Luv2Wrench

I'm lucky in that Tractor Supply is great about exchanging cylinders and they're only about 45 minutes from me. Had a "shop" day today, mostly the machine shop. There were a dozen or so tasks that needed completing to get the machine shop more functional. Silly stuff like covers on outlets, replacing some broken circuit breakers, rerouting some wiring to the VFD on the mill so the electrical box door would close, etc, etc. I also took some time to get the Monarch Junior functional. Didn't quite get it all done but pretty close. I need another v-belt and pulley to get it 100% complete. Was able to get the motor mounted and wired. I also added a QCTP since it was missing its lantern post. The Monarch is a pretty functional lathe as it has a 4-jaw chuck, 3-jaw chuck, 2 face plates and a taper attachment. It is a light weight compared to the Hendey but should be nice for smaller work. I desperately need to add some more storage to the machine shop as my tooling and such is crammed in to what I have. I'm going to try and work a couple weeks on the car and then a week on the shop until I get everything squared away. There's always so much to do!!

Super cool car, can't wait to see more!

Still making fairly steady progress. Other stuff eats up a ton of time so while steady... the progress is slow. Got the leaf springs and axles hung. Don't worry I will be doing something to the modern fasteners so they don't stand out so much. I have a blackening system I'm going to try this weekend. In addition, for the fasteners I make there is a company relatively close to me that will harden and blacken them. They charge by the pound so I'll be using modern fasteners to hold everything together until I reach the end of the project. I'll then take all the custom fasteners and get them hardened and blackened. Spent 2 hours driving to the nearest place that exchanges acetylene and I now have a fresh 75 cubic feet cylinder. Probably enough to last me for quite some time. DOM tube should be here today but I doubt I'll get to it this weekend. I still haven't figured out exactly how I'll hold it for brazing. The simple approach would be to sit in on a rotary table but in that case the brazing would be going up. I know it will wick but I'm not sure that is sufficient. If you know... please inform me.

Incredible accomplishment. I've watched these from when you started posting. Simply incredible!

OUTSTANDING!! Have a great vacation! I think you'll have a difficult time convincing people (outside of this forum) that the car in the before picture is what you actually started with.

It happens Chris. I had about the same thing happened but it was a smaller part so I was able to sand it down and start over. If that area is covered by the spare tire you've caught a break.

It'll get done when it gets done and you'll have forever to enjoy it.

Things are still moving forward at a reasonable pace. Like most of you I've got a bunch of other stuff going on, daily drivers that need maintenance, house that needs to be blown up, err, I mean needs some work, etc, etc. I'm still waiting on the DOM tube but I have everything else. I painted more parts this weekend as well as adding some strengtheners to the front of the frame rails. That involved hot riveting and while using the oxy-acetylene torch I noticed I'm about out of acetylene so now I need to get that filled up.

At risk of a thread hijack, I might mention that I ended up buying a DeKUPs system for my spray gun. One of the several advantages to this system is that you can spray in any gun position, including upside down. I think most gun manufacturers have similar systems. The system includes a hard plastic "cup" and disposable liners. When you start to spray you turn the gun upside down and the air is sucked out of the liner and after that it is all paint regardless of angle. For me it was definitely worth the extra cost just for the ability to spray at any angle though I originally bought it to save from having to clean the cup each time.

Looking great Chris! You're right, it gets easier from here and is the most enjoyable part.

What kind of flux did you use and where did you put it? I'm thinking preheat the parts, try to dip them in flux, puts parts together, lay the rod (I'm thinking brass) around the joint and heat until it melts in. Should I use a Rosebud tip or maybe a #4 or #2?

The things you need are scattered an equal distance apart across the entire swap area. How they know what you need and are able to distribute everything so far apart is one of the great mysteries of life. On a serious note... when I went it was a mix. There were definitely some areas that were brass era centric and then there was stuff scattered around.

Took the plunge today and cut off the ends. Chucked them in the lathe and turned off the outside. It was pretty easy to do because when I started seeing bronze chips come off I could starting taking 2 thou passes until it was gone. Once the tube was off it was pretty easy to see where the error is. The hub is actually two parts. The hub itself and then the flange for the wheel spokes. It is that part that was installed incorrectly!! In the last picture you can easily see how it isn't sitting square. Note the left side is sitting low and you can see part of the hub while the right side is a bit high. The good news is this shouldn't be a problem anymore since I've turned it down in the lathe. I will order a 3.5" OD DOM tube with 1/8" walls. I should be able to clean up the ends to get them to fit in the tube. I'm going to visit an old school driveline shop tomorrow to see if they will braze the ends on. They should have the experience but I'll carefully evaluate the shop when I go. I don't want to have to cut the ends off again!

Spraying the inside will trap dust so that's a great plan. I used 1.5 gallons but that was due to goofs, I think it would've been done in 1 gallon. I think the TD has more surface area than the MGA so I think you'll be fine. On the other hand, getting a quart to be sure is also a good idea. If you get it... you won't need it. If you don't... lol.

I pulled the oxy/act torch out and tried to remove the hub from the tube. Didn't happen. I wasn't surprised. I haven't yet worked up the courage for the next step but when I do... I'll put it in the power hacksaw, cut each end off, chuck those in the lathe and turn the tube off the end pieces. Once I find out what the wall thickness of the tube is I'll order the material. When it comes it I should be able to square the ends up in the lathe, bore out to the correct inner diameter and braze the ends on. In theory.

I chucked it up in the lathe from the other direction (the left side in the picture above). I did this by putting the jaws in the bearing seat (the big gear was not installed). When I spun it around I was surprised to find that the opposite end was mostly true. The middle part was pretty wonky but from bearing seat to bearing seat it was OK. The issue I had was trying to hold the hub in the jaws. The hub is definitely in the tube at an angle which is causing the problem. I'm 99% sure that I'm going to rebuild the piece even though the two ends are kinda OK. I've spent years on this car already so another week isn't going to be a big deal. Per how did it work before, originally the piece had ball bearings in a cage on each end so alignment issues were not that big a deal. At least I think that is correct. I also think this piece has been repaired/modified at some point. The end of the tube that has the hub is not cut well.

It sounds like you've done everything you can possibly do and are at a level way above the average paint-at-home guy, so congrats on that! You can fix almost anything in the paint with some time so beyond trying to minimize what you have to correct, this stage isn't that critical. With enough effort at the end your car will look way better than a professional spray job because 99% of those guys are not going to wet sand it and buff. My biggest failures were not getting paint in some areas like blind spots, behind this or under that, etc, etc. Most of those issues came from how I tried to hang/hold the piece being painted. It is a pain to have to prep it and spray it again but not a huge issue. I think I dropped something as well.

Here is the first one I did that didn't have any issues. Hopefully you can see how it fits on the axle. There are bearings and the far left and right ends. There's another flange that's not shown that matches the one on the far right. The spokes go just to the right of the flange on the far right and then the flange (not shown) bolts on from the right and hold the spokes in place.

Houston, we have a problem. I put the rear hub and extension tube into the lathe to take out the taper and radius and immediately noticed a problem. I had the indicator in the end of the extension tube (where the inner bearing is) and was measuring over 240 thousandths from one side to the other. After some investigation I determined that the extension tube is not true to the hub. Way back when I got these parts I thought it looked a little funny but didn't look into it. At that time I didn't own a lathe much less an indicator!! The hub and the inner bearing holder are brazed into the tube. I've been able to determine that the inner bearing holder is square in the tube and that it is the hub that is out of whack. I might try to heat it up and remove the hub but I'm doubtful this will succeed. I think the most likely path will be to get a DOM tube that matches the dimensions (it appears to be 3.5" outer diameter), cut the existing tube at each end, insert the hub/bearing holder into the lathe and turn the tube off. Then cut a piece of the new tube and reassemble. I'm not sure how I'll get the assembly true though one idea is to go ahead and put the bearings in and then assemble/braze on the axle. I haven't thought through it much so that might be a terrible idea. First step is to get the tube off one way or another and determine the outer and inner diameters.

Paint looks great and it looks like you're getting that hang of it, congrats! Time for a thousand questions, lol. Is the fan blowing air into the booth or pulling it out? Are you running the fan after you spray? Can you post a close-up of the particulate in the paint? It looks like you've wet the floor, have you tried putting plastic down on it? Are you wearing a Tyvek paint suit? One of the things I read was that once you have a nice clean both the remained of the junk in the paint comes off you! I had issues with the garage door opening but they were a bit different. I chose to go with a positive pressure paint booth (fan blowing in) because I had read that a negative pressure booth needs to be sealed perfectly or it will pull air (and possibly junk) into the booth. Any leaks in a positive pressure booth will go out of the booth which keeps stuff out of the booth. The downside to that is, of course, you can get overspray outside of the booth in your shop.

There are some very high quality paints/products available that are only well know to those in the custom paint/restoration business. Here's what I used for the MG TD. (2021 prices) Automotive Arts - Motobase LV is a fantastic base. 1 gallon of Jaguar 701 (British Racing Green) was $468 For everything else I used SPI (Southern Polyurethane Inc) products. Their Universal Clear is $132 a gallon and the activator is similarly priced. I believe if you do some research you'll find that these products are of very high quality. You can call SPI and they will find a jobber close to you. For Automotive Arts I used Chad's Paint Supply in New Troy, MI.

Thanks for mention that! They were indeed tapered and also had a radius at the bottom that was larger than the race I was putting in. I didn't realize they were tapered until I went to clean up the radius. I indicated the hubs off the "top" and also touched off there. As I went in the boring bar started removing material. This was initially confusing and I put an indicator on the outside and found that was running true. That implied that there was a taper. It wasn't much but it was a bit surprising. Glad to hear you found the same thing.

Summer vacation is over and back to work! I've been working on getting the Timken tapered roller bearings in the hubs. The hubs have required some slight modification to get the bearings to fit properly. I now have one front and one rear hub completed. In theory the other two should go pretty quick since it is just repeating what I've already done. I've found, however, that theory doesn't work well in my shop, lol. Once I get the hubs completed I'll need to take a bit more time off to get maintenance completed on our daily drivers. Hopefully I'll be able to get the wheels done after that and finally get a rolling chassis.

Many thanks for taking the extra time to show the details of the process.

Looking great Chris! What you have there is what I call "Finished Parts". I love finished parts. I love saying "finished parts". There's just something about getting a piece of the puzzle completely done to where all that is left it bolting to another piece. I love the Scotch-Brite pads. Surprisingly enough, Home Depot carries them. I'm sure Lowes does as well. You can order them on Amazon in bulk as well. I keep mine in ZipLoc bags so that they don't trap contaminants while hanging out on the shelf.