wheee!

Not the best pictures but you can see where I had to cut out some damaged areas of my rad support, reshape, weld it back together etc. The last pic shows a bit of the area after prep and priming.

I’m sure that only a small portion of all that plastic came out of mine so I will seal the remaining openings. Very interesting results Jim!

If we don’t hear from Jim by noon MST, I might have to drive down to Calgary and check on him! .... dibs on all his Z stuff if the band saw ate him!

I don’t plan on having to replace them again...

Awesome detective work Jim!

Expanding collet?

I was surprised how easy it was really. Even the bearing removal went easy for me.

Brand new from TTT. They are right right for future ease of replacement. Not that I should have to with the TTT outers...

Looks fine to me. Nothing that can’t be tweaked.

Ya, we will have to talk more later...

I just re-read all of your instructions you sent me from last year as I am nearing this part of the restoration.... yeesh...

I totally agree. The bushings will be replaced with correct fitting ones. These pics were more to give an idea of the finished look and colour scheme. The feedback I got was to minimize the red in the rack, so I went this way with the colours. Even in the picture of the Energy Suspension bushings, you can see how the two part bushing is going to be a better fit.

I bought the prothane bushings from Techno Toy Tuning and they DO NOT fit. I have to order the energy suspension ones.

Finished my rebuild thanks to this thread! Disassembled the bearings and cleaned them up. Very happy. New inner tie rods and cleaned up the old boots that were in great shape. Thank you everyone!

Rack is done! What do you think of my colour scheme?

@zKars might have a spare around that is beyond salvage... he might be willing to do a little investigative journalism to counter all this #FakeNews

No issue sliding the rack in. Looks good. There is a small (very small) amount of play in the driver side bronze bushing but that was there before. Not enough to warrant a replacement I think. If they were readily available I would replace it... As for the plastic test, I was on the hunt for nib I cut off! Darn thing disappeared!!! Crap.

Too late for the sniff test. The plastic drained out of the lower hole and left this stalactite behind. About the same amount dropped onto the bottom of the oven too. The upper hole just bubbled over. Nothing seems loose or out of place.

Good questions. I will do more investigation when I get home and take it out of the oven (where I left it to cool down last night).

Not much came out. What DID drain out quickly burned up in the oven at 450 for 20 minutes. There was a little residue on the rack , but from what I saw, it should only be what was in the small dimples on the rack. I don't think there was an excess from an internal cavity.

Add a period here and there... helps with the reading. Did you put a low resistance coil in? Did you remove the ballast resistor?

I will report back when I get a good look. It was still in the oven cooling when I shut it down tonight.

Well, they melted out in the oven...

One more.... what is the purpose of the small plastic plug under the driver side bushing? White in your picture here. My concern is, I plan to powder coat this part...

What did you end up doing with these grease ports and bolts?