I moved the car from the hoist to the center bay where the overhead electric hoist is to handle the hood install and to try to set the front wheel alignment. Below is the caster/camber tool I got at Amazon and got the camber set pretty close using the excentric adjustment on the lower control arm.
I fabricated a top-in tool from some left-over metal framing material, from a picture I saw on Facebook, that bolts to the front wheel hubs. Slots were cut at the bottom ends to hold the tape measures and adjustment made by turning the sleeves on the steering arms. The front of the wheel is 1/16 closer than the back measurement.
A string line was strung from back to front with the string touching the back and front of the rear tire, steering wheel was set to center then measurements taken from string line to front jig to set the front wheels parallel to the back.
A new hood, without turn signal or hold-down pins, was ordered from CJ Pony Parts that I called and put on customer pick-up as they wanted 400.00 to ship a 200.00 part. They were told that I would be driving from Kingman Az. to Las Vegas Nv. when I got there, I was told that it was put on will call at their east coast location. Luckly they had one in stock in Las Vegas but the guy at the front desk said he had to make up a new order, when he did the new order, he charged me 241.00 when it was on sale on their website at 205.00. I was told to go around back to the loading dock to pick up the hood and that he would credit my card with the difference, He entered it as a debit, not a credit. When I got home, we tried to straighten it out for 2 days but were only able to get the debit removed. My advice is for byers to be aware of the poorly trained employes at CJ Pony Parts. 1
The overhead hoist was used to install and remove the old hood and to install the new hood.
The gap shown below is because the hood is deformed in the front center and hits the radiator support.
I removed the radiator to make Sure that the old hood would not close as it looked like the radiator was too tall. The new hood was installed and closed & latched just fine then the radiator was set in place, and it cleared by a 1/16"
After the car was moved to the center bay and sat for a couple days, I saw a puddle of oil under the rear end and thought it was just the seal leaking and moved the car back to car hoist for seal replacement.
I had to use a gear puller to get the pinion yoke off and then I see the roller bearings laying in front of the bearing. The gear puller had to be used again to get the pinion gear assembly out and the ring gear and pilot bearing looked OK.
The yoke, seal, bearing rollers and flange/gear assembly are shown below with the destroyed front bearing frozen to the pinion shaft.
I had to use the hydraulic press to remove the bearing from the shaft.
This is all the ruined parts with the flange with damage where the bearing rollers worn the area in front of the race, the yoke with a groove worn where the seal rides and the front & back bearings.
The car came with 2 rear ends, one with the disc brakes and one without so I brought the other rear end in and pulled the pinion gear assembly out thinking that I could just use the second pinion assembly.
This is all the parts from both rear end pinion assemblies. The 2-pinion gear and shafts one is in usable condition with the bearing's replaced, the other has a Badley worn shaft end where it goes into the pilot bearing and the pinion gear has pits in it. One flange and one yoke are less worn than the other.
New seal, front & back bearings have been ordered so the car will just have to sit on the hoist until they get here. Next post I'll let you know how it all turns out. I guess this is why it's called a "Project Car".
1. side note this isn't the first or second employee error on orders. Between the hold time (always upwards to an hour) to the I can't fix this; My wife and I have agreed to not use this Company any longer. It's too bad as a good source for Mustang parts it's the best. But, the attitude of the employees and the inability to fix their errors removes them from a useable vendor.
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