Rear suspension and diff trial fit

I've been having fun up the shed and have some progress to report.

I removed the original diff and leaf springs. It was a bigger job than I estimated, some seized nuts in some difficult places. I ended up using the gas axe to cut through the springs as the front mounts were in a tricky spot making removal a pain even without having seized and rusted stuff to deal with. i'm glad I'm not restoring her - so I can be a bit brutal when removing stubborn parts.

Tonight I spent a few hours up the shed after work - I got the Jag rear end trial fitted to see how things line up.

I'm very happy with how it all lines up - it's almost like it was made to go under the Wolseley! The distance between the chassis rails lines up very well with the distance between the mounts on the rear suspension cradle.

The trailing arms line perfectly with the front suspension leaf mounts! 8) My engineer will love this! :)

Plenty of clearance between the tyre and the inner guard, no need to tub this baby. I will be running tyres that are 10 mm wider (215 as opposed to the 205s that are on the rims currently.

The mark shows roughly the centreline of the existing rear axle. As can be seen, I need to move the whole assembly forward a smidge. It was getting late and I didn't want to dick around with it any further tonight.

Things line up fairly well for the outer tyre edge clearance to the guard. Still need to look closely at this, I still might need to widen the guards slightly.

Tomorrow night I plan to compress the springs to ride height and drop the vehicle down and see how it all lines up. I might put the rear guards on too.

The new job is going great, I love working closer to home - it means I can do cool stuff up the shed after work! :lol: I'll sleep well tonight.

Andrew.

Some progress to report. Still not actually building yet, getting there.

I spent a couple of days stripping the final useful parts from the Jaguar - resorted to the gas axe for the front suspension mounts (really I just wanted to try the gas axe out - it's been over 20 years since I wielded one!)

Dragged the body shell from the workshop using the tractor. I got lazy. I let the jack down with only one hand trolley under the front of the body.

The hand trolley survived only as far as the shed door, then one of the wheels completely separated from it's hub and the whole lot catastrophically collapsed. Cor blimey that Jag was heavy! Thankfully it made it out the shed door so I didn't end up damaging my shed floor. I ended up just lifting the car up and putting the old bonnet under the end to act as a skid. (My wife's suggestion!)

It worked a treat for most of the hundred odd yard journey up the drive to the front paddock where the car was left for the scrappy to collect.

Nice paint effect on the bonnet!

That cleared some room in the shed to get on with other things.

I painted up a couple of Jaguar wheels to see how they'd look with the Wolseley caps on, I'm happy with how they look.

I also played around with the ride height of the front end, but I'll have to remove the axles next to fiddle around to see how it will all fit together. I'm looking forward to getting into the real stuff, I feel like I'm just stuffing around so far, but it's all worth my time, I'm not really the "feet first" type.

On another note, I got tracked down by a Wolseley enthusiast from Sydney (Andrew Snelling of Peking to Paris fame) and we finally met up this week. He is preparing his 14/60 to take to the Australia Day MotorFest in Sydney city. It was great to meet him and check out his 14/60 he and his father restored in the mid 1980s. I didn't quite realise how rare the 14/60 was, his is the only one on the road in New South Wales, and he'd know - he really is Mr Wolseley.

He has another complete 14/60 under a tarp waiting restoration, I wish I had the money to buy it and the spare time to restore it.

Next job: remove the front and rear axles from the Wolseley, check the clearance of the wheels given the track width and set some sort of ride height/rake.

And I start my new job on Monday. Bring it on. :lol:

Cheers all,

Andrew.