Previously on "The Pamilcar"... see above post.
August 25th I began the process of leveling centering, and straightening the rear end in it's new home.
I'd taken a look in the jaguar factory manual hoping it would lsit axle droop at ride height, but it didn't, rather giving a distance from the ground to the bottom edge of the subframe bottom plate. My Calibrated Eye thought that the angle on the drawing in the book looked to be about 5deg, and so I checked horizontal level on the top of the differential case mounting bolts, jacked the axles to 5 deg droop, and made some tubes to replace the shocks and hold the axles at that angle. luckily it turned out that 1.5 square tubing raised the differential housing up just the right amount so that the stock wheels and tires slid right onto the lug bolts. Yay, as it were.
Attachment:
jag rear levelctr 1 825.JPG
then began two evenings of tweaking the position of that assembly until, on 8/27, I finally realized I wasn't going to get it any closer to perfect center and straightness than I'd gotten is, sat back, and said aloud, "Enough!"
Attachment:
jag rear levelctr 2 827.JPG
...And clamped it into place using both the lower control arm brackets...
Attachment:
jag rear levelctr 3 828.JPG
...and the pinion snout.
Attachment:
jag rear levelctr 4 828.JPG
The next evening, 8/28, (after measuring the positions of the top shock mounts in relation to my scribed-on chassis datums) I cut the original Jag safety wire...
Attachment:
jag rear unbolt 1 828.JPG
...and removed the last piece of the original subframe for the last time.
I made sure the pinion snout flange was at zero in Y...
Attachment:
jag rear pinion angle 828.JPG
...measured the angle of the differential case top mounting surface (5 deg if you're wondering).
Attachment:
jag rear top mount angle 828.JPG
.
...and once again called it a night.
Oh, in a bit of serendipitous happenstance, I found that I could use the orginal subframe bottom plate to clamp the differential case into the frame, clearing up space formerly occupied by my giant 6-inch C-clamps. Pic from 9/02.
Attachment:
jag rear low pan 1 902.JPG
Then I spent a week or so thinking about things, looking over my notes in the infamous and ever-wonderful build notebook, and finally came up with what I thought would be a good mounting plan. Probably overly complex, but y'know, what could possibly go wrong?
First, on the evening of 9/06, I cut and drilled some 1 x 2 x .083 tube for half-inch bolts, for a test fit.
Attachment:
jag mount 1 906.JPG
That seemed to work okay. Next up making crush tubes to weld into the tubes. I cut some .75 x .156 wall polished DOM at the edge of the rain.
Attachment:
jag rear crush tubes 1 906.JPG
While it poured down buckets...
Attachment:
rain 906.JPG
...I drilled the tube sections for half-inch bolts.
Attachment:
jag rear crush tubes 2 906.JPG
...and that's the 12 picture limit, so we'll continue on September 9th...