Another weekend project...last Saturday I jacked up the back end (and put it on jackstands, of course) and pulled out the transverse leaf spring with the purpose of rebuilding it with new PTFE machined buttons I bought on eBay because of the case of Spitfire Sag my car has. All the rest of the suspension is stock and I don't want to have to put in adjustable shocks and all that, at least not right now (2 kids in college). I'm hoping the buttons will lift the back end enough to help the inordinant amount of negative camber on the rear wheels. We'll see.

First job was dismantling the spring leaves and cleaning them. It took at least an hour of scraping and wire brushing to get the grease, road dirt, and undercoating off. The only original buttons that were left were reduced just to little domes of rubber which were worn down entirely until the leaves were metal to metal at all contact points.

After scraping and brushing (with spray on degreaser) I took the pieces into my apartment and washed them in the bathtub using Goop. My family is temporarily in another state so this isn't my wife's bathtub so I didn't feel bad about making it more than a little dark. It all came off with some Comet, though, so no harm done.

When they were dry, I steel-wooled them to get them ready for painting with some black engine paint I happen to have. Since I took off the generous rust protection they had from the grease and the road dirt, I have to replace it with something else, at least until they pickup more natural rust protection. Painted them, let them dry, and reassembled with the new PTFE buttons (held in place with a little RTV).

Apparently these have a front and a back which I had not entirely noted when I took the leaves apart. Forunately, I discovered this before I painted them and could still see the wear patterns. There's a tag saying Front held by one of the bolts that hold the leaves together so I knew at least which side was front on that one. Also, the Book says which side is front (or actually, Back) on the main leaf because it's ground back a little bit in the center. So, before I painted them, I took a small file and made a tiny, but big enough notch on the Back side of all the leaves, after observing the wear markings and restacking them. After painting, the notches were still there so I'm reasonably confident I got it right way round.

Reinstallation was postponed a couple of weeks (travel to the other state where the family is and other things) but finally I got to it. It wasn't terribly difficult to get the spring back in position on top of the diff by myself but had to wrestle the spring ends around the vertical links so I could get the pin to set in the diff.

I was concerned about getting the studs back in because just threading them back in place as "hole stuffers" while the spring was out was surprisingly difficult. They were very intolerant of the tiniest misalignment. One started and, as expected, needed a backing nut to turn the stud rather than just the nut. Eventually, they all started and gave me no real huge difficulty other than it's a little awkward reaching in that access panel from outside the car since I didn't remove the seats. If I did this again, I would probably remove the seats just so I could have straight-on access to that panel area and the top of the diff.

Once the spring was mounted back to the diff, I looked at the spring ends to see how well lined up they were. They were right in line with the vertical links but below the holes for the bolts. I reconnected the shocks to the bottom of each vertical link and then wrestled the driver's side spring end first. It found the hole reasonably quickly with a little help from a crowbar to pull up the spring end using the brake housing for leverage. Had to be very careful not to lever off part of the brake line.

The passenger side was not so reasonable. The spring end was almost 2 inches below the hole at the top of the vertical link and I was unable to pry enough to get it in place. Partly because it took two hands to pry it hard enough so I didn't have a third hand to fit the bolt in place and partly because prying it levered the wheel down and out so it misaligned the vertical link by the time the spring end was close to in place. I tried putting a bottle jack below the brake housing to keep the link in place which helped but it still took more than two hands so I gave up prying to align.

I got my floor jack under the stub axle and made a square out of 4 steel corner angles, bolted together (in place) so I could catch the square under the spring, outboard of the bracket that holds the spring togther, but with a jacking surface below the stub axle, basically jacking "around" the axle. Great idea but the 1/8" steel (bent steel, not formed steel) brackets buckled under the full force needed to get the spring in place. Time for plan C.

Plan C was a purpose built "jack around the axle" bracket made out of 1" x 1/4" steel flat stock, cut into pieces and welded together by a friend of a friend. I designed it so there was a simple open-ended U and a second piece for the bottom (with a centering bit welded in place to keep the U from walking off the bottom support). It sat on the bottom piece on the jack and fit right in the spot outboard of the spring bracket and worked the first time, no hint of buckling out of the 1/4" flat stock legs. With the bottle jack holding the brake housing up and the floor jack pushing up the spring end, I levered the bushing inside the vertical link, centered the holes with a screwdriver and beat the bolt through with a rubber mallet.

It took more sweat effort to get the cover plate back on over the diff and the trim pad back to cover all that back up than it did to finally get the spring in place. But it's all done and cleaned up now.

So, was it worth it? When the wheels were back on and I lowered it off the jack stands, the wheels initially had a marked positive camber which I was hoping was just the spring needing to settle into place. So I took it around the block and when I parked it again, the wheels had settled into the slight negative camber they're supposed to have, much less than they used to have. I hope it stays that way.

This past weekend, I put gas struts to open and hold the bonnet in place of the old, bent up stock prop rod that I was going to have to replace anyway. After reading about this mod and seeing an example at the Quad Cities British Car Club's Auto Show a couple of weeks ago, I decided that this was my fix.

Paul Tegler's advised struts (Sachs SG123002) are available from Rock Auto at a better price than the update on Paul's website. The hardest part of the job was innovating a connection for the ball connector on the piston end. I wound up buying a length of 1x1x1/8 angle steel and cut two one inch lengths from it. Then drilled a hole for the ball connector's screw thread and a hole for a frame bolt that I'm sharing now with the frame. One hole for the cylinder end mount (looks like a screen door mount) was already available in the wheel well part under the bonnet. I drilled a second hole through that cover for the other cylinder end mount (held to the cylinder with a supplied clevis and clip ring).

It took minutes to mount them both, including drilling the extra hole in each wheel well cover and voila, the bonnet opens and closes now just like Paul Tegler describes on his website. Plus, the "bonus" of having the bonnet opening now sound like a minivan tailgate. Oh well, at least it opens and closes easily, doesn't put as much adverse torque on those stress concentration areas next to the headlights, and I no longer have a prop rod in the way on the driver's side of the compartment.

If I can scratch up a camera, I'll try to post a picture.