March 11, 2006 - Part 2 of Tackling the Rear Suspension (1)
During the week Dad drove over to the local NAPA and picked up the
right bolts for the rear control arms. When we got to
the garage we were ready to complete the rear suspension and we also
had to get the rest of the pilot bearing out because during the week
we realized we left half of the bearing in the crank.
The first thing we did was make sure the bolt fit through the
bushing in the rear control arm. Thankfully it did. I grabbed
the H&R race spring and the new spring isolators and put them in
place. Then I put a jack under the control arm and tried to
get the hole in the control arm to line up with the hole in the
bracket on the axle tube. It didn't. When I did this on
other Cobras it took a little bit of jockeying with the jack to get
the holes lined up, but this one just wasn't going well.
Here's a picture of how far off the holes were:
As you can see the holes are off by quite a bit. After a while
of messing with it we figured out why. The driveshaft, along
with the upper control arms, keeps the axle housing and tubes in the
right place when the control arm is disconnected. However, the
transmission was still out so the driveshaft was disconnected and
the axle housing rotated a bit because it didn't have anything
supporting it. We put a jack under the front of the axle
housing and jacked it up a bit which rotated the axle housing
counter-clockwise looking from the passenger side. This gave
us the angle we needed and we were able to slide the bolt through
both holes. It took some force from a big screw driver to get
the holes aligned perfectly so the bolt would go all the way through
but we got the job done and were able to tighten up the rear control
arm. Unfortunately we didn't have the brake pad bracket yet so
we had to leave the passenger side brakes hanging for another week.
We needed a change of scenery so we slid under the front of the car
and tried to get the rest of the pilot bearing out. Here's how
we did it:
We used the bearing removal tool again and this time we didn't
have any trouble getting the fingers through the center of the
bearing. The second half of the bearing came out without
trouble. Again, I don't understand why people say this method
doesn't work. I can't imagine doing it any other way.
Here are a couple of close-ups of the crank with the pilot bearing removed.
Putting the new pilot bearing in was just as easy. We
greased up the outer ring a little bit, and went for the hammer and
a block of wood. We lined the bearing up (it's an interference
fit so it didn't just slide in), put the block of wood squarely over
the bearing and hit it lightly with the hammer. It took a few
whacks, and we checked the progress repeatedly, but the new Ford
replacement pilot bearing slid into place.
