We don’t seem to be able to escape our problems with the fitment of the rear axle hubs and brake drums. A thorough accounting of the issues we faced were first documented in several videos included in an earlier post:https://valvechatter.com/?p=13569

We thought we had conquered the problems we had encountered with the hub rubbing the axle flange and with the brake drum rubbing against the brake backplate, but upon installing the road wheels and tires we discovered that all had not been corrected! 

The wheel on the left side of the car turned freely but on the right side we found that despite the hub nuts being tightened and torqued to 38 ft. lbs. as directed in the maintenance manual, the wheel and tire wobbled back and forth. It is a little hard to tell but it can be seen in the beginning of the Bugeye Restoration Video Episode Ninety-two. We then tried a pair of brand new Moss Classic Gold brake drums that we had on hand.

Unfortunately, the new drums rubbed against the backplates just ever so slightly. We visited our friend, Randy Forbes, and he graciously set up his milling machine to remove .0075″ from the back side of each brake drum. We then mounted them on the car and found that we had eliminated the rubbing against the brake back plates, but we still had the dreaded wobble on the RH wheel.

We removed the RH axle half-shaft, bent back the locking tab washer and tightened the hub nut to 145 ft lbs. This actually turned the nut very little but it was sufficient to eliminate the wheel wobble. Not really sure about the mechanics of all of this but we will take it and move on!

All of this trial and error is shown in the Bugeye Restoration Episode Ninety-two video. 

https://vimeo.com/1050905261/b7432414cf?share=copy

We will now machine the edges of the drums and see if we can end up with a fully operational axle assembly. Stay tuned….