Story and photographs by Mark Wing

The attendees of Larry’s work party on Saturday, March 25th, were greeted with pleasant warm weather.  Projects on this day included the Lance family disassembling a rear differential, John Hayne trying to remove a spring perch from an axle, Paul Duncan assembling tubes and tires, Dave Merewether unloading an engine, Eddie Paquette cleaning transmission parts, and Mark Wing working on ring and pinion gears.

The Lance’s brought along a rear differential for their 1919 speedster project.  The goal was to disassemble the unit and check the condition of the parts.

John Hayne brought a rusty 1920’s front axle with a frozen spring perch.  It took a lot of heating, and then considerable force with a hammer and punch to finally drive the stubborn spring perch out.

Paul and Marilyn Duncan had been working on salvaging some split rims with damaged latches.  Larry had welded new metal strips to the rims to receive a new nut and bolt.  Once that was done, and the split rims prepared and painted, it was time to mount the tires and new inner tubes.

Mark had brought a modern Timken-style driveshaft bearing and housing and Larry, Dave, and Mark were trying to get it to mate with the ring gear.  The ring gear, although new, was wobbling too much to take accurate runout readings. In addition, the bearing housing required a lot of shims to provide the clearance necessary so the ring and pinion gear wouldn’t gaul.  Was the problem that the new Ruckstell bell housing wasn’t concentric or was it something else?  Those questions couldn’t be resolved on this day due to lack of time, and will have to wait for a future work party.

Paul Duncan gave Dave Ferro a running board toolbox.  This toolbox will need some repairs and Dave is thinking about the best way to proceed.

Thanks Larry for another fun and productive work party!