Newly named Yvette, the little red corvette

[Vetteheadracer]

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[CrispyCleen]

So I may have been quiet on the forum but I have been far from quiet on the car.

What a rollercoaster couple of weeks. We’ve had some fantastic rides, some real head scratchers, nail biting tension and some hair pulling frustration.

Where to start? The first couple of runs out have put such huge childlike grins on my face that it’s almost obscene. She is everything I thought and hoped she would be. Connected, exciting, fast, that sound, that rumble. Oh so good. However, then I tried to go around a corner. quite possibly the worst steering box slop I have ever experienced. A solid 30-40degreds of ‘
slop in either direction before getting any steering input. Utterly terrifying when I was in the slop zone and the wheels hook up into a set of HGV indented tram lines and the car decides to go in its own direction. Quite a few brown trouser moments before I was able to make adjustments in hte steering box. It’s still not perfect, but it’s manageable and safe. Especially when I consider that I am definitely going to upgrade to a power steering kit.

Now I’m starting to get a lot more confident and enjoying the thrill of that V8, and there’s a strong smell of raw petrol when under load. So that’s just the secondaries in the carb right? Just adjust the mixture on it right? Wrong, carb doesn’t have adjustment on the secondaries, only in the primary. Bugger. Head scratcher number 1 to muse over.

Fuel economy aside, she’s running nicely. So nicely that I take Yvette to her first ever show. Prescott Hill Climb club for the Rotary Club Classic event.
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She garnered a lot of attention and everyone was very keen to see her again next year with all the progress that is ‘possible’.
She even manages a swift trundle up the hill climb with all the other static display vehicles in the lunch time parade.

With confidence high, and a few commutes in to work to show her off, under my belt I joint the ‘2-door Club’ at work for a drive around the Forest of Dean. At our halfway point around Ross-on-Wye the car behind asks innocently “was the ride a bit rough in that last bit?” To which I respond with “wasn’t it just the road?” . Needless to say, a 40min drive back home was spent biting nails and pulling out hair as both rear tyres gave up their shape. Looks like they spent a prolonged period in one position and deformed under loading going around the country roads.

Once home I double checked that bearings and disks were ok and promptly spend the remaining 2 weeks (until pay day) hunting the internet for the best deal on tyres. The fronts were a no brainer; 215x70. Went with some Nangkangs after guidence from a tyre fitter friend suggested them. The rears however are a different story. With 8” wheels, trying to track down a pair of replacement 275x60’s has proven to be too much (both time and money). So I have settled for a pair of 235x60’s and one more for the spare (also a 8” wheel). All in all, using Mobile mech has saved me nearly £400. Can’t be bad.

And now for the most frustrating part. Hand over Yvette to the guys in the garage to put her new boots on and a few nice conversations later, I pick her up. They mentioned that the passenger side rear exhaust is hanging a little low so the next day (today) I pop the rear wheels off the get access to the extra exhaust hangers I put in. On the drivers side however, one of the nuts is really sticky to come off. So much so that I have to get the extension bar on it to get it..........
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Bugger.

And that’s were I am. Thanks F1 Autocentres. I await their response to my complaint of them cross threading the wheel nut. Either way, it’s very frustrating to have another problem that doesn’t have anything to do with the age of the car or with me. If I break my own car, fair enough. But when someone else breaks your pride and joy, that’s some thing else entirely.

In the mean time, has anyone had to replace wheel studs on the rear spindle? Do you have to extract the spindle to do it?

 

[johng]

As I've got my trailing arms apart at the moment, I had a quick measure up. My studs are 45mm long and the gap behind them is only 40mm. So you should be able to knock the broken stud out but I doubt you will be able to get a new one in, unless your setup is different to my 1978. Looks like quite a big job to fix a small issue!
John

 

[stealthyflatfish]

So I may have been quiet on the forum but I have been far from quiet on the car.

What a rollercoaster couple of weeks. We’ve had some fantastic rides, some real head scratchers, nail biting tension and some hair pulling frustration.

Where to start? The first couple of runs out have put such huge childlike grins on my face that it’s almost obscene. She is everything I thought and hoped she would be. Connected, exciting, fast, that sound, that rumble. Oh so good. However, then I tried to go around a corner. quite possibly the worst steering box slop I have ever experienced. A solid 30-40degreds of ‘
slop in either direction before getting any steering input. Utterly terrifying when I was in the slop zone and the wheels hook up into a set of HGV indented tram lines and the car decides to go in its own direction. Quite a few brown trouser moments before I was able to make adjustments in hte steering box. It’s still not perfect, but it’s manageable and safe. Especially when I consider that I am definitely going to upgrade to a power steering kit.

Now I’m starting to get a lot more confident and enjoying the thrill of that V8, and there’s a strong smell of raw petrol when under load. So that’s just the secondaries in the carb right? Just adjust the mixture on it right? Wrong, carb doesn’t have adjustment on the secondaries, only in the primary. Bugger. Head scratcher number 1 to muse over.

Fuel economy aside, she’s running nicely. So nicely that I take Yvette to her first ever show. Prescott Hill Climb club for the Rotary Club Classic event.
View media item 337
View media item 338
She garnered a lot of attention and everyone was very keen to see her again next year with all the progress that is ‘possible’.
She even manages a swift trundle up the hill climb with all the other static display vehicles in the lunch time parade.

With confidence high, and a few commutes in to work to show her off, under my belt I joint the ‘2-door Club’ at work for a drive around the Forest of Dean. At our halfway point around Ross-on-Wye the car behind asks innocently “was the ride a bit rough in that last bit?” To which I respond with “wasn’t it just the road?” . Needless to say, a 40min drive back home was spent biting nails and pulling out hair as both rear tyres gave up their shape. Looks like they spent a prolonged period in one position and deformed under loading going around the country roads.

Once home I double checked that bearings and disks were ok and promptly spend the remaining 2 weeks (until pay day) hunting the internet for the best deal on tyres. The fronts were a no brainer; 215x70. Went with some Nangkangs after guidence from a tyre fitter friend suggested them. The rears however are a different story. With 8” wheels, trying to track down a pair of replacement 275x60’s has proven to be too much (both time and money). So I have settled for a pair of 235x60’s and one more for the spare (also a 8” wheel). All in all, using Mobile mech has saved me nearly £400. Can’t be bad.

And now for the most frustrating part. Hand over Yvette to the guys in the garage to put her new boots on and a few nice conversations later, I pick her up. They mentioned that the passenger side rear exhaust is hanging a little low so the next day (today) I pop the rear wheels off the get access to the extra exhaust hangers I put in. On the drivers side however, one of the nuts is really sticky to come off. So much so that I have to get the extension bar on it to get it..........
View media item 339
View media item 341
View media item 342
Bugger.

And that’s were I am. Thanks F1 Autocentres. I await their response to my complaint of them cross threading the wheel nut. Either way, it’s very frustrating to have another problem that doesn’t have anything to do with the age of the car or with me. If I break my own car, fair enough. But when someone else breaks your pride and joy, that’s some thing else entirely.

In the mean time, has anyone had to replace wheel studs on the rear spindle? Do you have to extract the spindle to do it?

That's why i never take my cars into a garage for tyres, I just take the wheels in and get them to change the tyres, then they can't ram the wheel nuts on with their numatic guns.

 

[CrispyCleen]

I seriously considered doing that, but I couldn’t use my other car as the wife was out with it. Seriously regretting it now.

John, any chance of a photo or 2 of the back side of the spindle? I need to know what I’m letting myself in for if I do it myself.

 

[johng]

So here's a couple of photos. The first shows the trailing arm still assembled but with the disc taken off. I think you would have to remove the handbrake shoes as well to knock the broken stud out, but the issue is whether you could then get a new stud in without removing, or at least moving, the spindle. The second photo shows the spindle removed, it would now be easy to replace the stud, but in knocking the spindle out (or even just moving it 5 or 10mm to create enough space) you might well damage the inner bearing. Then you are going to need a setup tool, new bearings and shims to rebuild it!!!! Let me know if you need anything else.
John

 

[CrispyCleen]

With your help John and some others, I have (finally) managed to switch out the damaged stud. To say that it was a pig is a massive understatement. Just to get to the stud was a massive pain. I had to disconnect the anti-roll bar just to get to one of the brake calliper bolts (which I didn’t round off or snap ). Equally, the brake line immediately attached to the calliper was clearly replaced ‘recently’ with a generic part because all the bends had obvious plier marks. Either way it was always in the way or stopping me getting a full enough rotation with a spanner.

So now I have access to the stud, or at least the spindle and the instructions in my Haynes (build instructions are still in the post) on how to lift out the park brake shoes are bloody awful. In the end I settled with the brake adjuster and the retaining spring and that gave me enough space to work.

I tried every type of vice, grip, press, splitter and puller I could get my grubby little hands on. My best be was a ball joint splitter that my boss lent me. I got so frustrated I even ‘modified’ it to try to get it to work. I’ll buy him another one in the morning . However. the the little bugger was too tightly stuck in there.

In the end I drilled it out. Which sounds easier than it was. And it certainly carried a large amount of risk. Now, I have already got a lot of experience doing this as have previously I worked for a guy in Lincolnshire refurbishing pre-war car and tractor engines. However, a few friends exclaimed that they wouldn’t dare attempt anything like that. So I thought I would document the process and the tips and tricks I have picked up over the years.

So first, no matter what you have to start with, always tidy up the end. The end needs to be as smooth as possible but most importantly it needs to be square. Also, the amount you leave behind is dependent upon the surface you are extracting the thread from. If it’s a machined surface you will need to leave a small raise to the bolt, otherwise take it right back.

Centre punch the centre of the bolt. Don’t be tempted to skip this stage as no matter how good you are, the drill will always wander off.

Now let’s talk drill sizes. Drilling into metal always requires a pilot hole. The reason it’s called a pilot is that it guides the true drill size in. In this instance I didn’t know what drill size I need, as I’m not actually trying to completely drill out the the last remnants of the bolt. For this size of bolt I started at 2mm and went up in 1mm increments. A 2mm drill bit that will drill into a graded bolt are surprisingly hard to find. Certainly you won’t find one at your regular b&q. All my pilot drills are carbide drills and I have quite a few of them. Carbide can be brittle and the smaller sizes don’t like shocks or being bent, so make sure your drill is square the the surface you are drilling and remains so all through the process.

I was able to drill all the way though as I knew what was on the other side. But if you drilling out a cylinder bolt/stud, you may not know if there a water chamber or reservoir just past the end of that hole.
View media item 345Now it’s a case of increasing the drill size. However, what I won’t do from now on, is drill all the way through. This allows me to use a punch to push the stud out. This only works if can push the bolt out the other side. For blind holes it get a bit more complicated.
View media item 346View media item 348View media item 347With less material, the remaining stud will compress into the centre a release a lot easier.
View media item 349As you can see I had to go VERY close to the edge. This bugger really didn’t want to come out. For a threaded bolt, you would still follow the above, however when you get to this strange, you would essentially cut out the centre of the bolt and leave the thread inside the hole. You would then have to use a tap the clean up the thread and push out the old bolt. This is why centre punching is sooooooo important.

For the rest, I had to trim the new stud a small amount (as John correctly pointed out) as the new studs are just a smidge too long.
View media item 350View media item 351As you can see, I only trimmed a few mm off, but most importantly I did it cold (with a hacksaw) so that I didn’t mess up the material properties by putting too much heat into it with a grinder. Equally, I finished the cut end with a pipe deburrer and a thread file to ensure don’t cross thread the nut.
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Then I greased up the nut and the stud and pulled its through with an impact drill. Using a ratchet just made the stud spin around and not bite into the spindle plate.

Job done.

Now it’s prep time for the Classic. What can I do in this amount of time so that we don’t completely embarrass ourselves? Ideas on a postcard.

 

[Nick B]

Wow, what a pig of a job, I feel your pain! Thanks for taking the time to post so much detail and advice.

 

[Rich]

Great post. Very worthy of being repeated in Vette News?

 

[CrispyCleen]

Hmmm, photos probably aren’t good enough. And I don’t fancy going through all of that again just for some better pictures

 

[johng]

Glad to hear it all worked out. I've found the Haynes manual to be not particularly useful either. I'm going to be very careful not to shear off any studs from now on!

 

[CrispyCleen]

On an interesting and minor note, i went around and replaced all my wheel nuts with the new set (why order one, when you can order 20 ). As i was ‘un-torquing’ with my torque wrench and using my mini impact driver the rest of the way, each and every nut was torqued waaaaaay over the recommended 80ft.lb. So I reckon that they over torqued it and stretched the stud. There you go, lesson learned.

Also, i have had another development on the starting and carb adjustment. I’ll take some more photos and collect the links to the websites i used once i have actually made some progress.