Found Object

[my8thholden]

Rob.straight forward , inexpensive ,effective ,way to go !!!well done Vern ..

[ardiesse]

Another day's work, and this is all I have to show for it.



Guide wire inside the transverse roof member, guide wire inside the RH A-pillar.  Body wiring harness removed, and just like before, I'll have to replace the fried dome lamp wire.  The main wiring harness made cracking sounds as I fed it back into the cabin - hopefully "just" the harness tape, rather than the PVC insulation cracking.

A temporary cease-fire in the Threaded Fasteners Wars: the front door hinge screws loosened without much effort.

Front seat's out.  Doors are off.

Rob

[camxsmith]

Mate any work on the car is time well spent and worth doing ..  Keep up the great work 

[ardiesse]

Rear Axle Removal:

Using an ACME skyhook, suspend rear of car.  With two hydraulic jacks, raise rear axle enough to enable removal of rear wheels and admit a furniture dolly.



Lower the rear of car and the rear axle bit by bit to sit the rear axle on the furniture dolly.  Drive out the rear spring front eye bolts.



Roll the rear axle assembly out from the rear.



Remove U-bolt nuts, shock absorber plates, U-bolts and rear springs.  Label rear springs for side and lay over the top of the rear axle.  Wheel the rear axle out of the way.  Bolt up the rotisserie (rear section).

[ardiesse]

Oops.  Too quick on the trigger finger.

Rotisserie attached at the rear.



Rob

[ardiesse]

Now I can turn my attention to the front.

Disconnect the front brake hoses, unbolt the idler arm support, remove Pitman arm from steering box.  Undo the front crossmember bolts.  Jack the car up by the front subframe.  Put a couple of jack stands under the (very dodgy) no. 1 body crossmember.



Knock the "Infiniti-Rate" front springs out with a b.f.h.  Remove the hydraulic jack.  Wheel the front suspension out complete.  Replace the front crossmember bolts and spacer tubes in their original locations.



Fiddly work on the inside.  I hadn't removed the top steering column cover on the firewall.  I only noticed that when I tried to remove the column.  Minor delay, then - steering column removed.

Pedals next.  Brake pipe distribution block and brake master cylinder next, being slow and careful so as not to butcher the brake pipe nuts.  You have to remove the master cylinder pushrods to get the pedal set out.  But the firewall insulation has to come out more or less at the same time as the pedal set.  Swing the pedal set downwards at the front, then depress the clutch pedal all the way to get the overcentre spring out of the way of the firewall insulation.  And then there's just enough room for the pedal set to clear the dash brace.



Rob

[ekute]

Great write up Rob, too much work for me!


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[ardiesse]

Which just leaves the front subframe.  The four bolts underneath came out with "encouragement" from a hammer and drift.  Getting a spanner onto the bolt head and turning the bolts during removal aids the process.  The self-tappers on the subframe skirts let go, except for one, which took persuasion with the MAP gas torch.  Then the six upper bolts, and then some deft levering with the Auld Persuader to break the subframe free top and bottom.



Note toolbox acting as ballast.

I "walked" the subframe away on its legs, and then brought the front section of the rotisserie near.  This was another of those things where it looked OK from a distance, but the closer I got, the more it didn't want to go.  By dumb luck, the attaching brackets were at nearly the same height as the rotisserie's axis, which meant that I couldn't bolt the rotisserie up directly.

Then in mating the two halves of the rotisserie (tie members underneath) things appeared badly out of whack at the rear.  The vertical member had taken on a distinct inwards lean.  The "leg" of the T with the third castor is only attached with two bolts.  When you put the load of a body shell on the rotisserie, all the bending moment is taken by these two poor bolts.  I co-opted a hydraulic jack to sit on the "T" member and jacked up the pipe (between the spring hangers) to get the load off these bolts.  Then I found that if I put one of the pins in the main vertical member and jacked up the hydraulic ram, the sagging went away.  So this design of rotisserie requires load to be taken by the hydraulic ram always, otherwise it sags.  Major design flaw . . .

It was a similar deal at the front.  I jacked up the hydraulic ram, which allowed me to attach to the mounting brackets, then put the stay pin in at a convenient hole, and then jacked the ram up more to stop the sag.



As you can tell, it was now dark; and I was running out of energy and patience.  But the whole show held together well enough to wheel the shell back into the carport and take the load off the rotisserie with jack stands.

I need to re-design the front attaching brackets so the pick-up point is about a foot lower than at present.  Then I'll be able to get the roll axes front and rear to the same height.  And to stop the sag I need to put in a pair of stay members between the vertical and the leg of the "T" (front and rear), dimensioned to clear both the hydraulic ram and the rotating part of the framework.

Which will mean unbolting the rotisserie from the body.  After all the time it took to bolt it up.

Rob

[Errol62]

Outstanding progress. Here is a photo to contemplate.
On my EK van I have height adjustable axis. The centre is set 25mm below bottom bonnet hinge bolt hole, bearing in mind the van has a raised roof so bit higher centre of gravity.
Just welded nuts to square tube and bolts for clamping, but you’ve seen my set up.


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[Errol62]

I can reverse the mounts and get the axis lower if required.


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[ardiesse]

Clay,

Yours is a simpler rotisserie setup, and better because it's simpler.  I'm losing my EK-memory, so tell me - where the bonnet hinges attach to the firewall, do the bolts point fore and aft?  That'd make for a simpler mounting bracket.

On the subject, I just took a look at the Canberra FX-FJ club magazine for July.  Featured was an FJ van under restoration on a rotisserie.  The rotisserie was of the same general design as mine, and a piece of 25x25 square tube had been welded between the upright and the leg of the "T" to brace it.

Rob

[Errol62]

Aye-aye skipper, fore and aft. I actually welded two lengths of two inch galv water pipe either side, between the front and rear stands, as well as diagonal bracing.


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[fcwrangler]

I’m with Clay, the simple designs work best. I used two supercheap engine stands mounted with cut down bonnet hinges and adapted fear bar irons and 50x50 tie beams for support. I have seen the type of  rotisserie you have and the guys using them weren’t impressed.

[ardiesse]

How To Make a Dugout Canoe, Step 1: First select a stout tree.

The parallels between this folk-wisdom parable and restoring Holdens are obvious.

I've bought a Holden.  It needs a complete strip-down and rebuild.  It would be convenient if I could turn the body shell over to perform structural repairs.  I'll get a rotisserie.  Rotisserie needs extra bracing for rigidity.  Design the braces, so that the rotating parts don't foul on the stationary parts, and so that the braces clear the hydraulic ram.  Make the braces and mounting brackets.  Discover that the members are 50x70, but are oriented differently.  Dig up some 25x10 steel flat bar and cut to size in order to space 50 mm out to 70 mm.  Line the parts up, mark up locations, remove paint, fire up Mister MIG.



That's one done.  As an aside, every workplace needs a sheet-metal shop.

Rob

[Errol62]

Hard to believe they didn’t build any diagonal bracing in to such a fancy set up. I’d still like to see the two stands joined at the base, so they can’t move independently.

Starting point for shell centre of gravity for a sedan is the level of the fuel filler hole. Seems low but then the bottom of the shell is where all the boxing is, using 18# sheet a lot of it.

Will be an absolute joy to work on once you get it sorted.


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[ardiesse]

Yeah.  It's a curious mix of the dodgy and the precision-engineered.  The inner pipe for the horizontal axis has machining marks where it's been turned to size, and the pipe it turns in has been sleeved with nylon (perhaps).  But yet the engineer who designed the whole show decided not to provide the bracing which I've just put in.  And the moving vertical member runs on rollers; but the rotating T part has 4 mm clearance in the cross-head.  (Which I'm going to take up with greased pieces of 2 mm sheet.)

Here is the second rotisserie braced.  Minor oops:  I only made up four brackets instead of eight, so I went to Bunnings and got a couple of 340 x 40 x 3.5 "mending plates" (zinc-plated, even), drilled them and cut them to size.



The rotisserie's not complete, because I need to disassemble it to get it past the body shell in the carport, where I can reassemble it.

After reassembly, I am happy to report that it lifts the rear of the shell easily, with no sagging.  Yay!

Rob

[Errol62]

👍👍


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[ardiesse]

Today's pleasant task: cleaning the subframe.



Once all the grease and dirt is removed, I get a much better idea of what lies beneath.  The right-hand outer leg, for example:



This is your classic farm-grade repair.  The RH inner leg looks almost sound - maybe one or two pinholes.

The LH inner leg:



This repair even has a few lengths of MIG wire sticking out near the engine mount bracket.

And the LH outer leg:



Even though it's got gaping holes, I feel I can work with this one more easily - it hasn't had a previous repair.

Now the tie member and LH "dumb iron":



This is about what you'd expect, really.  And note bonus holes in the front of the skirt.

This is where the three right hand legs come together near the steering box:



And similarly, on the passenger's side:



There's a couple of months of weekends ahead of me, just on the front subframe.  I started to take the engine mount bracket off on the driver's side, and as I was undoing the second bolt, the subframe made creaking sounds, and a gap opened up between the inner leg and engine mount bracket.  The repair to the RH outer leg has distorted it, so the engine mount bracket bolts went back in.  I was hoping to make a jig for the subframe legs; but the best jig will be the body, even if the no.1 body crossmember is rotten.

The question of whether the inner and outer leg bolt holes are collinear still remains.  It's probably best to determine that from the body, instead.

Rob

[Errol62]

Yes and yes. Bull dust and moisture have rotted many an inner subframe skirt. It wasn’t just farmers either. Farmers used oxy mostly. My mates HT wagon had 1/2” plating arc stitched around the rusted near side lower legs. This in 1980 when the car was ten years old!!


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[ardiesse]

If, then, I'm going to use the body as the alignment jig for the subframe legs, I need to be able to attach and remove the subframe, preferably without removing the rotisserie at the front.  This rather constrains which attachment points I use, and the bonnet hinge bolt holes became the preferred choice.

Down to Bunnings for some 40x40x3 galvanised right-angle section.  Cut, bend, mark up, drill, file holes, bolt to body; measure, cut, mark up, cut, bend, drill, saw, relieve, weld; line up, mark, grind off zinc, line up again, tack weld, remove from body, go nuts with the welder, reinstall on body.



(Crappy focus, unfortunately)  It's not complete yet.  I have yet to put the tabs in to bolt it up to the rotisserie's rotating T-piece.  The rotisserie will be as close as I can get it to the firewall, so that (fingers crossed) I can tip the shell upside down and put the subframe on around the rotisserie.  And maybe 135 degrees will work too.

Rob