Daniel S. Eiland wrote:
>My car will go into the shop soon for it's first paint
>job since the factory. I would like to remove the softtop
>frame and repaint it while the car is in for it's paint job.
>Can anyone tell me if this is a major undertaking and if
>so what should I expect? or is this a pretty straight forward
>job that can be done in a day or two over a weekend?
Dan, as there's not much holding it in, it _could_ be painted in
a day, yeah. I took mine out and had it stripped down to bare metal
first; I was afraid of getting grit in the hinges if I had it
sandblasted, so I had mine chemically dipped (5 days in the tank). Then
I spraypainted it. To big to fit into the household oven to bake it,
though. :^)
Dave Johnson wrote:
>By all mean remove the top. Before repainting remove the
>windshield and frame. Rustproof the h*ll out of the frame and
>then have it repainted to match the car.
I never thought of having it painted the same color as the body,
hmmmm. At the time I did mine, I didn't know that the original soft-tops
had a gray lining, so the gray paint on the frame looked silly to me. I
painted mine black, to match the inside of my soft-top.
Chris wrote:
>Where can I find poly bushings for the front and rear suspension
>on myTiger.
A) Front A-arm bushings: I'm just switching over to the
plastic-and-aluminum ones from Dale's All British and don't know how
they'll work; they do have grease fittings built right in. They're part
of the 'kit' that includes HD fulcrum pins, I don't know if they're
available separately or would even work with stock pins. Before that, I
had a set of Delrin bushings from Tiger Auto Service in Ohio, and had no
problems.
B) Front sway-bar bushings: I don't think they'll be available as a
ready-to-bolt-in, what I did was order a set of generic sway-bar
bushings from J C Junk and cut/grind them down to fit the factory
brackets. Time-consuming but not difficult. I had my A-arms reinforced
where the brackets clip in to prevent them from 'tearing', just-in-case.
C) Front Shocks: Again, J C Junk generic items, went right in.
D) Front Upper/Lower limit snubbers: generic Energy Suspension items.
For the lower, use one designed for traction bars, sort of a stepped
cone, bolts right in. The upper one I used was about 3/4"H x 3/4"dia.
E) Rear Springs: I don't know, I'm using the rubber ones that came in my
new rear springs; they're smaller in diameter than stock, shouldn't give
as much. Anybody else know?
F) Rear shocks: Same as front.
G) Panhard rod: No idea. I just got a new set of stock rubber ones.
Anybody else know?
Chris, I think you've subscribed recently enough to have missed
a fair % of the installments of "underneath", my suspension rebuild
story. If you want to read it, I have it saved as a Word document and
can send it to you. It's about 10,000 words so far. I've made about
every possible mistake, you might find it instructive in what _not_ to
do!
A fair amount of the above is re-post; but then again, it has
been re-asked. :^)
Lawrence R. Wright
Purchasing Analyst
Andrews Office Products Div. of USOP
larry.wright@usop.com (new)
Ph. 301.386.7923 Fx. 301.386.5333
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