3/1/02
Staying in Suspension

Yes, I got the damn locating arm out!!! After a week of hearing everyone giving me great advice on how to address my locating arm dilemma, I went to work today, and the front bolt came right out! (There must be a God!) Now that the arm is out, we had many more options to go with.

The first thing we tried was to press the stuck bolt out with François’ arbor press.

I don’t know how many pounds of pressure one of these presses are capable of, but this bolt wasn’t going to budge! In order to save a perfectly good rubber bushing, I think I’m going to take this locating arm to the CBS machine shop, and have them help me  press, or drill out!

While we were working on the locating arm, François noticed a lot of play in the leaf spring bushings. It’s evidently a common problem because the material Ferrari used for one of these bushings didn’t last long, so out came the leaf springs!

With the shackles removed, you can really see how much this bushing has worn. The solution is to replace this inferior material with a teflon insert.

First, I removed all of the old bushing. It’s a strange material that had the consistency of hard wax. These bushings have grease fittings, so along with them being made from a crappy material, it probably didn’t help matters without grease. The GTE owner’s manual doesn’t even include this grease nipple on their lubrication diagram!

Replacing the old bushing with these teflon inserts I made will solve all my problems. Teflon is pretty slippery, so they won’t even need grease, but I added some for good measure just in case!

Before I inserted the new bushings, I painted the spring with some POR-15. I know I could take this opportunity to detail these springs to concours standards, but I promise I’ll do them someday in the future!

I also painted all the suspension brackets and spring shackles so they’ll look nice. I put POR-15 on these pieces with a disposable brush. I cut the bristles down so I could really push the paint into all  the crevices.

Another area that I can paint with POR-15 is the mounting point of the suspension. That’ll have to wait until next week!

My tires arrived from Tire Rack. Those sidewalls look SO big when you compare them to a modern car, but they’ll look fine on my car!

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