Time Lapse

It appears two months have passed since my last post, a period during which I’ve been to the garage only twice. I meant to post an update after the first visit, but it slipped my mind and I have absolutely no idea what I meant to write on. Something about disc brakes, wheel spindles, ball joints, and completing front-end suspension removal, but let’s not dwell on the past. After a ski vacation, an SAT, the start of lacrosse season, and Model UN preparation, I finally returned to TLG last Sunday to begin rear suspension work. In an attempt to accomplish as much progress as possible, I completely disregarded the heap of parts that need to be inventoried and neglected to use the camera at all. Please excuse the lack of pictures, I’ll include some in the following post.

I began by removing the rear wheels, and then started on the left drum brake (raise the car onto jacks for this). There are a number of springs and cables that work to connect the wheel cylinder and the brake shoes. These must be removed before the shoes can come off. My sources tell me there is a tool for this, but vice grips will do fine if you can manage not to bend the springs. The shoes can then be pulled right off, and the wheel cylinder is removed by undoing four bolts. The most difficult part of dissembling the brakes is removing the parking brake cable from the backplate. There is a metal casing with three tabs that stick out and keep the cable in place like a wall anchor bolt. These tabs must be pushed in and wiggled through the slot to get it out, but there isn’t much clearance. A pair of pliers and some help from Dad did the job. I’ll take pictures to demonstrate this when I work on the right side this weekend.

As I had already detached the brake lines in the rear, the only parts still attached to the differential were the leaf springs. These are connected with U-bolts and a mounting plate on each side, and are easily detached from the rear-end.

Sometime this weekend I’ll go back to remove the differential, and hopefully start on the steering components.