My Dumbest Move Yet

Without a doubt, I did the dumbest thing yet on the build. (Yes, even dumber than whacking myself in the face with the torque wrench). This week I worked on something that should have been pretty easy, but I managed to make it tough.

The task was to install the master cylinders for the braking system. When you press on the brake pedal, what makes the car stop? Well, the brakes are activated by fluid. That fluid gets pumped to the brakes by a master cylinder that is connected to the brake pedal. It has a piston that pushes fluid from the reservoir to the brake calipers. That piston is connected to the brake pedal. In this car, there are 2 separate master cylinders, one connected on either side of the pedal, that pump fluid separately to the front and rear brakes. This is a safety feature so that if there is a leak going to one pair of wheels, you will still be able to stop with the others. It is also a performance feature that lets you balance the braking power between the front and rear as you see fit. Here is a picture of the MCs that came with the kit.



The first step is to put the white plastic cap on the top that will connect the fluid reservoir to the MC. The instructions say it is pretty tight and easy to crack the caps when putting them on. Some people have needed to use heat (like a hair dryer) to get the cap to fit. Here is my MC in the vise as I was trying to get the cap on.



Well, I spent 2 hours trying to finesse the cap on this sucker. It was not even close. I tried heat. I tried force. I tried lube. I tried cursing. I tried prayer. Nothing was even close. So I did some measuring. The cap inner diameter was 1.34 inches. The outer diameter of the part I was trying to put the cap on was 1.49 inches. How could that work? Heat can't make that much difference. I even tried re-reading the directions. No help. Then I looked online at other people's pictures. I studied and studied them. Then I noticed that theirs did not seem to be using the rubber gaskety thing that was on mine. Close examination revealed that this was not an integral part of the MC, but was just a packing cover to protect the O-ring underneath. DOH!!! Once I took that off, it took about 20 seconds to slide the cap on. No heat or anything. I swear that it looked like it was an important part of the system and that nowhere did any instructions say to remove it. Ugh.

Here is a picture of the master cylinders mounted to the firewall.



I am currently having trouble connecting the piston rods to the brake pedal, so they are not quite functional yet. I've spent another couple of hours on that task and it really should have been easy. Not sure why I am having trouble with that step. Anyway, I should get that solved and be able to connect the rest of the steel tubing to finish the brake system and then move on to riviting the inner fender liners to the frame.

Steering binding solved

There is nothing like a little break to clear the mind to help solving problems. When I went back this week to working on the car, I quickly figured out what was causing the steering shaft to bind. I could only get the steering wheel to make about a half turn. The problem was that the set screw and jam nut holding one of the u-joints in place was hitting on the pillow block that held the bearing and shaft right under the dash near where the driver's knees would be.

Here is a picture taken after I got it fixed.



The bright O-shaped thing is in reality a nut that acts as a jam nut. The jam nut holds the black set screw in place by encircling it. The set screw tightens through the U-joint into the steering shaft. Just to the right in the picture, you can see the bottom of the pillow block (the shiny part) that is holding the bearing and steering column shaft at an angle going up to where the steering wheel will be. Anyway, the 2 shiny parts were hitting each other and shouldn't have. The solution was simple--bang on the steering column with a big rubber mallet to move the U-joints away from the pillow block.

Here is another useful picture.



In it, you can see a vertical line drawn with a silver marker on the shaft that goes through the firewall into the engine compartment. I made that mark prior to swinging my rubber mallet. You can see that where the line used to be flush against the bearing, it now shows that the shaft moved about a quarter-inch or so.

I did also have to make another slight modification. The steering column was still rubbing slightly against the dash frame. So I took it all apart again to add a couple of washers to lower the pillow block and bearing so that the shaft would not rub. Seems to work beautifully now.

I could not completely finish the steering yet, because the steering wheel cannot go on until the dash board goes in. There is a small hole in the dash for the steering shaft to pass through, but it would not go over the wheel or the hub that holds the wheel either. So later on, I will have to finalize the turn signal stuff and steering wheel.

With the shafts all in their final positions, I was able to start to look at how to fix the power steering pump location problem. Recall that I had to remove the pump to get the steering shafts in place. A first pass at looking at the situation seems to indicate that I will be okay with my current setup for the pump, but will have to get a slightly longer belt. The current one is 50.5 inches long, and has to be about an inch or so longer to accomodate the slightly raised location of the power steering pump. That had to go up just a tad in order for the hoses taking power steering fluid from the pump to the steering rack to clear the steering shaft. Unfortunately, the belt replacements come in 51 and 52 inches, not 51.5 which is what would have been easiest. I tried the 52, but it was just too long, so I returned it for a 51. That was just barely long enough, but with some serious pulling using a ratcheting tie down strap, I was able to get it to fit perfectly. There is about 3/8 inch clearance now from the steering shaft to the power steering pump hoses.


After that came the throttle cable and gas pedal. This was pretty straight forward. I got the holes drilled for mounting the pedal and for passing the throttle cable through the firewall. It goes through a stainless steel housing up to the carburetor so that when you press down on the gas pedal the cable opens up the carb a little so more air and fuel pass into the engine. I ended up drilling an extra hole into the driver's side footbox so that I could put in a clamp to hold the cable housing in place. It was very close to the steering U-joints, so I thought this would keep them from getting caught or rubbing on each other. It may look a little funny, but it is undoubtedly safer. Here are 3 pics showing the gas pedal, the housing looping around as it comes out through the firewall, and the routing up to the carburetor.

Steering

I got about 4 hours in this week on the car. I started out messing around with the gas pedal. It turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected at first. Actually, I had to end up taking the whole thing apart from what came in the package shown in last week's post in order to re-orient the pedal part (looks like a spoon) to the other side of the pivot, and to create the angle for the top part of the pedal which will connect the wire that opens up the carburetor when you depress the pedal. I decided to wait on continuing with that part until I got the steering shaft stuff fixed afterall.

So I decided to whip out my cheap little dremel tool and try to whittle out the inner bore of the steering shaft bearing by a couple of thousandths of an inch. That actually ended up working quite well. So on to actually assembling the steering shafts.

I had a hard time getting everything to come together the way the manual outlined. Maybe if I had another set of hands, I could have done it. Instead I connected everything and raised it all into place. That worked, but I found it to be binding. First, it was that the shaft coming up to the wheel was rubbing on the dashboard frame. A little dremel grinding fixed that. Then I put it all together again and it was still binding. After a half an hour or so, I figured out that the mid-shaft was not put together properly. I had inserted the shaft too far into the joint so that when it turned, it would hit on the other shaft. I fixed that, but there still is binding. Not as bad, but I haven't figured out the cause yet. Anyway, here are some pictures showing the work so far...

Here you can see the U-joints where the steering shaft goes through the firewall.


Here you can see the steering components in the footbox.


Here you can see the steering shaft coming up through what will eventually be the dash and the hub for the steering wheel.


I will have to find the source of the binding before I can proceed with anything else.

No Work

I still did no car work, feeling a little discouraged about the bearing/steering shaft difficulties. What I think I may do is proceed onto the next step to rebuild my confidence a bit. That step is installing the gas pedal and throttle cable. Here is a picture of those parts.

No Car work

Sorry, I did not get to work on the car this week. It ended up taking longer to get both my VW and my garage door fixed, and then I was just way behind on routine life stuff. Here are some of the promised pics anyway...

Here is the broken spring...


Here is the replacement bearing...


Here is the bearing in place in the firewall...

Little accomplished

I only worked on the car once this week, really. I did manage to get the U-joint that connects to the steering rack connected. I got the shafts going through the firewall okay, though I did have to take apart the U-joints that were previously connected to the other shafts, even though I had used LOC-TITE on them. I got the original bearing installed in the firewall, but the new bearing did not quite fit with the shaft that has the steering wheel bolted to it. I tried force. I tried oil. I tried freezing the shaft so it would shrink a tiny bit, but that still was not quite enough. It is so close, though. I think I will try freezing it again and carefully heating the bearing so it will expand the hole that the shaft fits through.

Right now, I cannot even work on the car if I wanted to because my garage door finally broke good and proper. The huge spring that helps lift the door snapped. Thank goodness it was safety-wired or the Cobra body would have been damaged. I will get that fixed very soon. I took a couple of pictures, but will wait on posting them until next week when hopefully the steering system will be completed.

No Labor for Labor Day week

I did not get to work on the car this week. I did manage to get the missing part ordered from Fastenal, and I picked it up on Friday. I've fallen a little bit behind other things in life, like renewing my driver's license that expired in May, which I only found out about when I got stopped for speeding in Winfield, MO. Doh!