by Dan Adams
On May 12th (Mothers Day!) a restart of the membership workshop series commenced with disassembly of the Tupper Club Project Car's rear end segment. We had a delayed start this day to allow members to participate in more important matters….Mothers Day!! For breakfast in bed and brunches associated with the celebration we started in the early afternoon.
The workshop portion of the club car project had a number of members attending the session at the clubhouse. Members able to attend included; Chris Brancaccio, Paul Chudek, Barry Osborne, Gord Rouse and son James, Glenn Smith, and Murray Walkemeyer (Project Manager).
The project began with removing all service and emergency rods connecting to the brakes. A floor jack was positioned under the rear differential before disconnecting the u-bolts mounting the rear spring to the frame.
Next up was pulling the rear axle drums. At this stage there were a number of variations of brake drum pullers in discussion with variations and types of different pullers that can do the job. And a variety of them there were, some good and some not so good.
Next step was removal of the rear spring from the axle housing perches. A couple variations of spring spreaders were reviewed by the group lead by Murray's technical knowledge of the tools and types. After selecting a spreader, and using it to spread the spring allowing the shackles to be removed and the spring removed from the housings in one piece.
Onto the rear brake backing plates where two groups formed, each successfully removing the rear brake backing plates from the housing. A review and discussion involving cats drums, woven brake linings, steel drum thickness and tolerances was engaged to all member’s benefit. Axle hubs and roller bearings were checked for bearing wear and score.
The rear end assemble was positioned using a floor jack to allow the axle assemble including drive shaft to be maneuvered about. The axle housings and exposed drive shaft were then moved by manual grunt and helpful hands onto a handy home-made holder (created by Murray) that had been previously attached to the engine stand. Manual lift over, the home-made mount on the engine stand allowed the entire tri-assemble to be rotated using the engine stand (without any backs going out!). This provided a platform for easy removal of the axle housings from the banjo differential housing. Next up was removing the torque tube housing the drive shaft. The needle bearing (near speedo gear) was removed from the torque tube and the tube unbolted from the differential including the security lock wire.
The drive shaft pinion nuts and lock rings were removed and inspected. The drive shaft c/w pinion nuts was removed from the differential housing and interlocking differential ring gear using a puller specific to that operation, not allowing pull bolts to have direct contact, potentially damaging or scarring the pinion flange portion of the differential housing. Pinion gear and drive shaft were inspected resulting in some discussion as to whether the drive shaft was an OEM or after market due to the diameter.
Next up was removing the crown gear and pulling out the spider gear assembly, thus allowing axle removal.
After dis-assembly, all items were inspected for wear and gathered for required cleaning to be done at a later date. Since rear end assemblies are not an aspect that owners do daily, there is always something to learn or “remember” when participating in a rear end disassembly workshop including techniques used by various members to accomplish similar goals.
Parts were organized into categories, clubhouse/shop was cleaned, and we even located an original NOS axle that Paul recalled we had in the loft storage. Onto the next stage……..clean, re-assemble, including any new part installs and setting that darn back lash!
An enjoyable day was had by all with some member fellowship!
Photos by Barry Osborne
