Houdaille Shocks

The lever action shocks on the PF coupe are made by Houdaille, a French company.  These are rebuildable and there is a modern replacement available by the current French company Spiral.  The previous owner had these rebuilt, but for some reason, the silent blocks at the ends of the arms weren't replaced.  Instead there is a rubber bushing with a metal sleeve in the center.  The sleeve looks like it might have come from an old silent block.  In any case, the fit is poor and the shocks wouldn't be very effective.

The series 1 parts book shows these parts.  However on the front suspension page, no part number is given. On the rear suspension page, 92990 is shown, but that is wrong since that part is at the bottom of the shock linkage and the top is a different size.

So I'm trying to find a source for these.  In case I don't, I ordered some polyurethane rod that I can drill out and make my own using the existing center sleeves.

There is a Ford service manual that covers the care and feeding of these shocks.  It can be downloaded from http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/manuals/Ford/Haudaille/index.html.

It turns out that one of the people that rebuild these shocks has these silent blocks made to fit.  Sherman Wolf in New Hampshire sells them independently of the rebuild process.  However, right now he's waiting for a new batch to get made, so I'll have to wait a few weeks before I can finish on the shocks.

The silent blocks came from Sherman.  However, he makes them to only fit one size of shock, so the outer shell is too small.  He mentioned that he usually just machines a bushing to make up the difference.  I checked in the McMaster-Carr catalog and found that there was tubing available that was the 1.25" OD needed, while the inside was about 5 thousands too large for the OD of the bushing.  I considered a couple of solutions, but finally just decided to use J-B Weld steel epoxy to stick the two together.

I cut the tubing to length using my neighbor's cold saw and then cleaned the ends and inside for the epoxy.  Then I removed the paint from the outside of the silent blocks.  From there, I mixed up a batch of epoxy, spread a thin layer on the outside of the silent block and slid it into the tubing.  After cleaning the excess epoxy off, I set them aside for the hardening to occur.

Once they had cured, I just used a vise to press the silent block with bushing into the hole in the arm.

They fit tight in the arm and no sign of the bushing separating from the silent block as I pressed the assembly in the arm.  So one more problem solved.

I had had one of the rear shocks off the car to measure and test for the silent block size.  I re-installed that one and forgot that I hadn't replaced the silent block on the other.  I had gone ahead and put in the cotter pins, properly bent with yellow paint.  As I went to do the front shocks, I saw that I had an extra silent block and realized my mistake.  I really didn't want to have to remove that rear shock, so I just removed the bolt from the end of the arm thus allowing me to remove the old rubber bushing.  I used a large C-clamp to press the new silent block into the arm while the shock was on the car.  This way, I only had one cotter pin to redo rather than three.  Then I removed front shocks and installed the silent blocks in them with the proper bent cotter pins and yellow paint.  I also found one castellated nut on the front suspension that hadn't gotten its yellow paint so I fixed that too.

So now, all of the suspension is on the car.