Having now got the front uprights from Jeremy the first job was to take them to bits! So, I took the bearing caps off and hence the hubs and exposed this rather nice looking spidery thing. These uprights are interesting in that they’re essentially a set of parts. The bearing support shaft here is just held at the back of the upright by a big nut. The steering arm, as you can probably see, is also a separate part.
One of the reasons for taking the uprights apart was to change the wheel studs which really aren’t long enough for normal wheels. I really can’t imagine what sort of wheels they would be appropriate for. Before taking the studs out I tried the hubs against my existing wheels. For both of the sorts of wheels that I’ve got I only managed to get 10 turns of a wheel nut on before getting to the end of the travel. I know it’s not a cast-iron rule but the usual rule is that a wheel nut should go on by 1.5 stud diameters, which in this case of an M12x1.5 thread should mean 12 turns.
However, I had some longer studs, as in the photo and pressed out the old studs and inserted the new ones. One slight concern is that the design of the wheel hubs means that there isn’t really space to tie the backs of the studs together in the way I did on the Fury. I shall have to monitor that closely to check that the studs stay where they’re put.
With that done I put the uprights back together with my new brake discs and the Wilwood calipers. Everything seemed to fit nicely, although I haven’t put any pads in yet.
With that done it was back to the rear suspension. After all the faffing about with suspension bearings the last bit was to weld the spherical bearings into the rear lower wishbones. Essentially I did this by tacking one of the parts I made in position, and then assembly everything with some bits of cut-up feeler gauge clamped inside so as to make the correct spacing of 0.1mm in front of the circlip. 
Here’s a photo of what it looked like.
With everything tacked in place I could weld it properly. Mind you, this is one of the places where I could have done with a TIG set, and to be able to use it. The problem with MIG welding is that the heat input into the parts is huge leading to ample scope for distortion. Hence I took things very slowly, going off for several drinks as I didn’t want to end up with some useless lumps of steel blocking access to the wishbones. When everything was done, though, it seemed to work fine. Mind you, as I was starting to write this post I suddenly thought that I’d got the spherical bearings in the wrong way round, and that the braking loads would be taken by the circlips rather than the accelerative loads. However, after thinking it through 482 times I’ve decided I was wrong and they are in the correct way round. Phew…
I now need to make some spacers to go between the spherical bearing and the upright, on one side, and the retaining nut on the other. However, that should be fairly easy for a man with a lathe.
After that I spent ages looking at how the pedal box fitted in the chassis. I think I’m going to modify the pedals slightly so that they don’t stick quite so far back in the car. That’s no big deal though. What I do need, though, is something firm at the bottom to mount the pedal box on as otherwise it’d only be bolted to the aluminium floor panel which isn’t very clever. So, I welded in the plate shown here.
With that done I decided that any other chassis mods, and there will probably be a few, could easily be done with after the chassis had been painted. OK, I’ll end up having to repaint a few bits but that isn’t such a problem and it means I’ll be able to get on.
That meant I was going to have to tackle the horrible job of getting POR-15 all over me, the garage floor and the chassis. Still, it had to be done. Here’s the result of the first coat on the bottom of the chassis. After this I retired inside, somewhat fumigated, to rest for a while. With luck I can get on with the rest of this over the coming week.
Of course, there’s a race coming up, at Snetterton, as well and I’m going to have to do a bit of fettling to the Fury. I had been wondering if I could feasibly miss the last race of the season, at Mallory (!), in preparation for the upcoming Birkett. However, having looked at the championship points position I really need to do moderately well in both remaining races.