Throwing in the dowel.

There was little time to do much today, but what I did do took longer than it should.

I had planned to reassemble the springs complete with new dowels. The first hurdle was reached when I found I had four RTC1921 rather than two of these and two RTC1920. The second challenge was that these dowels were too long in the shank, so the nut bottomed out too soon. I thought I could thread them further but typically I didn’t have the correct pitch die. I therefore cleaned up the old dowels and installed these in the rear springs as I pasted them with graphite grease before bashing the clips back over.

I need to see grease the outside to paint, and will replace the dowels when I find the correct ones. Seven leaf dowels are a bit tricky now that I am ignoring the rabbit hole of part numbers that led to the RTC1920/1921 problem.

After giving up on springs for the day I attacked the sump and the front axle with a grinder mounted wire brush. No great revelations to report on this apart from the fact that someone seems to have buried the front diff into something immovable.

It must have been sometime early in the life of 05 KD 28 as there is yellow paint over the top of the welding. I think I will let this particular sleeping dog lie. A new diff pan can wait until it is leaking.