliner, but yes, 1/2" was enough. Not much room for error though!

Thanks

[Patcon]

Ok so I have been working on the fuel tank and some suspension bolts to try to get the car back on the ground.

Worked on fuel tanks for awhile. I may be repeating some of this as I forget what I have covered and not... ?

Stripped the tank and treated with rust dissolver

Ok, here is a test for you. Do you see a cherry tree or a puller posts???

I worked on the 280z tank for a while. It will probably have to be cut open to be made right. Some areas you just can't pull

I used Caswell sealer on the 240z tank. It's a clear two part epoxy. Very tough! This is a puddle I peeled up out of the spray booth. It pulled the dirt and all off the poly floor...

This is the finished 240 tank

I am using Eastwood satin chassis black. I like the sheen and so far it has done well. We will see how it holds up

 

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Patcon

[Patcon]

I have been tinkering with the upper steering column for a couple of weekends. Plate something, paint something, on and on until I could finally assemble it.

The replacement U joint I bought needed some detailing to work.

The shoulders on the new joint were wider and I couldn't get into the yoke. So I took a die grinder to it with a cut off wheel. It wasn't very pretty but really not visible when it's assembled

A little paint and here is the result

Re

Reassembled the column. I know the bottom cap is not supposed to be cad plated but it does look nice this way

[Patcon]

I also finished rebuilding the front fender I have been messing with for probably a year

I disassembled the inner and outer fender so I could rebuild the inner fender and patch some holes in the outer fender.

I reattached this bracket to the inner fender before sliding the inner into the outre fender. I spot welded the bottom and the inner top flange then I dollied the flange back down flat

Hung it up and added some black. I shooting black under the whole car and in all the wheel wells

 

[Patcon]

So I have been working on getting the car back down on the ground. That has meant I have been working on getting struts assembled

the front backer plates use philips screws 6mm x 1.0 by maybe 10

Brake rotors bolt to the hubs with 10mmx1.25 by 18mm ?

I have been plating hardware as I go and finally installing parts that I have had on the shelf for 6 years or more

Work on the one of the rear struts too

Did all new wheel studs while I was at it. Surprisingly I think Courtesy probably has the best price on the studs. Cheaper than where I sourced them.

The rear backer plates also use 10mmx1.25 to bolt the backer plate to the hub. I am going to go ahead and convert to rear disc. I thought about converting later but figured it was just as easy to convert now

I may have a similar problem as Mathew. We'll see when I torque the rear hubs. The seem like they are going to lock down when I torque them. @Captain Obvious

I figured I would torque them once the car is down on it's tires

[Patcon]

As an aside, someone was asking recently about fuel tank drain threading. On the tank I have the drain plug is 1/2 x 20, which seems odd. I don't know if there is a close metric pitch or if this is truly a non-metric fitting

[Captain Obvious]

Why do you think you're going to have a problem with the rear bearings locking up? Do you think you may have mixed up distance pieces and ended up with the wrong lengths?

When I was working with Matthew, first thing we did was check his hubs and distance piece measurements to make sure he had the right pairings. Measuring the distance piece is easy, but measuring the distance between the bearing seating surfaces was a little more difficult. You can hold a block of something against one side and then measure the distance between the two faces with a depth micrometer (or using a caliper as a depth measuring device), but it's a little hokey.

In the name of accuracy, I wanted a direct reading. So I donated a cheap caliper to the cause... I ground the internal reading jaws off one of my calipers so they would fit into the center of the hub and provide a direct (no interpolation) measurement between the two bearing faces.

Here's the caliper with the top set of jaws ground off:

And with those jaws removed, it fits down inside the hub like this:

[Captain Obvious]

And about your drain plug... M12 x 1.25 is close in both diameter and pitch to 1/2 - 20. It's either metric M12, or someone in the past stripped out the old one and retapped for 1/2 - 20.

[Patcon]

13 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

And about your drain plug... M12 x 1.25 is close in both diameter and pitch to 1/2 - 20. It's either metric M12, or someone in the past stripped out the old one and retapped for 1/2 - 20.

Yea, I thought it was odd to be standard.

As for the hub.

I intentionally only did one hub at a time so I couldn't mix up parts and I had one to check against if I forgot something. The first one that seems like it will be too tight had the small copper washer in it. The second did not appear to have it. I never saw it and don't believe I lost it. I put the copper washer under the inside flange for the hub, between it and the bearing face. When I ran the nut down with the impact wrench it got too tight to turn. Now it's possible that it was over torqued but I seriously doubt it because my impact isn't really that strong. With it off the car I figured I would be challenged to get it torqued any way. So I figured I would need to have it on the car so I could use a wheel to hold it still to torque. Speaking of that, how did you torque Mathews hub? My torque wrench doesn't read that high. I also thought I should probably try to mic it so I know what I have...