Beam Me Up!

Part of today was spent working on the new axle beam.

For Mike’s purposes the old steering box and steering arms and torsion bars had been left in place. I didn’t need or want them, so I set about making them go away.

The tower nuts had cotter pins in them to stop them from turning during heavy road vibration. Of course, the ends of the cotter pins had been eaten away to the point they very difficult to get to and had to be pushed out with a nail. Then you have to break loose the old rusted nut and spin those off. It is a good example of how little task eat up your time.

Once all of that is cleared, we pulled off the trailing arms and removed the spring leaves from the lower tube so I could replace them with a sway bar.

None of this is unusual, but it takes time to do.

Anyway at the end of the day the beam is clear and all of the old hardware has been removed.

The next step is to remove the old beam from the racecar and then start swapping out parts. The long-range goal is to have a beam with an adjustable spring package in the top tube and an anti-sway bar in the bottom tube.

* * *
Tomorrow Hugh and Rusty are going over to the track to play corner worker for the annual Ferrari club track outing. They are expecting a nice turnout of cars and it should be fun.

I’d like to go but since there is a race next weekend I am staying home to work on the car.