Uprights
Before the suspension was assembled some small jobs were necessary due to my choice of 13" wheels. Whilst the chassis was away having an exhaust made this seemed like a good time to tackle them.
The rear hubs and uprights were trial assembled into a rear wheel in order to assess how much tweaking would be necessary. In order to provide clearance for the brake lines the uprights are approx 15mm narrower than the wishbones. Six washers are provided in the nut and bolt kit to fill this gap. I decided to only use one washer between the front and rear of the upright and the wishbone which provided a 5mm gap at each end. I then used a big vice and a lot of BFI to push the metalastic bushes inwards to the upright by 5mm each in order to provide clearance for the bolt head and nut. Trial assembly inside the wheel proved this to be sufficient clearance. It was also necessary to file 1-2mm off the top of the upright in order to clear the inside of the rim.
A trial assembly of the front and rear hubs complete with disks showed that the rear studs were now a bit too short (although I would imagine that the rear drums were not significantly thinner than the disk bells) and the long studs provided with the front hubs were about an inch too long. All were removed and swapped with the aid of a big vice and assorted sockets to push them out and a spare wheel to pull them back in again.
The front hubs were assembled in the following order: New bearings were used and the shells were inserted into the Alloy hubs; The disks were attached and secured by high tensile bolts, secured by a combination of spring washers and Loctite; The inner bearing race was packed with grease and dropped into the hub; The inner oil seal was inserted and the hub/disk assembly inserted onto the lightly greased stub axle. Finally the outer bearing race was greased and inserted into the hub. I sourced some new hub nuts, tabbed washers, locking nut cover and split pins from Ford. The hub nuts were tightened to 27lb.ft whilst the hubs were rotated anti-clockwise and then the nut was backed off 90 degrees and secured by the locking nut cover. I found that this method worked well as the hub nut was just finger tight like this, there was no slack at all in the bearing and yet it ran very smoothly and easily. I tried one assembled hub within one of the front wheels and was pleased to see that the wing stays cleared the 7" wide front tyres. I finished the evening off by inserting the top ball joint, which was tightened by holding the ball joint in the vice and screwing the upright onto it and then locked in place by bending the lock washer over the ball joint and the upright.