Strippers

The car went off to the paint strippers wednesday. I rented a trailer and trucked it down to the place. The owner of the shop said he is going to take his time with this one. He is afraid of cutting through the sheet metal with the plastic media. I have time to wait though. I don't to rush anybody.

On other fronts I have puchased my valves, guideplates, and keepers. Also studs for the rocker arms. These items are necessary to assemble my A3 heads. I found a in A331 intake manifold that I should get next week. The manifold was $575, rather pricey but hard to find. I may have been able to get one cheaper if I was able to wait. I also found a Scat stroker crank that has been used but only on 10 runs supposedely. It doesn't need turning just polishing. The other benifit is that this crank maybe balanced well enough that it may save me some money on balacing, anyway the price was $375.

I dissasmebled the A-arms today. I removed the bushings by cutting off one side of the metal inner collar then burning out the rubber with a propane tourch. Then I pressed out the outter sleeve. The upper front A-arms were the toughest as the outter sleeve had no "gap" between the sleeve and the A-arm bushing hole. I had to grind down the sleeve collar until it was fairly thin, then I used a screwdriver and hammer to pry the collar away from the A-arm hole. Then I used a bearing holder in the press to get enough "grab" on the A-arm to allow me to press out the sleeve. I used a 1/2" ratchet extension to allow me to press all the way through the A-arm. Now I know why you pay people to do this work :)

I have a couple of options for body work so I will wait until the car comes back from the strippers to see how bad it is before making my decision.