Saturday, January 2, 2010

3rd Member Cleaning

I spent today cleaning up the parts of the 3rd member.

I started by scraping off the large grease deposits with a little chisle. The part was rather bulky to work with so I decided to go ahead and disassemble the piece. Once it was disassembled, I cleaned it with some Super Clean Engine Degreaser and a brush.

I noticed the bearings and races in the 3rd member have Timken on them. The front seal was still the stock style fabric style seal. When I noticed the Timken bearings, I immediately questioned if the gears were still stock. I counted the teeth on the ring gear and found there were 39 and the pinion has 14 teeth. This works out to a 2.79 gear ratio which is what I expected.

I expected to find a few different paint markings on the 3rd member. It was the stock color (orange/red) but I did not find many markings. There was yellow paint on each of the carrier end caps, what appeared to be a slight amount of yellow on one side of the pinion, some yellow near the fill hole, and some white on the opposite side of the 3rd member. There was not much paint so the only one I'm confident of is the first paint spot.

The 3rd member has a cast date of 7C2 (March 2nd, 1967) so it is original part. The part number of the main case is C70W-4025-A. The smaller portion of the casing has a cast date of 6M8 and the part number seems to just be C60W. The pinion itself has no part number.

While not completely clean, the current state is shown below. The cleaner I used removed much of the orange/red paint. The black areas are grease deposits I'll need to work on cleaning tomorrow.



I read quite a few posts about the proper detailing of the 3rd member today. From the VMF Concours forum, I learned many use Red Oxide Primer (BT51) made by Brite Touch because it is so close to the original color. I found some at O'Reilly today for $2.99. Since the paint was mostly intact on the underside of the 3rd member. I sprayed just a little in the middle to compare it to the surrounding original paint. It is still a little wet in the picture below which makes it look shiny but the color is an exact match.



I've not decided what paint I'll use on the axle housing. I'm thinking the Eastwood Chassis Extreme Satin paint. According to the VMF Concours forum, the original color was similar to the engine compartment but with more gloss. I'd like it to look original but durability is more important.

The following picture is of a properly detailed rear axle. It was restored by Charles Turner. I'm told they all looked about the same for the early Mustangs. This one is a '65 or '66. I'd love to have mine turn out like this one except I think the 3rd member appears a little more red in this picture.

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