Overview

This blog is intended to document the build of my Gardner Douglas Mk4 Cobra; partly as IVA evidence, bit primarily to help others learn from my mistakes and/or successes.

I will endeavour to post as often as possible, with a view to entering a single post for a particular element of the build process, however inevitably some things may not be completed in one go. All posts will be tagged so it should be easy enough to find the information you seek.

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Monday 13 November 2017

Uprights & Hubs

Front uprights, bearings and hubs
Normally these come pre assembled by GD, however they were having problems with their hydraulic press so it presented an extra step for me to contend with.  First the outer races of the taper roller bearings need pressing in to the hubs, as I don't have a press ended up outsourcing this to a local HGV workshop.  Now the bearings can be packed with the supplied grease before being laid into the outer races within the hubs; the outer bearing is held in place with a seal cup which is gently tapped in to place with mallet and copper drift.  The inner bearing has an alloy cap instead of a seal.

Once the bearings are in place, the hub can be pushed through from the outside and held in place with a heavy duty washer and nyloc nut, this is a close tolerance fit so I placed the hubs in the freezer overnight to ensure they slid through nicely.  Whilst both uprights are identical one of the hubs has a left hand thread, this needs to go on the left side of the car to avoid undoing in motion.

View from inboard side after hub pushed through

View from inboard side showing heavy washer and hub nut (LH threaded nut on front LH side of car).  An alloy dust cover taps on after the nut is torqued up.

Torqueing up front hub nut

The hub also has some tapered stainless steel sleeves that need pressing in for the ball joints, these have a top hat and can just about be pressed in using a bench vice.  Again, I put these in the freezer overnight to help.

Rear uprights, bearings and hubs

The bearings for the rear uprights are much the same as the fronts but are slightly larger diameter and have a seal on both inboard and outboard sides.  Again the outer races were pressed in by the HGV workshop and the rest assembled as per the front ones.

The hubs differ from the fronts in that they have a splined centre which accepts a corresponding inner hub for the drive shaft.  Again the 'frozen' outer hub is installed first, the inner hub then slides into the splines before the washer and nut are installed.  This time the LH thread goes on the RH side.

 Inboard rear hub showing bearing and grease seal in place

View from outboard showing bearing prior to insertion of oil seal

View from inboard showing inner hub flange for driveshaft

View from outboard showing hub, washer and nut.  (LH thread nut on rear RH hub)

Front wheel studs
The wheel studs would also normally be pressed in by GD, however I only the rears had been.  I tried using the vice but couldn't get enough pressure so resorted to pulling the studs through from the outside.  Each stud was greased and pushed through the hole, I then used a stack of washers and high tensile nut to draw the stud through in to the hub whilst holding the hub still with some unistrut bar.  This was repeated another 9 times and hey presto, something to bolt the wheels to.

Washers and nut used to pull stud in to place.  I started using an old wheel nut but that destroyed the washers so I moved to a high tensile hex nut which worked much better.

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