Front suspension bushings replaced

 2 July 2026

   I have had a clunk in my suspension for a few months and bought new poly bushes over the winter. Enough for both ends as my rear left side has developed a lean.

First thing to do was rip the skin off my hand when I went to undo the first lugnut! I just dragged it on the tire....

I cleaned it up and stuck a bandaid and bug killer on it, then gloves....

Once the lugnuts were all loose I jacked it up by the spring and put a jackstand under the front bumper. Then went about taking off the shock. The shock is damaged from the first spring/shock plate being too short and the brake caliper hitting it at full turn.

I am getting new shocks and will adjust the turn stop.

Anyway I got the spring off and the inner sleeves were broken loose from the rubber and one side was smashed down. 

Original factory bushes lasted 50+ years, these less than 10.

I've learned over the year to put my spring in a vise and pound a steel wedge in the gap for the bush spring. Then I can use a chisel and pound the shit out of the inner tube until it decides to relocate to the floor. These took A LOT of convincing!

I won!

The new poly's were installed with anti seize and I attacked the poly chassis bush removal. It fought tooth and nail eventually giving way by running a long drill bit, 3/16" down the side and chewing out the poly. I got the outside bush out and could clamp a vise grips on the inner tube and with a LARGE crescent wrench on the vise grips I was able to wiggle the tube out and knock out the remaining poly.

New chassis poly's were installed with plenty of anti seize.

Then began the mighty struggle! I could not for the life of me get the axle housing to line up on the spring and seat properly. I fought it for 3 hours in the hot sun. I was whipped, I didn't eat lunch as I was too filthy to go inside, and I thought I was almost done........

By whipped I mean I was sooo tired and sore I could barely move and cook dinner. I left it to sit over the Fourth of July weekend, I missed the pancake breakfast and parade.......I had time to think though and realized I was trying to put the shock mount plate and locate the axle at the same time. When 5 July rolled around and I did the axle then the shock plate in sequence I had it together in 40 minutes. I won again!

That was the first one!

By 8 July I started on the right side. It had other ideas too! I removed the tire and all the u bolt nuts and the shackle pins and the spring just sat there stuck to the axle housing! WTF? I banged on it with heavy hammers and nothing. The rear was tight up against the frame. Eventually I used my steel chisel to separate the 2 bits.

Again the inner bushing tubes were finger removed.

The spring had apparently rusted onto the axle housing.

I wire wheeled that and coated it with anti seize as well as the bottom of the axle housing.

One of the pins showed some wear and was probably the clunking I could hear and feel underfoot when driving.

I rummaged through my spares and found a matching set of pins and shackles.

Next came the arduous task of removing the old leaf bushes. So into the vise put in the wedge and pound the crap out of it until it screamed "UNCLE"! At both ends!

  Put in the poly's and throw it back on the 109 armed with what I had learned from the first spring. Easy Peasy!

I am currently working on doing the rears. I will drive it and torque it when all are done. It's supposed to be in the low 90F for the next 3 days so I may work slower that normal.

Door knocker

 I've lived in my house for 36 years now and it's never had a door knocker or doorbell. Lately I don't know if it's my hearing or the folks at the door are not knocking hard enough for me to hear them.

So over the past year or so I've been trying to come up with something unique. I finally figured it out with a 3" stainless ball and 3/8" stainless rod which I drilled and tapped for the threaded insert which came with the ball. I also had some 3/16" stainless rod which I drilled the bigger rod for in one end. I bent this into a "U" and drilled a flat plate of 1/2" aluminum to fit the uprights of the "U". I cleaned the plate and added several coats of semigloss clear. And drilled 2, 3/16"mounting holes to fit my 9 x 1.25" wood screws.

It will probably be 6 months or more before anyone uses it..........

Well at least it's there!

Sundials?

 Hi, I have a friend whose birthday is the first part of February. I like to make things for friends and relatives rather than buy something, to show how special I think they are. Plus I like making things. Most of the time I struggle to come up with the "right" thing. It usually means making it from stuff I already have.

   For Marie I decided to make a sundial. I had these 2 aluminum gears sitting around for years. Both were 10" x 1/4" and 50 teeth. I didn't think to make a blog about my sundials until I was well into the project so there are no early pictures.

   One of the first things I did was find out about marking the time on the dials. For this I found a website online; https://sundials.org/index.php/sundial-registry/selectdials/CA.html     It helped me realize that I could do a sundial and gave me help figuring out the correct degrees for the latitude I needed.

https://sundials.org/index.php/teachers-corner/sundial-mathematics

   So armed with that I found the latitude of Marie's home and measured and cut out a gnomon from 1 of the gears I had.

 

   On the other gear I had already laid out the angles for the hours and did a test fit of the gnomon.

    Partly because I didn't know what I was doing or had the proper tools for engraving the lines, things were often kinda off. But I persevered. I drew a circle to put the hour numbers in and bought a set of 3/8" number and letter stamps for marking them.

    I needed to center my circle compass for the proper look and I found the center of a hard drive gear fit the 1" hole perfect and it has a center dent for the compass to fit!

   Next came mounting the gnomon. I did a test fit and figured out I could do 2 screw holes through the bottom into the gnomon. I figured 10 x 32 would work cause I had a couple of those screw already.

    Well I drilled and tapped being very careful to get the holes aligned and careful of the tap in the holes to not break. So much for that I broke 2 taps..... I repositioned the gnomon and redrilled everything this time going with 1/4-20 . It worked out though I had to cut the nose off the gnomon to make it look nice.

    I did not get any pics of hammering the numbers in. It was very hard I'm pretty sure this is not just aluminum but some kind of harder alloy. When I was too soft on the first strike it was hard to line up the stamp and not do a double stamp. It was also difficult to cut the hour lines in. I wound up with a steel ruler and an ice pick doing multiple scratches to get some depth.

   Then came polishing. I went with 220-400-600-1000 and lastly with Brasso polish on a cotton wheel on my drill press. Took forever!

Finally I wrapped it up for her birthday. 

She loved it!

SUNDIAL PART TWO;

    Of course now I wanted one for myself.... I had a piece of 1/4 x 6" copper plate and I figured I could get 2 sundials out of it. So I laid out 2 circles.

This time with all my vast experience and knowledge.........I used a wood circle cutter mounted in my drill press to mark a 5.5" inner circle and drill and tap the center for a "stick" type gnomon.

These gnomon were made from 1/4" brass rod and shaped in my drill press with my dremel tool sanding drum. I tried cutting out the full size of the disc with the cutting tool but my drill press was not strong enough and kept stalling out.

    During this process I discovered that I could use my drill press to keep the holes and the tap aligned as the holes don't go through. I used the same trick to center the end of the gnomon in the die clamped to the press table to align everything. Worked a treat!

Next up was to mark the hour lines. 6am and 6pm were at 90° on the circle and noon 90° from them.

              Then using the numbers I got off the sundial website  I used a compass to mark them.

    Most were just tick marks so I could line up what ever engraving device on later.

    I marked all the hours and drew lines, leaving the outer circle empty for the numbers.

    At the bottom I used blue marker pen to make a place for the latitude these sundials are made for.

Then I went about stamping all the hour numbers at the top of the lines. Next I clamped a straight edge by the blue line and put in the latitude numbers.

    I thought I had all the hard work done. Then it was time to cut out the sundials....... My Dewalt jigsaw was a a piece o .......!  The blades kept falling out. I replaced the holder and had the same issue. I contacted DeWalt and there was/is no redesign of the holder. So I bought a cordless Ryobi! Most of my cordless tools are Ryobi so it fits for me. The Ryobi uses the T blades and they stay in. I used it to cut out the sundials.

Of course it wasn't perfect like a circle cutter would do. There was lots of sanding off the cutmarks and nubs.

I did get them cut out eventually. I really needed to engrave the lines in deeper as they might disappear during sanding. Making a jig on my drill press table to hold the sundial I was able to clamp a steel ruler and drag my circle cutter tip. now held in visegrips, across the lines multiple times to cut and recut the lines. This was the hardest part of the whole job and I did it twice!

       Then came polishing. I went with 220-400-600-1000 and lastly with Brasso polish on a cotton wheel on my drill press. Took forever!

    I gave 1 of them to my neighbor Lynn and kept 1 for myself. Not the greatest picture, here is mine on my back porch.

   One of the things I learned is that my property doesn't have a good safe place for it. My front yard is right along the street and this being solid copper would be an easy target.

Anywho a couple of fun projects!