Well after spending that last few days trying to locate shim stock to adjust the rear axle pinion height, I finally hit pay dirt. The king pin shims for an I-beam axle ford are the same inner and outer diameter as the Rapier pinion bearings. I added .010″ to the shim stack and nail’d the gear pattern first time. Happy days!!!
After I rolled the pattern, I installed the third in the freshly painted axle housing and added some shiney new fasteners.
Got some ugly wheels that need a new home…..
I posted an add on the Hillman forum, but unfortunately, I didnt get the slightest bite on these. They are hands down the ugliest wheels Ive ever seen…LOL. I listedd them on Ebay and found a buyer in Wyoming who loves them, who knew…
now to find some original wheels and hubcaps.
Today, I picked up the axle and third member housings that I had dropped off at the sandblasters earlier in the week. The third member housing was in excellent condition, but the axle housing was a bit worse for wear. The leaf spring perch welds on both perches had developed several cracks. I re-welded the perches, and spot welded any additional pin holes that I found in the housing.
After all of the welding was completed, I added a Land Rover axle tube vent to the top of the housing. The original breather was simply an 1/8″ hole drilled in the top of the housing, which I thought was kinda hokie. I drilled and tapped a hole for the new breather assembly. The banjo bolt and vent was off of a spare Land Rover Discovery axle housing that I had in my shop. Now, I can route a vent tube across the axle tube and up towards the fuel tank. This should keep the breather nice and clean.
I primed and painted the axle and third member housings, and leaf spring mounts with chasis black. I also primed and painted a handful of engine tin with Packard green engine enamel from Kanter Auto.
Once the paint was dry on the third member housing, I test fit the pinion and carrier to check the pinion height. As I had suspected, the pinion was sitting a bit to low and would need to be shimmed up a titch.
A couple of days ago, I posted up a bearing inquiry on the Hillman yahoo group.
hey gang,
I’m currently going through the axle in my rapier series 2 project and
am having difficulty locating the correct bearings. The bearings that
came out of my third member are as follows:carrier cup: Timken 16284
carrier cone: Timken 16150
pinion cup: SKF K26118S/4/J
pinion cone: SKF K26283Si ordered what we though were the correct bearings from Rick @ sunbeam
specialties. but the bearings that he sent were not correct.pinion bearing set: Federal Mogul M88010
carrier bearing set: Federal Mogul LM501310these bearings are the superseded parts from his parts catalog. his
books also list 2 different pinion bearings. my rapier uses the same
bearing for the inner pinion and the outer.i put in a call to my local bearing house, and am awaiting his search
results. from what i could find on the net, the timken online catalog
shows he carrier bearings but the pinion doesnt seem to match.
i did find a place in the uk that listed the pinion bearing at 200£
each…could this be right?
$800 for 2 bearings… good god that’s more than i paid for the car, LOLanyway, thanks again for the help
marc
what I ended up finding was the following:
bearing update for those who care…
i got the bearings from Kaman and this is what i’ve found.
the carrier bearings (16150/16284)were the same as the ones i had.
the only difference was about -.002″ in the race thickness.the pinion bearings (26118/26283) were about .005″ smaller in inner
diameter than the originals and again the race was about -.002″ in
thickness…
Since the pinion bearing was slightly smaller in diameter than the original bearing, I chose to skim a bit off the pinion gear so the bearing would not be to tight when installed. The results were better than I had hoped for.
More on the Hillman yahoo group bearing thread can be found here.
With new parts in hand, from the UK, I thought I’d quickly overhaul the oil pump that I had previously cleaned. Hmmm, to my surprise, the parts that I’d recieved did not match the parts that I had removed. The oil pump to distributor drive gear was about a quarter inch to long, and the pump gears on the pump pick up was also too tall, by about 5/16th’s.
What the heck is going on???
Seems I either got the wrong parts, or the pump that I have is not the correct pump for motor. Yet another setback…
I was able to carefully machine down both sets of gears, with fairly pleasing results. Once the lathe work was done, I reassembled the new gears and flattened the pump cap where there was slight wear from the prior gear set.
