After leaving the garage yesterday evening the thoughts about how to proceed with the Rutherford rear suspension circled in my head the entire night. Since the wooden spacer I made fitted nicely, the idea of getting this CNCed out of alloy seemed best. As the paint-shop finished painting some steering parts and the fishtail panels, I asked the owner Stefan if he knew who could fabricate such a spacer.
None of the shops he suggested to me would be open before Monday so I drove go my garage at around noon thinking about what todo next. The fishtail panels were in my hands so that was the first task that came to my mind. I flipped the frame over, put the small panels on just to realise that they don’t fit at all. I remembered that the one on the driver side was loose anyway because the wood was rotten. Some bending and flattening was required and with some Terson sealing band beneath I nailed them back onto the frame. Not the prettiest but it will not be visible later on.
The Track rod was next on my list but I noticed that I put the plate for drag link upside down after cleaning it up. Argh…. It has just beed painted. Annoyed by this I just went on to drill the holes for the Panhard rod into the chassis. I marked the correct position yesterday – with the axle out this is a simple task. The kit came with metric M8 bolts – but those were 40mm long. Too long for my taste. And not stainless….
A good excuse to hop into the Mini and get some 20mm M8 stainless bolts. On my way to the store I saw that Wolfgang, who is restoring an Austin Healey, is in his garage. Maybe he would have an idea on how to solve my Rutherford problem. Limora gave him a visit not too long ago. Check out his outstanding work on his BJ8 here https://youtu.be/swN12VXoDwMa
Even though I really try my best to restore the Morgan as good as possible, the difference between his work and mine is quite obvious. His accuracy and level of detail painfully remind me that I am just a lunatic Auto-didactic weekend-mechanic. I showed him some pictures of the brackets and he said that I would be fine if I just use washers as spacers. Since this was also a suggestion from the TalkMorgan forum I decided to give this a go. Needless to say that such a solution would never be seen on Wolfgang’s Healey.
Back from the store I started on this solution right away. 3 washers are 4,55mm – pretty much the same as the lower part of my wood wedge spacer. I used eletrical tape to put them together. Red for 4,5mm and yellow for 11mm. Using the two existing holes in the chassis I gave this a try. An hour later everything was bolted in place and I was ready to get the axle back in.
The radio started playing a David Bowie song which (as the moderator said) should be in our minds when we look at what is happening across the pond. I looked at my spacer-bracket construction and the lyrics that came to my mind are today’s title for the this post 😉
I struggled a bit more this time to get the leaf springs aligned with the front bolts. Eyeing at the distance the between the springs and the screw-heads for the brackets I asked myself how much lateral movement the leaf springs might have. At this point David Bowie sings: “And I could have the faintest idea”. Good for him because I don’t. Sha la la la la
Fixing C6622 
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