Roasting an Alpine

Alphie goes belly-up for rusticle surgery

Page Nine:  Alphie on a Spit!

I got to thinking - a dangerous thing, I admit - but to transplant the Organ Donor's nose onto Alphie, I'll need get the body panel gaps even...

• To get the body panel gaps even, I'll need to mount and secure the doors.
• To mount and secure the doors, I'll need to replace the inner rocker panels to rigiditify (my new word) Alphie’s bod.  
• To replace the inner rocker panels, I'll need easy access to Alphie’s tummy.·
• To get to Alphie’s tummy, I'll need her on a rotisserie.
• To get Alphie on the rotisserie, I'll have to cut and modify two Harbor Freight engine stands
• To mount Alphie to the HF engine stand rotisserie, I'll have to replace the frame rail tips where the front bumper mounts... one thing leads to another!

Therefore, I conclude, that I shouldn’t cut-off any Sunbeam noses just yet!

Oh, I built a rotisserie!  BUT, as with everything concerning Alphie, spinning her on a spit turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

Problem #1 – I Need a Coupla Inches:  The engine stands are too short.  In order to rotate the body 90 degrees, the engine stands need to be taller than half the width of the car.  After much measuring, I need them to be at least 34 inches from the stand’s mounting plate to its bottom rail.

The engine stand upright (cut) with the 2X4 rectangular stock
that get it to 34" (or close enough)

A friend who manufactures laser cutting machines, gave me a length of 2X4 rectangular mild steel tube stock that fits over the post of the engine stand, meaning the post will fit inside the rectangular stock.  First, I had to cut the engine stand post in half.  Next, I inserted the engine stand upright inside the rectangular stock and laid it out on the bench.  I expanded the post/rectangular stock until the bottom edge of the mounting plate receiver was 35.5 inches from the top of the bottom of the post where the perpendicular beam meets the post. 

Thirty-five and a half inches turned out to be the magic number that will allow Alphie to rotate 90 degrees without banging into the legs of the stands.  I can work and weld her rusty underbelly without having to muck about on the floor. 

Fun fact, welding upside down SUCKS!

Close up shows the angle adjustment screws 

I have never worked on a restoration without having to scooch under and out-from-under a car thousands of times.  I’m looking forward to NOT doing that!

Problem #2: - I Need a Few Degrees:  Engine stands tilt the engine mounting plate back slightly; I assume to keep it from sliding off the stand.  The receiver on the top of the post where the mounting plate attaches is not at a right angle to the post.  When you press engine stands into service as a car rotisserie, the mounting plate must be perpendicular to the car’s center line.  

In other words, I need to tilt the receiver and mounting plate down a couple of degrees to level them.

Not bad.  We call that Bonehead Level

My solution is to mount the upper section of the post (the section with the mounting plate receiver) up against the inside of the rectangular stock so that it is locked in-line with the rectangular stock.  (See the pictures; it will help you follow this discussion immensely!)  I placed the lower post section in the middle of the rectangular stock to give me some movement where I can adjust the angle of the mounting plate.

I drilled holes and welded three nuts on the sides of the rectangular plate so that I can adjust the angle of the mounting plates.  The bottom two cap screws give me some fine-tuning and lock the angle.  (I added the cap screw just below the mounting plate receiver for adjustment to eliminate some movement.  I only want movement that I plan for.)  Again, check out the pics.

Problem #3 – I Need a Wider Stance:  The width between the engine stand’s wheels is too narrow.  I don’t want Alphie pitching over when I rotate her on the rotisserie. 

Extra stance and racing tires

Sub-Problem:  I also need to be able to roll the whole kit and caboodle around the garage, so I need some decent wheels.  The little metal casters that come with the stand just don’t pass muster.  I bought some 6” pneumatic casters from our patron saint, Harbor Freight.

I mounted the engine stand post to a 5-foot section of 4X4 and mounted the pneumatic casters to the 4X4.  Plenty of stance with plenty of wheel for rolling about!

Problem #4 – I Need a Connection:  I watched a few Engine Stand to Rotisserie Conversion videos, and I noticed a situation.  In the one video, a guy using the same HF engine stands I’m using had each stand holding up its end of the car independently of the other stand.  It looked to me that if he tried to roll the car on the rotisserie  – or move the car on any axis, for that matter - the engine stands would separate from each other and drop the car, mashing the car and any hapless soul who happened to be near it at the time. 

I need to connect the engine stands, front to back, so that the whole contraption moves as one piece.  Enter another a length of 2X6 - I had a twelve foot one taking up WAY too much room in my shed.  Instead of mounting the supplied rotating caster on the front leg of the engine stand, I mounted the front legs of each stand to a 2X6 to set a fixed distance from each other.  I mounted a fifth pneumatic caster in the middle of the 2X6 to prevent the whole thing from sagging in the middle.

Problem #5 – I Need Better Mounts:  Alphie has had surgery before…  It seems that someone in the Alphie’s past welded nuts on the end of her front frame rails where the front bumper mounts.  The angry studs that protrude like British dentistry from the frame tips threaten to tetanize (it’s a word, I Googled it) anyone walking past.  The studs are scary, rusted, stripped, and they’re too short.

Ahhh! 

I mounted the stand’s mounting plate to a 2X6, which I then fitted to Alphie using the shiny new bumper attachment points.  For all this mounting to happen, I added longer bolts (actually, they are pieces of ½” all thread) than the studs currently poking out of Alphie’s smile.

Sub-Problem – Shiny New Frame Rail Tips:  The frame tips where the front bumper mounts are “perished;” I need new ones!  (See the blog post, FIRST FABRICATION, about making new ones.) 

I love the smell of mig welding in the morning!

Problem #6 – Trimming the Fat:  Alphie needs to be at her lightest when she twirls.  I stripped everything down to her shell – nothing on the firewall, interior or underbelly.  I removed all manner of parts tossed in her boot and interior, all of which went to my secret storage hidey-hole.  Nothing is piled under the car… yet, more of a challenge that it sounds.

Going Up!

Problem #7 – Hoisting Her:  Once stripped to her knickers, I hoisted her high enough for receivers to meet mounting plates.  

My engine cherry picker handled her front end and my chain hoist mounted on a substantial I-beam that my house builder so thoughtfully included in my garage.  He added it to keep the attic above the garage, you know, actually above the garage.  I use it to lift various kinds of heavy kit off the floor, including Alphie, smashing!

All Mounted Up!

She’s finally spitted on her rotisserie!

At first, I thought I had her too high.  I feared that she would hit the garage door when I spun her.  I thought of several ways to drop a couple of inches – each idea required a good deal of re-engineering and a bit fiddly.  Then I thought, may as well give it a whirl (snort!:)

This angle shows how the rotisserie works

I took out the pins that keep the mounting plates from spinning inside their receivers, and she sat peacefully on her center line.  Then I nudged the handle on the front mounting plate just a smidge and Alphie rolled belly-up all on her own.  Seems she’s a bit top-heavy, not exactly balanced.  

I could slow her roll so she’s somewhat balanced but she is too heavy for to stop her from rolling, much less rotate her back the other way. 

If she had been less balanced, the let’s-give-it-a-whirl” idea could have been much scarier.  It’s better to be lucky, especially if you’re not that good.

Note:  Use the I-beam chain hoist to manage the roll in the future.  Cars are heavy, turns out.

Next up:  Serious Surgery!

Now I can get to work!  I couldn't fix all this laying on the ground!

Oh, I have a grinder, two in fact!  There is good metal in there.

FIRST FABRICATION

I was ready to put Alphie on the rotisserie until I saw this.

Page Eight:  Finally Fabricating!

I decided to spit Alphie like a roasting pig on my Homemade-Harbor-Freight-Engine-Stand-Rotisserie.  I modified the engine stands and got the rotisserie ready to mount an Alpine (that blog post is coming, soon).  But, when I looked into where to affix rotisserie to car, I found the front bumper mounts at the tips of the frame rails were No Bueno!  Rusty with stripped threads and someone had welded nuts to the ends to mount the front bumper, like I said, No Bueno!  FABRICATION BABY!  I’ve been waiting for this!

Shiny New Frame Rail Tips

My new fabrication bench, complete with sheet metal brake, lots-o-new metal fab trinkets and such kit, gets its first test!

I need to make one of these.  (From the Organ Donor)

Step One:  Trot out to the Organ Donor and rip off the passenger-side frame rail tip - by hand, no tools needed!  Yep, it is that rusty.  The avulsed (vocab word of the day) rail tip gives me something to measure without climbing under Alphie hundreds of times.  It also shows me how the Rootes folks put it together. 

I’m admitting here, without shame or apology, that I’m completely metric when I’m fabricating.  I can tell you exactly what half of 950mm is.  Don’t forget, I am an English teacher by trade.  I have no idea what half of 1 7/8” is.  No hate!

Step Two:  Destroy several file folders!  I saw this trick somewhere; make templates from file folders.  File folders are cheap, and I have tons of them laying around. 

Generically, the steps are 1) measure the dingus (many times), 2) transfer the measurements to a file folder, 3) cut the file folder to the shape, 4) trace the file folder template onto sheet metal, 5) cut the sheet metal to shape, 6) bend it, 7) weld it and 8) BAM! A new dingus!  (There are many other fiddly tasks, along with some screwing up, but those are the basic steps.)

The frame is made of boxed sheet metal (14 or 16 gauge depending), so I made two file folder templates: one for the inner frame and one for the outer frame.  Check out the pics of the file folder templates and the cut sheet metal cut from the template.  The templates work for the left and right sides; all I had to do was make the bends in opposite directions.

File Folder Template transferred to sheet metal.  The red lines have scribe marks showing bend locations

Sub-Problem One - Jack points:  Alpines use, as I see it, the sketchiest method of jacking the car on the side of a motorway.  I’m sure it works fine as long as you’re on a perfectly flat, level and dry concrete surface, but nowhere else.  The Rootes-provided “jack” uses an upward-angled, square stock gizmo that fits into an equally upward-angled square hole located just under the bumper attachment point.  A chap is to slide the jack’s angled proboscis into the square hole and, using the lug wrench, crank the nut on top of the jack to raise the tire off the (we’ll say) earth.  (Check out the pic of the “jack’s” base – a measly 2” diameter disc guaranteed to sink into anything less that Sahara-dry soil.  Best case: only have tire troubles in dry car parks (parking lots, to us yanks.) 

My generous description for this whole setup is “teetery”.  I suspect that, back in the day, smart Alpine owners bought a scissor jack on the way home from the dealership and chucked it in the boot.  Oh, and never, no matter the emergency, put any part of anyone’s body under an Alpine when it is precariously propped on its factory jack!

The Rootes Jack - Just don't use it!

But, in the spirit of authenticity, I must recreate the jacking point on my new frame rail tips.  To wit, I picked up some 1” ID square stock, which fits perfectly over the Rootes disability-waiting-to-happen jack’s prong.  I decided that the square stock needed some reinforcement so I welded a strip of 1” flat steel stock to the top of it.  You can’t see the reinforcement in the finished rail tip.  At any rate, I plan to keep a scissor jack in the boot.  The Rootes jack is only for show and/or demonstration purposes.

Sub-Problem Two – Substantial attachment points:  The Rootes folk used a ½” fine thread (of course!) captured nut for the bumper bolt.  I feared that I would need something more substantial for the rotisserie attachment point.  I discovered that “coupling nuts” exist and are used to connect pieces of all-thread together.  Of course, no big box store has ½” coupling nuts, so to the internet! 

Bolt Depot gets a shout out here – I love ‘em; they have everything.  I ordered four ½” fine thread (they had fine thread, a strike for authenticity) coupling nuts along with a length of ½” fine thread all-thread that I’ll use to attach a 2X6 to the bumper attachments and then the engine stand plate to the 2X6.

Step Three:  Cut out the sheet metal!  I did all the tweaking on the file folder templates.  (It took a couple tries.)  Next, I made the bends in the templates and matched them to the frame tip I yanked from the Organ Donor.  I only had to cut the sheet metal once!  Each piece bent up exactly like the template!  No wasted sheet metal!  (OK, a small confession:  the first inner frame rail piece I bent in the wrong direction.  I was making the right tip, and I bent the piece in direction needed for the left side.  No worries, I saved it to for the left tip!)

The front piece before I welded the coupling nut

Step Four:  Welding!  First, I welded the coupling nut to the front piece.  The front piece is a rectangular piece of sheet metal that I cut and bent to fit over the opening of the boxed frame rail (see the pics).  Once the front piece was formed and fitted to the frame opening, I drilled a ½” hole in the center of the front piece.  I grabbed a ½” bumper bolt, a washer and a nut, and secured the coupling nut to the inner part of the front piece.  Then welded the coupling nut to the front piece. 

All the pieces ready for welding - also the original and the left side rail tip welded up.

I drilled holes in the side of the sheet metal where the piece of square stock rests and fill-welded each hole.  Fill-welds simulate spot welds, are just as effective and a great way to glue together sheet metal where it overlaps.

When the 16-gauge sheet metal is bent to shape and welded, it’s quite robust.

Yours truly burning some wire!

Step Five – Grinding and priming:  I’m using flux core wire in my MIG welder so the welds aren’t exactly stacked-nickels clean.  The flux core wire leaves copious spatter and ragged surfaces.  (I’m learning to weld during this project, so it’s not all the machine’s fault.)

I have a myriad of grinding apparatus, both electric and pneumatic, and trusty hand files too.  With some self-etching primer, the pieces are ready to weld on to Alphie.

Step Six – Getting the tips even!  Step six requires many trips under and out from under Alphie to measure, measure, measure!  I’m looking for a fixed point on each frame rail where I can consistently measure to the rail tip for a definitive length. 

Once I build up the courage to cut the frame rails, I’ll measure from my fixed points to get a consistent distance to the tip of each rail.  I’ll spot weld each tip to its rail and measure a few hundred times more before I stitch the welds together and grind it all smooth.  I plan to fill-weld some scab plates inside the box frame at the junction where each tip meets its frame rail.  All part of my build-to-110% plan.  I will take it as a win if the frame tips don’t bend while I’m rotating Alphie around on her rotisserie.

If they do bend, I’ll throw a proper wobbly!  (Gratuitous Britishism for this post!  I’m rather chuffed I found a way to use it:)

Welded and ground down.  All it needs now is primer, paint and to be installed in Alphie.

Next Up:  Roasting an Alpine!

Captain's Log, Supplemental – Fitting the Shiny New Frame Tips

The frame tips are fabbed up, and they are a cracking bit of kit, in my (somewhat) humble opinion.  The problem is gluing them to the end of the frame rails.  Simply butt-welding sheet metal to sheet metal will not be strong enough.  The tips will bend/break when they hold Alphie’s weight on the rotisserie, not to mention if she takes a future shot to the bumper, perish the thought!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, my first thought was to scab in some sheet metal rectangles and fill weld them to the inside of the frame and to my spanking new tips, a fairly solid plan but…

A Flash of Duh!

At about 2AM one morning, a couple of things occurred to me:

1) I used 1X1 square stock tube steel to recreate the teetery Rootes jack points, which means…

The tip with the 1X1 fill-welded into place

2) The interior width of the frame rail is 1 inch – you know, because the jack point is 1X1…

3) I can extend a piece of 1X1 square stock into the frame rail box to give the tips the strength they need, Duh!

Such twilight epiphanies create groggy mornings, my mind races, and being a little too pleased with myself, I struggle against the urge to make a lot of early morning noise in the garage.  BUT I have a banging better plan!

Cutting the frame tips off was more involved than I expected.  Contorting the grinder inside the fender and lower valance was problematic.  I had to drill out spot welds and drop the lower valance to get access.  I probably would have had to remove the valance to get her on the rotisserie anyway.

Cutting off the old tips cleanly and squarely didn’t happen.  The first cut was a bit ragged; it looked like I chewed it off, but nothing that lavish welding and grinding can’t fix.  I also razed a rodent subdivision that had gone up during Alphie’s dormant years, ewww!

I cut a piece of square stock that runs about three inches into the tip and about five inches into the frame rail.  This piece will run along the top of the frame rail and be fill-welded to the top and both sides of the frame rail box.

Homemade panel separator
and requisite hammer 

A good plan until it met the enemy.  Welding the 1X1 square stock to my nifty new frame tip was easy, but fitting the other end to Alphie’s boxed frame required suffering.  To get a good weld to the frame rail, I could see I would have to remove a 6" X 3" piece of sheet metal that makes the outer skin of the frame box.  Sounds easy enough, right? - like when the instructions say, Step 2: Remove drivetrain. 

It took a grinder, sawzall, spot weld drill, air hammer, my handy homemade panel separating knife (see the pic), an hour and a half and a spot of blood to wrest it from Alphie’s grip.  Also, I had to keep the piece intact enough to measure a pattern for its replacement.  The rust inside the frame would have compromised the welds anyway, so all necessary work.

Like a good little fabricator, I vice-gripped the frame tip/1X1 assembly into place and measured, and scrutinized, and palpated, and pondered, and squinted, and measured…  The tip stuck out farther than the passenger side.  I cut 2.5 cm from the frame rail, getting a much cleaner cut with the entire valance gone, by the way.  Re-vice-gripped the frame tip to the frame and repeated the measuring/squinting cycle.  Eventually, everything was GO.  Time to burn some wire!

The tip welded inside the frame rail.  The square stock provides extra strength

I welded everything and ground down some solid if ugly welds.  The new frame tip is strong enough to rotisserize Alphie, but I decided to hold off fabricating the replacement frame rail’s outer skin until I can rotate Alphie so that I can weld without crawling under the fender well.

The yellow shows where I will fab a cover piece
that will become the outer skin of the frame rail

Can confirm that welding upside down SUCKS – note to self: get a welding blanket, those little sparks burn when they fall in one's lap and jump around the floor under one's bum.

Now for the passenger side!

Partially welded in.  I'll need to fill in the gaps and holes

Lacing Alphie's Shoes

Page Seven: It has been a while - let me catch you up.

Step One:  Take a damn picture of the spokes BEFORE you take the wheel apart!

Fortunately, I have five of Alphie’s wheels to help me remember how the spokes are arranged.  Still, take a damn picture.  I took apart a motorcycle wheel once without taking a picture – I had to scour the internet to find a picture of a wheel just like it to remember how to lace the spokes.

Digital photography is a dream tool.  I don’t remember how I remembered how things went back together before I could snap a quick pic.  (Actually, I do remember.  It goes something like this: screwed-up the first assembly, tear it down, break some part(s), strip a thread or otherwise do something stupid, reassemble – rinse, repeat, sprinkle with colorful and forthright language.)

Motorcycle Wheel Balancer AND Alpine Wheel Truer.

What’s changed since I started this wheel saga

Salvaging Spokes:  I got my first order of replacement spokes from Buchanan’s Spoke & Rim, and they are AWESOME!  Mixing original with replacement spokes poses some problems.  The pristine replacements positioned next to rust pitted (even if bead-blasted to surgical cleanliness) shows all their imperfections.  So I’m going to use 100% replacement spokes.  I may collect the best of the old spokes to make the wheel for the spare, but I’ll probably just replace those too.  Buchanan’s is awesome – my humble advert for them.

Powder Coating:  There was some big talk about how, of course, I was going to powder coat the wheels…  After reading up a bit, a powder coat may crack as the wheels flex, allowing water – and thus rust – to get between spoke, nipple and rim.  Also, once powder coated, the wheel is much more difficult to re-true.  The cured powder tends to crack when you turn the nipple to tighten the spoke, and you can’t easily touch up the powder coating.

Paint won’t absolutely prevent water from seeping into threads, but paint is more flexible.  When the wheel needs to be re-trued, I will be able to touch up the paint if the spoke wrench chews on the surface a bit.

So, the steps go:  Step one – etch prime the parts.  Step two – lace and true the wheel.  Step three – color coat with Argent Silver and Step 4 – clear coat.

The bits are sorted!

The spokes and nipples are etch primed.  The rim is bead-blasted, sanded and etch primed.  The hub has been paint stripped, bead-blasted and etch primed…  We’re ready to lace up Alphie’s shoes!

A Jiggedy Jig:  I built a jig.  Sounds impressive doesn’t it?  It’s not.  I put a straight edge against the back of one of the wheels I haven’t messed with yet and measured the distance between the straight edge and the center hub and found a piece of wood that is about the same thickness.  I placed the piece of wood down on the workbench, set the center hub on it and placed the rim down on the workbench surface.  Now the hub sits at about the same height, as it will when the wheel is laced.  The only thing the “jig” does is make it easier to align the threaded spoke ends with their holes in the rim.

(Update:  I wrote the previous paragraph before I actually tried my Jiggedy Jig.  It worked, sorta…  I had to pick up the whole assembly so many times that the space the jig was only helpful to get the center hub in the approximate position.  I won’t worry with when I lace up the second wheel.)

Next, I screwed a nipple on each spoke and tightened them until about the same number of threads are showing above the nipple. 

The Truing Contraption

God Bless Harbor Freight!  I buy tools from them all the time and use them for tasks they never intended.  In this case, a motorcycle wheel-balancing stand and a bearing and race and seal driving set.

The truing thing with bearing race and seal drivers

I used two race drivers from the set to center up the center hub of Alphie’s wheel on the balancing stand and, POOF created a wheel-truing stand.  Check out the pic.

Next, I stuck a old speaker magnet to the side of the stand and used a piece of coat hanger as a pointer.  After hours of spinning, loosening and tightening, and a little hammer and dolly work, the tire bead surfaces of the rim only a couple of millimeters off from true.  The outer edges – where someone used a crow bar!! – are out of round, but they do not affect how the wheel relates to the center of the hub.  In other words, it will only slight affect wheel balancing and will be nearly impossible to see unless you’re splayed out on the fender, watching the rims as we merrily drive along.

Priming and Painting

Outside spokes - half laced.  The coppery stuff is anti-seize.

I don’t know if I measured the spokes incorrectly, but most of the spokes had threads protruding through the nipples into the inside of the rim.  I wore out/disintegrated many Dremel coarse grinding bands smoothing each spoke end.

Next, cleaning with acetone, then priming, painting with Eastwood’s Rally Wheel/Argent Silver paint and finally, clear coat with Eastwood’s Diamond Clear DTM.  (As fates demand, I haven’t painted or clear coated the rim yet – a water leak in the house requiring contractors, the holidays and cold damp weather have thwarted my efforts.  But I’ll add some pics when I “git ‘er done”.)

One down, four to go!

Long spokes go in now.  The spokes are only finger tight now.

Trued, cleaned and primed.  Next comes paint and clear coat.

Next up:  FIRST FABRICATION!

A Wheel Explodes!

I just like this picture of the Organ Donor peeking out of the grave

Page Six: If you give a mouse a cookie...

If I see that I can take something completely apart, I can’t help it, I’m gonna wanna clean every piece.  Sane people would sandblast their wire wheels and paint them – done - but not me.  I have to take the damn things apart, every single spoke!   If it was put together, by the ghosts of the Rootes brothers, it’s coming apart!

Once the first wheel came out of my battery-charger-powered de-rusto cauldron, I tested a few nipples to see if I could tighten/loosen them to be able to true the wheel.  Some moved, most defiantly refused to budge.  Spokes and nipples had fused from their time on the road and at least a quarter century in the mud, so I threw the first one back in the brew for another 48 hours.  All de-rusted and laid out on the bench, the spokes, I thought, need sanding.  I’ll just take them apart clean ‘em up, how hard can it be?  It can be quite a pain, but with some of the spokes out, the scars on the center hub taunted me.  The rim’s rust pitting and dents glared at me - one thing led to another and now…

Bits, lots-o-bits…

Two wheels have exploded with shrapnel all over the floor.  We’re talking LOTS-O -BITS.  The wheels are 60 spoke, 13 inch Dunlop-cum-MWS wire wheels with 20 long and 40 short spokes, one center hub, one outer rim and 60 nipples – that’s 122 bits per wheel!  And there are five wheels (don’t forget the spare)!  By my calculations, tap, tap, tap… tap, that’s 610 bits, all told.

And you know I’m cleaning, sanding, chasing threads, straightening and “perttying up” every one of those bits.  (You’ll note the pile of spoke bones in the pic – some spokes put up quite a fight.)  Bent spokes, rounded-off nipples, the scarred center hub, the rust pitted rim – I can’t let any of it go.

Turns out, the wheels needed to come apart because spokes solidly and permanently rusted to their nipples would make truing the wheels a real can of spam.

Boom!  Spokes all over the place!
One rim just out of the Derusto-Cauldron and one primed and ready!

Spokes, lots-o-spokes…

Many of the long spokes have misshaped heads, indicating they endured considerable stress. The short spokes, on the other hand, survived their travails a little better. When I started this ordeal, I planned to salvage and rehab the spokes, replacing only the missing or broken few. Not happening. My first order to Buchanan Spokes and Rims, Inc. is for 100 spokes (60 longs, 40 shorts) and 100 nipples, which should get me into the third wheel (maybe the fourth depending on how hard each wheel plans to fight me), but there will be at least one more order.

Engineering Factoid

The short spokes keep the wheel round while the long spokes manage the wobble.  That means that the long spokes take the lateral load on the wheel while the short ones take the vertical load.  If spokes loosen a little (and spokes will inevitably loosen), the short spokes are pulled linearly (inline) while the long spokes tend to bend with the side strain.  In other words, looseness hurts the long spokes more, which is why they tend to break more often than the short spokes.

And, I think it’s fair to say, that the Organ Donor’s wheels suffered a bit from loose-spoke syndrome.  Ya gotta tune wire wheels at least once a year, more often if you drive them “spiritedly”.

Buchanan’s will custom make spokes if you send them a sample of both spokes and nipples for $1.64 each (nipples from $.90 and up).  I will need more long spokes than short ones, but I will have to guess a bit because I haven’t blown up but two wheels so far.

The Center Hub, Bub

The center hubs are in decent nick.  One of them, the abused one, looks like someone took a hammer to the surface where knockoff meets hub.  Why do people fix cars with hammers?  It also looks like someone pried against the center hub for some reason; maybe to hold the wheel while tightening the knockoff, but that would bend, let’s-go-with, the “crap,” out the spokes.  I can’t figure it out, but I’ll fill the gouges with the wire welder and file/sand everything smooth.  The other center hub is nearly pristine.  It was also on the spare, but it had several broken spokes so it hasn’t spent its entire life in the trunk.

A couple of the spoke holes (on the abused hub) are elongated, more evidence of loose spoke syndrome.  I don’t think the elongated holes will affect truing the wheel, as I can tighten to the elongation.  If not, I’ll can weld the elongation and file or re-drill the holes.  The elongated holes will allow grease from the splines to seep down the spokes, so I will need to RTV or silicone seal the spoke ends inside the center hub.  (I was going to do that anyway because grease will doubtlessly seep down the spokes even if the spoke ends perfectly fit their holes.)

The Rim

Bead-blasted and ready for primer.

The rims are in good shape, overall.  Both have some rust pitting, some of which is shallow enough to hide with a good high-build etching primer.  Before I exploded each wheel, I put them on my cracking Harbor Freight motorcycle wheel-balancing stand that I have pressed into service as a truing jig, and both ran relatively true - enough for me to see that I will be able to true them with judicious spoke tightening.  (Note in the picture that I have used some bearing driver adapters to center the rim on the truing jig –pretty nifty, if I may say.)
Why do people use crow bars (and hammers, apparently) to take tires off rims?! If your mechanic’s go-to tool is a hammer, get yourself a new mechanic, just sayin. Ironically, it will take some hammer and dolly work to clean up the rim edges. Fortunately, all the shillelagh shenanigans left the surfaces where the tires seat unaffected.

Close up - bead-blasting gets it clean!

The Plan

With spokes straightened or replaced, threads chased on both spokes and nipples, and every piece etching primed, I will lace up each wheel and true them wheel before painting everything a nice Argent Silver with a glossy Diamond Clear (all from The Eastwood Company).  I will tune each spoke to a satisfying “ping” when lightly rapped with the spoke wrench.  The music of happy spokes.

With new shiny chrome knockoffs, Alphie’s wheels will look spanking!

Why Not New Wheels?

Yeah, it would only be a few more dollars – and certainly a helluva lot easier – to buy a new set of wire wheels, but what’s the fun in that?!  

No one is impressed when you say, “Look at the wire wheels I bought!”  Now are they?

The Spokes Are In!

Buchanan's came through with some awesome replacement spokes and nipples.  The look great and only an experienced eye can tell the new from the old.  (I know the difference, but I'm not telling!)


Next up - Lacing Alphie's Shoes!