Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Garage => Topic started by: YellowS4DHC on Thursday,January 17, 2013, 11:28:09 AM
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I'm trying to remove the rear axle nuts. So far I used heat, an impact wrench, and lots of penetrating fluid. Still on there, hasn't budged at all. Any creative ideas appreciated. Otherwise I'll just keep cycling heat/cold and hitting with the impact wrench.
Rick
'72 Europa TC
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I'm going to lose a lot of "Engineering Cred" here, but what the heck....
I have a 3/4" drive socket on a home made 1/2" to 3/4" adapter to fit my socket set. I jam a big screwdriver (or any other handy steel bar) through the outer UJ and wedge it against a block of wood to make sure nothing moves and then have a piece of pipe over the socket wrench. It's tightened to something like 150ft lbs, which means I can then stand on it to get it started.....
( told you it wasn't very a "engineering" solution ;) )
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Hi Brian,
actually your non-engineering solution was what I started with: a 3/4 drive socket, 3/4 drive breaker bar with a 5 ft pipe extension, and blocks of wood to hold the tire/car. No dice. I couldn't keep the tire from rotating, so I went for the impact wrench. This is the first nut that has withstood my trusty impact wrench.
I suspect that Loctite was used on the hubs and some of it got onto the threads of the axle. I guess it's going to be a long slog with the torch and impact wrench :(
regards
Rick
'72 Europa TC
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Hi Rick,
If you think some loctite has strayed into the threads, then the only way I know is to get a blowlamp on it and degrade the loctite, you'll never shift it without. I can't recall the temperature you need but it's not excessive. I would guess it's somewhere around 200C and I've always managed to release the hub with a small propane blowlamp that I use for copper fittings, just play it over the axle for a couple of minutes.
The brute force method will easily rotate the hub/wheel and that's why I use a steel bar/screwdriver/whatever in the yoke of the UJ to lock the wheel. I arrange it to bear on a piece of wood (usually offcuts of 3"x3" fence posts) and jam them such that I don't end up lifting the car. I'm an 11 stone weakling so more often than not I've ended up standing on the extension pipe even without loctite on the threads.
Brian
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Brian,
I've been using heat (propane torch or blowgun I think you call it) from the beginning. 25 years of working on my old series Land Rovers taught me that heat would be required here - especially so if any Loctite is on the threads.
I'm having doubts about my impact wrench though - it only gives around 345 ft lbs of torque, so I may need to borrow a friend's which has greater output. Barring that, I would need to go back and bring out my socket and 5 ft extension, but for that I need to hold the hub from rotating.
I'm a bit reluctant to jam anything in the UG of the drive axle. I know it worked for you, but I have so many things to fix that I don't want to chance messing up something else. Im also afraid to jam something onto only two of the wheel studs. I might use my spare tire and try to hold it fast with a nylon tow strap or make up a steel brace that bolts to the hub (all four studs) and go from there
On a different note, I crawled under there (while I had the torch heating up the axle nut) and installed my heater hoses. I decided to simply run a 30 in hose from the control valve forward and then down in front of the timing cover. I used wire ties to sister it to the water hose/pipe running to the thermostat housing. It's the simplest and shortest route and also avoids any proximity to the exhaust manifold. All in all, it wasn't too bad. Even that short one wasn't that hard. I put the hose out in the sun to warm up, and used lots of CLP lubricant. If you haven't used CLP, you ought to try it. Better than WD40 or similar stuff.
regards
Rick
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I'm a bit reluctant to jam anything in the UG of the drive axle. I know it worked for you, but I have so many things to fix that I don't want to chance messing up something else. Im also afraid to jam something onto only two of the wheel studs. I might use my spare tire and try to hold it fast with a nylon tow strap or make up a steel brace that bolts to the hub (all four studs) and go from there
On a different note, I crawled under there (while I had the torch heating up the axle nut) and installed my heater hoses. I decided to simply run a 30 in hose from the control valve forward and then down in front of the timing cover. I used wire ties to sister it to the water hose/pipe running to the thermostat housing. It's the simplest and shortest route and also avoids any proximity to the exhaust manifold. All in all, it wasn't too bad. Even that short one wasn't that hard. I put the hose out in the sun to warm up, and used lots of CLP lubricant. If you haven't used CLP, you ought to try it. Better than WD40 or similar stuff.
Hi Rick,
CLP ? not heard of that one although 2 minutes after I press "post" I'll no doubt remember what it stands for !
I can understand your reservations about possible damage, admittedly I'm probably a bit more cavalier in that respect. I tend to look at these things and guess what the shear/tensile strength of the component is (that's an ex-metallurgist for you) and then imagine if I'm going to get anywhere near that with my tools. If it's just me heaving on a lever then based on that 11 stone weakling concept I'm not likely to break very much :)
The idea of a template over all 4 wheel studs is a good idea though, and once made will be far easier (and safer) to use. You might even get away with some flat bar (1/4" ?) bolted across a couple of studs & using the wheel nuts to hold it in place ? Two studs will be very strong in shear, far more than I could generate with a breaker bar.
Good news on the heater hoses though. Admittedly it was winter when I did mine but I did struggle with the small one in the Y of the chassis and I've got the benefit of having a pit to work under the car. One job I don't want to do again !
Brian
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Rick, the bar I made is for Porsche in total is 34".......I am going to make one 40" for the Europa. Never failed when torquing on rear nuts on P cars. The lugs on Europas are skinny little things so maybe a plate with all four lugs may be safer. The steel I used was 1/4" by 2.5 mild.
Take off the drum and trace on card board as the template.
Mike
(http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k571/cal442/Europa/IMG_2845_zpsf66bc8e8.jpg)
And this
(http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k571/cal442/Europa/IMG_2698.jpg)
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Brian,
Break Free CLP is a cleaner, lubricant, and preservative that is commonly used in the US for cleaning guns. My son (a medic in the Army Reserve) told me about it a few years ago. I found it's very useful in the shop for all sorts of things. All this may be academic as the quickie search I just did said it can't be shipped out of the US. ??? I haven't a clue why.
After about 10 heat/cool down cycles over the last three days, usually followed with the impact wrench, I finally got the right side axle nut off. I definitely think loctite was on the threads, but not on the hub splines themselves (hub came off relatively easily with a puller and it got no direct heat). I think the PO misunderstood where the loctite retaining compound was supposed to go when he messed around here.
This is such a pain that while I've got both hubs off, I'm going to powder coat both brake backing plates and replace the outboard bearing housing seals.
Mike,
funny you should mention Porsche tools; my 5 ft breaker bar extension is a holdover from the old days when I used to work on my '57 Porsche Speedster. I still have the Speedster AND the 5 ft pipe; if it weren't for the impact wrench, I'd have really needed it. I'll still have to make up a hub torquing tool for reassembly. I'm going to use .250 thk plate about 4 ft long and wide enough to accommodate the hub bolt pattern (5" or so). The hole in the center for hub nut access is going to be a pain as that's a lot of metal to remove. I may have that bored by the machine shop.
regards
Rick
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CLP, guns, ahh, I understand. You almost need a letter from the queen to own a gun over here so that explains it. (not quite a letter, but you do need a licence and have to justify your need for a firearm)
Good to hear you've finally succeeded. Obviously the DPO (or a mechanic) heard about hub nuts coming loose and decided his wasn't going to :)
Brian
ps - only one side to undo now, eh ?
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Dang Rick,
you still have the Speedster?......and the bar? What I failed to mention was the one side of the bar is for 356. Small world. We are heading up to the 356 show this summer in Orange County Ca.. Ain't never seen sooo many in one place.
That is if I can get out of bed for more that five minutes..........since the world always wants to blame someone else for everything....who do I blame for being stuck in bed for the last three days with a sickness that would bring down a Romulan Cruiser.........and not fixed yet.
Mike
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Guys,
Having got an axle nut off, I found three odd details, and invite your comments:
First, I don't have any D washers under the axle nuts. My outboard drive axle shafts are round in cross section, with no flat on the end for the D washer to engage - I assume outboard drive axle shafts have a flat to correspond to the flat on the D washer, yes, no? Anybody got a pic?
Second, I have oil seals on the outboard (yes, outboard) side of each bearing housing. These shouldn't be here according to the parts manual.
Third, someone drilled a hole in each bearing housing and installed a zerk fitting.
From 2 & 3, I'm assuming a PO replaced the original sealed bearings with non-sealed bearings and modified the system to allow periodic greasing. I guess I'll eventually tear this all apart and put in the correct bearings.
(Mike, yes, I still have the Speedster, had it since '73. It's now undergoing a complete restoration. It's a beautiful car, almost a piece of art, but, frankly, these cars are way overvalued, IMHO. I've sometimes thought of selling it and getting an Elite and a 23B ;) )
Regards
Rick
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Hi Rick,
Let's get the easy one out of the way first. You should have D washers and they lock on the threaded section as part of it is ground away. Here's a picture below of mine last year when I decided to replace the wheel studs, the white crusty stuff is the Loctite which was degraded with my blowlamp. You can see the flat section around 7-8 o'clock on the threads. With no D washer in place, perhaps that explains why the nut was on so tight ?
The rest is guesswork.... One mod for Elans over here in the 70s/80s was to drill the rear hub carriers and put a grease nipple on so you could pump it with grease in the belief that the bearing failures were down to lack of lubrication. You'd use the same 2RS bearings, leave the outer seals in place but remove the inner seal to allow lubrication. I never bothered with it myself although I did pack the casing to make it difficult for water to get in.
It sounds like your DPO has gone the same way. I guess the question is, did it work ? Are you stripping it down because the bearings have play or is it preventative maintenance ? (what my wife calls "wasting your time messing with that car again when we could be fitting a new kitchen" ;) )
Brian
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Brian,
thanks for the info and the pic. I clearly don't have a flat on my drive axle, it is round and has a hole in it for a cotter pin (you call them split pins, I believe?), so it looks like the PO pulled the original drive axles and replaced them with something else, from where I know not. But the drive axles appear to fit ok, from outside you can't see anything odd at the UJ. The nut was on very tight, so the PO knew that was important. Some of the other stuff he did, I'm still not too sure of. All in all, I guess it's ok (for example, the adapting of SUs), but as I get more familiar with the car I'm sure I'll be making some changes.
The reason for the tear down was originally just a brake repair and wheel stud replacement (RH hub). But mission creep has a way of getting in there. Now I want to remove the LH hub also to get both backing plates off for powder coating - but I'm not going further on strip down, I will blithely assume the bearing are good for now. I still have a lot of rewiring to do under the dash and other stuff including increasing the mechanical advance of my 43D distributor, but that's another story.
Regards
Rick
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Hi Rick,
we have found a quite easy way to mount and remove the central axle nuts.
We took an old steel rim (something from a junk yard) with an old tire and welded a huge square tube (steel) on the rim, which is significantly longer than the radius of the wheel. If we want to remove the nut, we put this wheel on the axle and then the wheel is not able to rotate anymore. That definetly works. No matter where you are. We always take the wheel to the race track. Otherwise we could neither remove the nuts, if we needed, nor screw it more tightly. The rear brake is too weak.
The only specification, which is important for the rim, is a quite huge hole in the centre, where the tool passes through.
I attach a little sketch.
Regards
Stefan
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I love it. Nice simple engineering, even I can understand how that works ! :)
Brian
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Could your axles be the 'upgrade' axles that are on ebay? I think they use a larger 7/8" diameter nut, no D washer. They're $1400. plus your old axle stubs on ebay, so gotta be good.
I've wondered if they were worth the price.
When I had a GT6+, I seem to remember that putting a grease fitting in the axle carrier was a 'upgrade'. Don't know if it helped or not.
andyh
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I don't know what's on Ebay, but I believe my outboard drive axles are 7/8 in dia so they may be the same thing. I do wonder where mine came from.
A small update of this minor saga FWIW: After disassembling and re-assemblng both L & R sides, I'm fairly sure both the axles and the Special brakes were a PO mod, competently done on the L side, less so on the R side. Much of the problems there result from an incorrectly drilled cotter pin hole in the R drive axle (i.e., too far inboard). A thicker spacer would have fixed a lot of problems with drum and back plate interference, only that isn't an option as a thicker space would cause the castellated nut to "cover" the cotter pin hole. And grinding the backside of the castellated nut doesn't seem like a good idea to me and, apparently, not to my PO.
So, my PO used an "undersized" spacer on the R side so that the castellated nut would fit but then had to have both the brake backing plate and the drum relieved at their outer edges to allow the brake drum to fit closer to the back plate than normal without interference.
Funny thing is, the spacers on the L and R are the exact SAME thickness. Ignoring for the moment the cotter pin hole position, one would think the spacers would be essentially the same thickness as all the parts (hubs, drums, back plates) appear to be the same, L to R. I'm unclear why the R side spacer should have been about 1/8 inch thicker with the cotter pin hole further outboard.
Bottom line out of all this is, if you have the std 1.25 " brakes, I would keep them as the Special brake parts (drums, back plates) appear hard to find. I'm still looking for a new or near new brake drum to replace my RR drum as it is at the max dia limit and can't be machined. If anyone knows where these can be had, please let me know.
What should have been a simple brake job has turned into a real pain and has really pushed me to consider adapting disc brakes at the rear. :(
regards
Rick
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Banks Europa (UK) have them listed at £118 each. :o That would be enough to make me convert to a disk set-up !
I have heard of people using the TR7 rear drum brakes as a conversion, IIRC these are larger than the TCS ones.
I would also try Rimmer Brothers in the UK, they are very well known for Triumph parts and I'm sure the drums were from the GT6, 1972-74. Also the Triumph Dolomite 1500, 1975 onwards, although of course those cars aren't so well supported. Some Ford Cortinas used the same size shoes but the PCD would be difference and hence need re-drilling to match the Lotus/Triumph PCD.
An interesting tale there, especially around the cotter pin hole. I'd have expected to drill one after everything had been tightened up and use the castellations as a guide. Is there enough room to drill another hole, preferably at 90deg to the first, only a touch further out ?
Brian
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Check NJ craigslist, ad date in Jan. TCS being parted out. Maybe he still has the drums. I like the disc idea!
Andyh