What... the Diff?

(post from Jack)

The diff is out - you'll have to take my word for it since i forgot the camera today.

But first - this morning, Joe let me in his rented garage to collect the wheels and trailing arms from "the farm car" that we recently dragged out of a field. This is when I first really missed the camera - Joe removing the front wheels in his lawyer shirt and tie would have been a great shot. Loaded with 8 wheels - 4 from the farm car and 4 from Lacey - I went to see Jon Cannup - he dismounted all 8 dry-rotted Michelins - all 8 had tubes - which is surely the only reason any of them held air more than 5 minutes.

Anyway - we spun all 8 wheels on Jon's balancer - on a TR6 lug pattern adapter - I'm gonna call 5 of them pretty good and 3 of them good enough to use...

On to Concord - Lacey let go the diff with little resistance today - all 4 bolts on the front flange broke loose - then I managed to borrow a vise grip small enough to grab the pin inside the broken mount and keep it from spinning. Unfortunately the broken mount is worse than I thought - I had thought (by feel) that the front edge of the mount had just separated from the frame - turns out the whole front half of the mount is missing - along with a bit of the frame to which it was attached.

Todd - our welder / cage fabricator - looked at the car today on the lift - before I got there - I should let Joe report on that as he talked to Todd and I haven't - but I gather he saw nothing un-repairable and gave the thing a really good look as he spotted something I had not - the part of the body shell to which the front right corner of the driver side floor pan is attached is ...ah...not really attached to anything anymore - but it sounds like Todd can fix everything - and weld the diff - and still be cheaper than anybody else.

Cheers,

Jack Mc