Another challenging day but progress was made.. First off, on ozzie7,, good place to look for help with angles is Spicer Calculator,, just type that in and it will pop up, it just mostly helps with the math but you also can sit there and plug in a lot of "what ifs" without doing the work. Like, what if I raise the CB. What if I lower the pinion, it is not perfect but it helped me. There is an information link there also, click on the little "i". Remember one thing with the Spicer Calculator or any of the tools on their site, the pinion when pointing down in the front to them, it is pointing up as far as the calculator, they consider the engine, front and rear shaft and the pinion shaft as one piece and starting at the engine it either slopes up or down from front to back. Pinion was opposite of what I had always used. Then if you can make your angles work as stated in the service manual which the guys shared with me, that is what I recommend. If you cant get what you need I will give you my alternative, at this point seems to work pretty well, I could not get my angles to the manual specs.
Todays work. We left off with me being pretty sure the one drum was bad on my car (out of balance), I ordered drums (NAPA), they came in this morning, I picked them up and installed. When my help arrived we ran the car up to 60 on the lift, just brake drums and the vibration persisted. We jumped back to the previous brake drum suggestion and ran one wheel at a time with no drum. This gets confusing but we took one drum off and there was no vibration, switched the situation (other drum on opposite side) and there was vibration. Changed the new drums from wheel to wheel and to make it easy understanding the vibration followed one of the new drums. When running either side with no drum and using the "best new drum" on the other side there was no vibration. So I had one good old drum and apparently one good new drum and we installed those and things were very quiet. Put the other new drum on and had vibration right away. So we put on one old drum and one new drum. Wheels/tires back on and a test run on the lift. Drive shaft not bad, front a little off. Checked all joints, connections for anything abnormal, all seemed ok. Wheels/tires doing fair also. I would like to say, the Cooper tires I have, I do not recommend. When spinning they look like they are way out of round but we put a gauge on them today and the run out was about 1/8 inch, looks much worse. I had taken them previously to a tire cutter here and he said they did not need truing up, I think they do but not so bad I guess. The US Mag wheels are also not perfect but not too bad either. All these things are going to contribute to being little a less than perfect. So we took the car down and headed for a test drive and it was a bust, traffic was so bad on a nice 80 degree day, everyone was on the interstate heading to or from the beach. We tried to get a test of over 55 when the traffic was more like 45 so that is delayed until Monday. We would have likely had to go at least 20 miles out of town to get some free highway. I never realized rums could so easily cause a severe vibration. So I am more convinced than ever that we have been working two vibrations and not really realizing it. One masking the good or bad we did for the other. Monday it is off on a test drive and if it is better than a "fair" test I will pull the drive shaft and have it rebalanced again, reason being I went back to an "out of phase" front shaft as suggested by most of the guys on this site. . The shutter which was once VERY pronounced right now is less than a whimper. Again assuming things go in a positive direction Monday I have a plan for the center bearing after the rebalance. A guy at the Myrtle Beach Run to the Sun show shared this with me and take it for what it is worth, he modified his center bearing mount and got rid of the shutter totally. He raised his CB 1/4 inch to get his angles, as I did, so this makes it more easy for me but he made a 4"X4" or so 1/4 plate that was tacked to the bottom of the bearing, welded 2 nuts on the top of the plate, drilled 2 holes in the frame (as wide as possible) perpendicular to the regular mounting holes and would eventually add two more mounting bolts. Next he cut two 3/16 X 1 inch strips of metal about 3 inches long and welded them to the new 1/4inch floor plate and tacked to the side of the bearing (as high as possible on the bearing). So now it is somewhat like the shape of an A roof. The bottom plate has to be shimmed on the sides as the spot where the bearing sits is slightly raised inside the frame. Of course he popped the rubber out before welding. I am not the inventor of this nor do I know if it really works. The plus that I see is,,, what can it hurt? If you know of something let me know because I think I am going to give it a try.
If you are wondering how he lined everything up for drilling etc,, he drilled the two regular mounting holes from the spacing of the bearing holes. He put his bearing in place and then took the two regular mounting bolts,,, put them thru the 1/4 plate and screwed the bolts into the bearing but the 4X 4 plate is now bolted under the bottom of the frame. He then drilled the two extra holes thru the 1/4 plate and the frame at the same drilling. Removed the bearing and then lined the regular bolts thru the plate and into the bearing and tacked the bottom plate onto the bearing. I am sure this will fly in the face of many and for sure it not for everyone but if you have consistent shutter on take off it might be an interesting Saturday project. If you dont like it a new CB at Auto Zone is $8.. yes $8. I have bought 2 to cut up and change heights. At NAPA $55. It might help,, might not. It was claimed to be a success by one man.