Jack Spurs and Tow Hook

More miscellaneous things got finished on Friday, in anticipation of getting the majority of the underside of the car ready for primer and undercoating. I finished up welding on the jack spurs and the tow hook, and I finished welding the bottom overlap seam of the floor pan halves.

I welded the jack spurs in place, which was more or less a straightforward operation. The only complicating factor was that the rocker panels aren't currently on the car, and I had to insure that the spurs were low enough that the rocker wouldn't block the jacking point once they were installed. I was able to temporarily hold the rocker up to its final location once I had put a single tack at the top of the jack spurs and insure that they were set at the proper height.

I located the distance from the rear of the longitudinal for the jack spurs with the aid of the 356 factory shop manual. It lists the distance from the most rearward torsion bar cover bolt centerline to the centerline of the jack spur as 335mm. I ended up using this figure after measuring 3 other 356s, each which had been worked on in the past, and coming up with different measurements for the jack spurs on all of them! I didn't have an original car to reference, so I had to trust the blueprint, which should of course be correct.

The other complicating factor on the right side jack spur was doing the finish lap weld on its right (rearmost) side. This is where I dented in the right outer longitudinal while I was installing it, being overzealous pounding it into position. I ended up having to slightly re-radius the jack spur to fit the longitudinal better. If this were to be a real concours car, I would have definitely had to pull out the longitudinal with a stud welder or something, and make it all perfect. As it is, its my car and I'm happy with the result. All this is going to look a lot smoother anyway after primer and undercoat are applied, and this is so low down that no one will likely ever see it. Besides, on most all the "original" cars I've seen, gas station attendants who put the car on the lift years past for a grease job or whatever usually dented in the jack spur, longitudinal, and even the whole floor pan area looking for a good lifting point, so I'm already looking better than those cars. Moving on to other things I almost forgot but couldn't afford to before the next few steps: the tow hook, which attaches to the outside of the floor of the battery box. This V-shaped steel bar was original riveted in place with stout rivets. Having no real way of properly peening these rivets over, I drilled the proper holes for them through the battery box floor, enlarged the holes in the tow hook (as it came from Restoration Design the holes were too small for the rivets from Stoddards), and then welded the rivets in place on the inside of the battery box. I supported the rivets from below with a bottle jack and a block of wood to make sure the fit was tight. Then I ground down the rivets inside the box to give them somewhat the appearance of having been flattened over with a hammer. Like the underside, the inside of the battery box is undercoated and painted, so it will smooth out the imperfections and make little things like this less noticeable in the end. It looks just fine right now to my eye, anyway. The final project for the day was to continue work on the front suspension. Here is a picture of the front steering spindles, back from Tim Berardelli at Berardelli Racing, where he did a very professional job of rebuilding them. They look first class. So I looked at those happily for a little while and decided it was time to do the trailing arms that they mount up to. I only had time to do the left side, hopefully I'll get the right side on Monday.

I removed the top left trailing arm; I already had the lower arm off from earlier in the week when I got the shock bushing removed with a torch. I cleaned both arms up in the Safety Kleen tank. Then I taped off the machined surfaces and bead blasted them to remove surface rust and any other junk; most of the original black paint was gone anyway.

After doing that, I thought for a few minutes about what to paint them with. It seems like most of the 356 suspension gear was painted somewhere between semi-gloss and gloss black. I've seen both used in restorations. I've been mostly using epoxy rattle-can paint for these things up till now, which is gloss. However, I'm quite sure that after spending a bit of time installed underneath the car, the shiny gloss will fade to matte or semi-gloss rather quickly, so I think it is a good choice. Rustoleum epoxy enamel was applied to the trailing arms, and I left them to dry over the weekend.

This coming week will be busy, I'm out of town on Tuesday, part of Wednesday, and Friday, so I really only have Monday and Thursday to work hard. The following week I am also busy on Friday. After that, classes are starting, and time will be very limited, I have yet to really know how much time I can continue to spend working on the car this Fall and Winter. I'm still seriously aiming to try to get the car underside primed and undercoated this coming week, but I'm not going to hold my breath if it doesn't work out.

Posted by pbrown at July 31, 2004 10:49 PM