Refinished Parts

November 18, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

Not a paint booth but good enough for this job!

It’s been a while since the last post.  Since the most recent update I have been slowly completing the refinishing of  all the various bits and pieces.  I’ve done alot of it myself but in the end I had Phil at Auto Coupe look after the important mechanical parts.  In particular he did the following:

  • Split calipers, blasted, replated, assembles, baked and fitted rebuild kit.  One piston was replaced but the others were OK.  These will work like brand new.
  • Blasted front hubs and coated with clear.  New wheel bearings packed and greased. New rotors to finish off.
  • Blasted trailing arms and coated with clear.  New wheel bearings, new handbrakes shoes.  Hubs also blasted and new bushes fitted where the trailing arm attached to the torsion bar tube.  Again, as good as new.
  • Spring plates blasted and replated.  Old bushes removed and new urethane ones fitted.  I had asked about squeaking for this style of bush but Phil assures me that use of the correct grease and they’ll be no issues.  There was a bit of surface corrosion that you can’t completely remove but the performance is not affected.  To me they’re still an 8.5 out of 10.
  • Camber plates cleaned and painted.  Not replated because of the attached rubber bush.
  • Front control arms blasted and repainted.  New bushes (urethane) fitted.  Phil also fitted the ball joints to make my life a bit easier on the assembly.
  • Blasted, cleaned and replated bolts, clips and various other hardware items.  Phil then bagged and labelled which I assure you is much appreciated!

Still to come from Phil are the powdercoated sway bars, stone tray, crash bar and tow plate.  He is also supplying urethane sway bar bushes all round.

All the other parts are close to done.  I have stripped and repainted the struts.  My first real project with 2K paint and the results are pretty good – certainly good enough for the struts and rear shocks.

Other parts such as the washer bottle, fuel overflow bottle, fuel filler pipe, rear fender brackets have been done.  No pics but they’ll be shown when I start putting the car back together.

At the moment I am refinishing the oil tank (in POR15) and at the same time will replace some of the oil lines – the old ones are looking every bit of their 27 years!  I need new ones when the SSI’s go on so I am doing it now while everything is apart.  Yet another ‘while you’re there’ project.

Enough words for now. The pics do the talking anyway.

  1. Andy Kingston
    November 19, 2010 at 12:03 pm

    GEE You have been very busy doing lots of “Polishing”

  2. Tom
    February 24, 2012 at 11:39 am

    Gday

    I’m an aussie with a 78SC. Love your car, I would have preferred silver, but got a red one.

    Anyway, I’m going through the suspension overhaul, I’m trying to nut out which bushings to run. I’ve owned plenty of cars running Nolathane or similar PU bushings and never had a squeaking problem; read too many american forums and you start thinking the sky will fall if you run PU.

    How have you found them after a couple of years? And finally where did you get your bushings from? Brand? Nolathane and Superpro don’t seem to make them for SC’s anymore.

    Look forward to reading more.
    Tom.

    • February 29, 2012 at 9:58 am

      Hi Tom,

      Thanks for your comments. Apparently red cars go faster anyway.

      With regards to the bushings I went through the same questions you have. To be honest my car is not yet running so I can’t comment from personal experience just yet. The reason I went PU was that my mechanic swears by the ones he uses, and he’s been fitting them for a long time without issue. He did say that that some are noisy but the ones he has made are fine as long as you use their grease which comes with them.

      I got them from Phil Hearn (Auto Coupe at Eltham).

      Perhaps the ultimate is to go polybronze but they are more expensive and require regular greasing.

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