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| Goblin's Restoration - 1978 Spit6 | ||||||||||||||
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As
mentioned up front on Goblin's home page,
the p.o. is quite lucky to be alive. Only one bolt was left holding the
axle to the diff after delivering the car to my house. The rear of this
car quite literally gave out right in my driveway. While
backing into the driveway after short test drive up and down my street,
the last bolt finally did it's dirty work, by shearing off the last of the
diff stub axle retaining bolts, letting the stub axle pop out of the
diff.
Just think what would have happened at speed, when the axle popped out, and the wheel toed in about 10 degrees. This would have sent the p.o. off the road asap as the rear end came around. Man... it's great to know a lot of people out there that are into Spits/GT6's as well. I had a friend in the area who was parting out his spit after the engine ate a valve. Having already spent a small fortune on other parts from his car, I rang him back for a second batch of parts. Both rear axles on his car were recently professionally rebuilt, and had less than 400 miles on them. One actually had less than 50 miles! So those axles are now on Goblin. |
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If you look closely at the axle
flange on the left, you can see the elongated holes from the loose
bolts. Now the worst part of this... this badly assembled (or
possibly never properly installed) axle was replaced for the p.o. by a
reputable (yeah right!) shop in the Washington D.C. area.
Unfortunately this is not the first or only horror story I've seen or
heard coming out of this southwest D.C. shop. To boot... this upright
had one pivot hole for the main trunnion pivot bolt that was ovaled out
to about 3/4" Crap! they even cut off the end of the
brake line to thread it into the brake cyl directly, as the axle back
plate is NOT a MKIV or 1500. It's a MKIII and does not have the flange
or metal pipe for the line to attach to. So not only was it a
bastardized install.... it was a 'bad' and unsafe assembly to start
with. Again...part of my comments about the poor p.o.... simply
not knowing any better.
I had a spare 3.27 diff here from Big Red from his o/d tranny + 3.89 rear swap. So I pulled that 3.27 diff out from under the bench, and installed it here as this diff housing was damaged when the last bolt broke out the side of the case around the stub axle. Also the stub axle mount plate was badly distorted and not usable. So a complete swap was the simplest at this time. Highway mileage should be interesting. This is a 3.27 rear...WITH overdrive. :-) |
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These two shots are simply
here to show everyone how one of those rear leaf spring lift tools are
used to hold the spring up out of the way while installing removing
axles. My tool here is home made, but works exactly as the factory
manual version.
Since the car is up on jack stands...I simply stacked a bunch of 4"x6" wood blocks (that I usually use as safety drop limiters under the car when I'm under there) with my old scissors jack on top. A couple of big sockets and adapters are on the spinner as I use my air gun to spin up/dn the jack. In this second shot, you can see about two inches from the end, are two legs that straddle the spring. The outer (near the spring eye) is a longer 'U' where a bolt is stuffed through under the spring after the long bar is in place above the spring. Oh... the main bar? I honestly can't remember... but I'm pretty sure it's one of those monster tent stakes from a circus size tent. It's about 1.25" in diameter and about 36-45" long. |
©1987-2008
All material copyright© Teglerizer 1996-2008last edited 03/18/10
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