INTERIOR

 Finally, after 4 months wait I was able to pick up the seats and door coverings. 300 bucks was a very good price I think. The seat squab will hinge at the front to allow the set base be a storage box.

NICKEL PLATING

 I wanted to nickel plate the steering wheel nut so I did some research and found it is dead simple. It requires white vinegar, salt, a 4 volt 1 amp power supply and some nickel strips available from:...you guessed it Amazon!! If interested go to youtube and have a look at "nickle plating". 

STEERING WHEEL HUB

 The hub on the original steering wheel is a zinc casting and it had started de laminating badly. 

Among all the parts I got was a machined hub to accept a modern style wheel. I decided to take this and modify it by adding a lid and milling slots to fit the spokes of the original wheel. Some tricky work but it came out very nice.

Doing this required removing the zinc from the wheel hub; not an easy task.

Machining the slots in the hub. Did the same for the lid and some filing to match them up.

I had to machine a fake nut that would hold the wheel to the steering shaft. I plan to nickle plate it next. The finished product came out nice I think.

REGISTRATION PLATE, LUGGAGE RACK

 Still haven't gotten the engine back yet so other project move on. I have renewed the registration plate and I had a new wheel cover made by a friend; also installed the luggage rack. I bought some oval head screws but found they stuck up too high due to the angle of the chamfer. I put them into the lathe and made appropriate cuts to change the angle. Better fit now.

The car had been registered by the previous owner as a car to avoid the helmet laws. I was unable to change that when I registered it. I'll have to live with the HUGE tag. The front plate is in progress.

PROPSHAFT INSTALLED

I installed the shaft and gearbox yesterday. I used this bicycle inner tube to go over the input gear and a sleeve glued to the propshaft. This was a perfect fit.  The RTV got smoothed out more before it was bolted up.

PROPSHAFT FINISHED

The new propshaft is finished now. I had to have the shaft straightened as it cam in with a bow; was replaced but the new one was bowed too. Anyway the clutch splines are cut as well s the keyways and the snap ring groove to contain the bearing. 

 

The support bearing is 7/8" x 2" and the torque tube is 2.375 ID nominal so a sleeve is required.

The gearbox input shaft or constant mesh gear leaks down the keyways and drips into the torque tube. That oil can pass forward and end up in the clutch disk. See my previous post to prevent this. It didn't work. I have been advised to get a short length of bicycle inner tube to fit the gearbox input and to make a sleeve to Loctite onto the prop shaft to accept the forward end of the rubber tube. This looks like a great solution.

This photo shows the torque tube flange to the right with the propshaft sticking out to the left. The gear box is removed. When installing the gearbox I have the rubber sleeve rolled over on the  input shaft. I slid the propshaft into the input shaft and rolled the rubber sleeve over onto the alum. piece to make the seal.

I will follow up with how this works out.

 

new propshaft

 When driving I got a vibration at about 45mph. It has to be the dreaded propshaft whip that is so common with the F type Morgan. My choice is to make a new shaft from 7/8" dia. 4340 steel. The bar should come in by the end of this week so today I made a test spline to be sure I could do it; never done one before. It came out just great, maybe a bit too tight so I'll add a couple thou. of slop in the real shaft.

The Bulletin has several articles on the subject. I'll add a support bearing part way up from the rear but not at mid point of the shaft. Some of the articles talk about using 2 or even 3 support bearings but I believe one is enough. One works fine with the twin car 2 piece shaft and it has worked with my JZR also. The idea is to break up the harmonic frequency of the shaft and raise the critical speed of the shaft.

More to come on this as it progresses.