Front Suspension

One of the things I noticed was that all of the O-rings that act as dust covers in the front suspension were cracked and loose.  Since the front suspension was completely gone through by the PO, I don't want to take it all apart just to change the O-rings.  After thinking for a while, I decide that I can try cutting new O-rings and then gluing the two ends back together with instant glue which works well on rubber.  Since these don't actually seal anything and aren't under much stress, I hope this will work as it will save hours of work.  I bought a bag of 25 from McMaster-Carr, so if this doesn't work, I'll have enough to do it the 'right' way.  BTW, the size is 5mm x 48mm.

Well, it does seem to work.  I tried it on a O-ring for a test and I had to pull pretty hard to have the joint fail.  One thing I found is that you use just a miniscule drop and smear it around.  To much and the ends won't stick together.

The other thing I noticed in the front is that the main tie-rod had been bent at some point, probably by some tow truck driver using it and the front sway bar to wrap his cable around.  So I removed it and using the hydraulic press, carefully straightened it.  Not perfect, but close enough that it's hard to see that it isn't completely straight.

The front suspension seemed to be assembled by someone who was told to get it together enough to be able to roll the car around.  Many cotter pins were missing and a lot of the nuts weren't properly tightened.  So I've spent quite a bit of time checking each nut, installing a cotter pin (the Tom Yang way) and painting each with yellow paint like the factory did originally.

There sure are a lot of them.  In fact, I need to buy another jar of yellow model paint as I used it all up.  Click for an amusing story on the yellow paint.  After reading that, I don't worry about matching the exact shade, but just use the bright yellow model paint.

A note on the cotter pins.  I was looking at the oil pump the other day and noticed a factory installed cotter pin, put in exactly the way that Françoise said.

After everything was said and done, I was moving the steering using a tire and noticed that the outer tie rod ends on both sides were worn.  So that necessitated buying new ones and re-doing some of the work I just completed.  At least these tie rod ends (from www.maseratisource.com) came with castellated nuts and the holes already drilled for cotter pins.  Some of the modern replacements come with Nylok nuts.

There is a rubber pad that fits into a hole and the upper forward A-arm rests on this when the suspension is hanging.  These also prevent the springs from rubbing on the king pin.

 

Putting these on the coupe was difficult in that the springs are strong enough that the suspension will not unload without the weight of the engine.  Jacking up under the suspension just raises that whole corner without compressing the spring at all.  So I ended up running a chain under the garage jack and over the chassis above the suspension.  Then jacking up under the spring bucket forced the spring to compress.

When I put these stops on both Lowell's and my 330s, I found that the pad top can separate from the part that goes into the hole easily.  These seem to be NOS and probably the rubber is just old.  Anyway, I was being very careful and managed to install one side correctly.

Then when I was working on the other side the top just came off as I was twisting to force the rubber through the hole.  I ended up cleaning both surfaces and using instant glue, put the two parts together.  After sanding off the rubber pin portion so it just fit into the hole without needing much pressure, I used instant glue to glue to pad portion to the metal around the hole.

After removing the jack, etc., I raised the car back up and looked at the first side.  Much to my chagrin, I found that the pressure of the A-arm slid the top of the stop off the pin portion.  At this point, I was tired of screwing around with these, so I'll come back another day to glue this side together like I did on the other side.

As I was working on this area, I noticed that the end cap for the upper pin was a penny.  I had previously seen a similar replacement on Lowell's car, but it was a dime.  So I don't know if there is a difference in size or they just went cheap on my car.