Jerry Feather

Thanks again, Gary. I found a couple of 36mm reamers on eBay and will order probably both of them.

As to the flutes and raised area inside the inner sleeve I find on closer inspection and some testing that the flutes and raised area are most likely integral. I ground a piece of steel bar to a fine chisel point and tried to see if I could catch the rim of the raised area inside that I thought might be part of an insert into the sleeve, but it is tapered and would not catch. Then I looked inside the sleeve more closely and by looking kind of past the rust in there I can barely see machine marks where the open end has been machined. Both are now telling me that the flutes are integral. That is probably good since trying to ream them out as a pressed in insert of some kind would likely lead to a real mess when the thing came loose. I think I'll still do the reaming in stages with both the 1 3/8 in reamer and then one of the 36mm reamers.

There are also machine marks on the upper end of the outside of the inside sleeve which reduced the diameter of it by about .030 in. I now suspect that the whole inside sleeve is machined to finish, and probably from some kind of heavy wall seamless tubing. Then it was welded to the bumper mounting bracket.

Jerry Feather

I received the 1 3/8 inch reamer in the mail today. It is JFB. It is 12 inches long and an inch in diameter so I am going to have to turn the end of it down to 3/4 inch to fit in my mill R8 chuck. That is the biggest that I have. I may need to shorten it also so that I can fit the assembly into the mill vertically. If I can get the whole thing lined up correctly I am sure it is going to mill most of the flutes and narrow area out the the inner sleeve. Progress = movement in any direction

Jerry Feather

So far I have received only one of the 36mm reamers that I ordered. As to the 1 3/8 inch reamer, it is/was 12 inchec long but I turned 5 inches of it down to 3/4 inches and then cut 3.5 inches of that off to use with the 36mm reamer which is pretty short. The 1 3/8 in reamer was very hard so it took me over 3 hours to turn it down and then cut it off. I am hoping that the 36mm reamer is not quite so hard so that I can bore the upper end of it to 3/4 inch to silver solder the short chunk of 3/4 in shaft that now have to fit it the mill.

As to the spring. Tim has pretty much zeroed in on that. What I am going to end up with is a spring that will take a 2.5 mph impact straight on, and a little more, but less than that on the corner impact. I could design for the 2.5 mph impact on the corner, but that is just too much spring for my desires; and since I can meet the 2.5, or a little greater, frontal (both springs) impact I am going to work in that direction. I think it will end up with a spring that will take a little more than 2.5 mph frontal (both springs) but only about 2 mph from the orner. For me anything greater is a Who-GAS?

Jerry Feather

I set one of the strut inner sleeves in the mill with the 1 3/8 reamer and was able to ream about half of the material out in the tight area and flute area. Then I had to take it out of the mill and clean it out since the thing fills up with chips pretty quickly. I also found that I had a 1 1/8 in reamer so I cut the end of it down and used it to ream part of the flutes out down to the bottom. Then I finished reaming the flutes out with the larger reamer. I haven't finished the 36mm reamer yet to fit in the mill, so I'll be finishing up with that. I think I had the strut piece in and out of the mill about 5 times cleaning the chips out since the sleeve is closed and the chips have no where to go. I think the 36mm reamer will finish it out very nicely and leave a nice flat bottom for the sring.

I think this is going to be the major operation in this whole project of converting these struts. The next major one will be welding it all back together.