Captain Obvious

Good. A POR-15 burr is a lot easier to take off than rust throughout the hole. Glad it was that easy. And I'm not surprised that the pin slid a little less easy after you had lubed it. That lube is pretty viscous and has significant shear required to move it. Makes sense. As long as it's clean and moves finger smooth, you should be good to go there. And don't torque the crap out of the tapered retaining bolt. All it needs to do is keep the pin from rotating while you torque the nuts on the ends of the spindle pins. Many people over-torque that tapered lock for no reason. It just doesn't need it. And I wouldn't worry too much about getting all the grease off the threads before the thread lock. Especially if they are deformed thread nuts. I've been known to both lightly grease and thread lock nuts sometimes. But I've got a screw loose, so maybe you shouldn't follow that example. As for the stub axle nuts... When I did my rear bearings, I switched over to the new deformed thread version and did not use the original peened over style. I did not re-torque mine, and have not had any ill effects. In theory, I don't think re-torqueing would do anything. It's not like the tapered bearings on the front where you actually control bearing pre-load with the nut. In the back, you're tightening against the "distance piece" and there's no motion or bedding in between anything there. I'm not sure what re-torqueing would accomplish. No deformable material like a gasket, no bedding in of the bearing balls, and nothing that should be changing length. Just very tightly held against the distance piece. Bummer. Where did it bend? My PO messed up mine pretty bad too. So bad that I ended up replacing all four corners on my 77.

I'm in the east coast time zone, so my morning is a couple hours before your morning. So take your time... I won't be back until some time tonight probably. Drink the coffee before you step in front of the bandsaw. Don't need no mishaps!

No, and no. I would absolutely NOT use red Loctite on any of that suspension hardware. The "correct" hardware is all supposed to be the vibration resistant style and should not need any sort of thread locking compound at all. However... If you are: 1) uncomfortable relying on just the original distorted thread design, or 2) reusing stock hardware that has been reused a mystery number of times in the past, or 3) using aftermarket hardware that does not have a locking feature built into it then I would suggest you use either the blue medium or maybe even the purple low strength thread lock. You most certainly do NOT want red as it will require a torch to take things apart again in the future. And as for the spindle pin, it should NOT require a press to get the pin into the hole at the bottom of the strut housing. It should slip in nice and easy. Spin in the bore with two fingers, and fall out with gravity if you tilt the assy to the side. If you need a press to get the pin into place, then you have a burr kicked up inside somewhere, or you've still got rusty crap built up in the are and have more cleaning to do. My money is on rusty crap as my past experience indicates that a wire brush is not aggressive enough to remove the hard thin layer of surface rust that builds up in that hole. Chemical means or a more aggressive mechanical means would be in order. Long (sacrificial) round file for example. The hard cast iron will probably ruin the file, but consider it a donation to the cause.

Hahaha!!! So what's the result? WE WANT PICS!!!

I was going to suggest that about the bulge on the inside. I was wondering if you were just creating a dent by pounding with the drift punch. Band saw! Band saw! Band saw!

All the other years* are jealous in every way except collector value. I would drink that beer with pride, and the offer is the same from me at this end of the country!! I love my noise reducing weatherstrip along the top edge of my window trim!! * Except 78 which is basically identical with a few electrical differences. Haha!!

Thanks for the work to satisfy the OCD. I've got some questions... So, the gear box portion of the early steering racks are cast aluminum? I don't know when they changed it (suspect 74?), but by the time they got to 77, they were cast iron, not aluminum. Also, were there holes drilled all the way through the tube into the interior? Or were they blind drilled? Or maybe no drilling at all? It would be difficult to align pre-drilled holes in those two parts... If those are in pins pressed in, I would think they would assemble first and then drill. As for getting things back to where they started.... I agree with the suggestion about pushing them all the way through and starting over. If it took non-trivial hammer pounding to get the thing to protrude that much into the interior, I think you're going to have a very hard time getting in there and pushing it back out of the way again. I don't think using a tapered mandrel is going to work because of the geometry and the fact that the ID of the bushings is the smallest dimension. Man, I'm surprised you took a hammer to a unit you intend to use again... Brave man!

Nice progress. Make sure you lube the crap out of the spindle pins and bushings before you put it back together. Last thing you want is to have to deal with the immovable spindle pin problem in the future!

77's rule. Woot!

My check valve holds sometimes and other times it doesn't. And I do notice a difference in starting times. So that could be what's getting you too. Get into the habit of checking the fuel pressure gauge before you try to start it and see if you've got a correlation there.

Yeah, I was gonna say... The paint scheme looks great, but those bushings still look like they are trouble. Here's to hoping the new bushings are a better fit. And don't forget to address that big gap on the end by the steering box. It won't get any better if you try to install it the way you have it. I'm not sure if all the mfgrs have the same sharp internal corner or not.

I don't feel tardy.

My kids think the same thing about me.

Haha!!! I'm guessing he recently saw snow for the first (and maybe only) time in his life? How'd that go? Make him all rowdy?

Nice! Sounds like you've seen some good classic DLR! Now just hope he doesn't sprain anything on stage!

As Zed Head already mentioned, the (normal) injectors won't fire because the ECU won't see any ignition cycles. However (seems there's always a however, doesn't it?)... If the engine is cold enough, the cold start injector will fire using the wire off the starter technique. Depends on how cold the thermotime switch is. The AFM manual movement doesn't have that drawback. So if you're used to just moving the AFM vane a little bit with the cover off, then using that method is just fine. One more thing though... All that said, if you have a fuel pressure gauge installed already, you should already know if you've got pressure in the rail even after sitting overnight. Just look at the gauge.

First thing I would check is to see if your fuel pump check valve leaks a little and is allowing the fuel pressure to drop off overnight. If you don't want to go through the hassle of installing a fuel pressure gauge, you can get an idea if that's what's going on simply by pressurizing the fuel system before you try to start the car. On those mornings when the problem "would normally occur", pull the starter solenoid wire off and turn the key to START to get the fuel pump to run without engaging the starter. Then after a couple seconds of that, put the wire back on and then try to start the engine normally. If it starts instantly, then that's probably what's happening. If it still takes just as long to start even after making sure there is fuel pressure, then maybe there's an issue somewhere else. I've removed my cold start injector, so mine takes a couple cranks to start because of that. I'm OK with the delay as a trade off for fewer leak locations and simplicity.

I don't know what the input resistance is looking into the CTS circuit on the ECU. If yours is working correctly, I'm gonna say it's about 1.8K Ohms.

Good. If anyone has a dead rack they would like to donate to science, let me know, and I'll put it on the cadaver table for some exploratory surgery!

Haha! Fuel on the mind?

Haha!! So no Sammy love, huh? I can listen to all of it, but I agree... The best stuff is the early DLR stuff.

Funky! Maybe it would be prudent to make sure the two bronze bushings on the ends of the housing are still in-line? Should be pretty easy to check... Slide the rack in and make sure it goes all the way through without any binding? I'd love to cross section one of those. But the only one I have is on my car.

The readings (that I understand) look perfect. It's a 1K Ohm potentiometer, so you should see zero at one extreme and about 1K Ohms at the other. Those look great. Your CTS cold sensor indicates about 60F, and your CTS hot sensor indicates about 180F, so (assuming it was about 60F in Ventura County at that time) those look great too. The only thing I'm not sure about is the 1.82K Ohms your getting on that other reading... What do you mean with "CTS ECU harness"?

Van Hagar.

Well that's probably not good. I had suggested they were epoxy, but I should have been a little more specific. They are plastic, but I don't know if they are thermoplastic, or thermoset. Sounds like they are thermoplastic... So how much goop came out? Just tiny dots like what would fill the holes, or once it turned runny, did a large amount come running out of the holes? Like it was melting out of an internal cavity of some kind? Pics or it didn't happen.