Another long weekend has come and gone and I got a few things done. First, I tackled the disaster that has been sitting under the car for a year. While assembling the left rear suspension I put the driveshaft in the outer knuckle and wound on the driveshaft nut to pull through the spline, but the nut cross-threaded, argh! It would not come off - I had a 4 foot pipe on there and I could see the 1/2" Snap-On breaker bar visibly flexing, I'm sure it almost broke. I tried heat, no go, it was stuck fast. This happened a year ago or more, and I threw the knuckle and driveshaft under the Cobra in disgust and forgot about it for a while.
I had assembled the drivers side knuckle and driveshaft the same way it came through ok. So.... I went to a wrecker and got a replacement knuckle and driveshaft. I had already spent time and money reco'ing the original knuckle, blast, paint, all new handbrake mechanism, nolathane bushes, new upper heim joint, so I wanted to keep it rather than retro all that to another knuckle, so if I could get the shaft out, all I needed from the wrecker was a new outer CV. So, grinders at 10 paces, that nut is coming off!
The real pain with this is that the nut has a tubular section that goes down into the hub and a captive washer, so splitting it is NOT an easy task - I never want to have to do this again, it took about 2.5 hours.
Who's your daddy
Once the nut is off, a small pressure with the press and the CV is out.
The outer CV (VE Commodore) is held together with a snap ring, so TUG and it comes apart
Then flip it, press out the drive flange (which destroys the bearing) and then the other half of the bearing
A quick trip down to Holden and I have a new drive flange and nut, waiting on a new bearing from Ebay and the original knuckle will go back together with the CV from the wrecker - this time I am going to press the outer CV half in to the knuckle before assembly to the driveshaft, this way I won't be using the nut to pull the shaft through the drive flange. You cannot press the splined CV into the drive flange by hand as it's a bit of an interference fit, but on the press it does not take a lot of force. It will be good to close this nightmare chapter in my build.
Next, was to continue work on the headers. First to clean all the mill scale off the flanges with a flap disc
Then welded up the headers to the 4-into-1, 2.5" outlet collectors. They will then get a 2.5" 90 degree turn towards the sides of the car, then the cats, then out into sidepipes.
Yes, my welds need some clean-up, but hey, I work at a keyboard all day!
Finally, it's amazing how you can work in the shed for days, using all manner of dangerous and even lethal equipment and come out unscathed, then cut your finger on the foil on the whisky bottle
