1982 Lada Niva

This evening i spent some time on my hydraulic press, pushing in wheel studs on the littles nivas rear axles, then i got busy assembling the rear calipers, greased the sliders, installed the new brake pads and they fit over the brake disc. I had a real plan about the axle housing but then i talk with couple of lada owners, and they changed my plan. Their argument was, Why would you spend the time and cost of reinforcing it when is the same as the Lada sedans, and you can buy one for 10$ in the junkyards they apparently don't bent easy one guy said that you need to lend it from a metre high loaded to bent it. And with all the rust that my has i'll be better off just paint it and put it back to use.
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Just found this - really looking forward to seeing the bracketry you'll use to mount the calipers to the axle.

BTDT on a Land-Rover Defender 110 - thankfully the brackets were available as spare parts, and required little modification other than a reduction in thickness (trivial on the mill).

I await the next installment!
 
Just old al, there is nothing off the shelf for a Lada so i'll be making them from scratch. Anyway today beside working hard all day i did not take pictures of the progress, but what i did is weld on a new stud for the brake lines, and then spend the next 4-5 hours grounding off the rust. Then i spent some more time cleaning it outside and inside. After letting the solvents evaporate i sprayed on a very special primer paint, made to be used on rusty metal and add thickness so it can be abused, on top of it i applied a grey paint to break up all the black undercarriage. By the time i was painting the sun had come down so i painted it with my phone light. Any suggestion on the color for the axle links ?
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Today i was busy with my day job but when i got back home i did found time to make one more piece for the little niva, i made a new breather coupler, the idea is to run a teflon hose to the front, to a breather manifold connected to the airbox. I started with a piece of 17mm hex, first i turn down the end to 8mm, 20 mm in length and made couple reges, then cut couple of radiuses freehand and drill it thru. Then i used my parting tool to cut the back side down to 8mm and part it of, after a bit of clean up i threaded this side with M8 same as the housing, chamfer the holes and then made couple of graphite gaskets.
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Regarding the video in post #29: "I'm being told there is something wrong with the wheel"
Umm, maybe 40 pounds of lead in the tires?

I did get a chuckle out of it though
 
Today i spent some more time on my lathe, machining some more parts for the little Niva. Started with sorting the material, the long thin rod is for the bushings inserts, the short chrome plated shaft is also for a bushing inserts for the strong lower arms and lastly the red thick piece is for the outside of the bushings. Started by making the tool for the inner piece of the bushings, i used the end of the chrome plated shaft, not to waste material. Then i chucked the thick piece and started with couple of clean up cuts, then i drilled the inside to 30 mm and cut a taper of 20 degrees, chamfer the edges and parted it off. Repeated one more time then took the two pieces i just parted and cut a 20 degree taper in the other side. Those pieces will form the new rear suspension links for the little Niva but they do take time, hopefully they will outlast the vehicle. Also this is my 1000 message on this forum, hope i'm not too boring.
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brino said:
Not boring at all.
In fact, I'm "watching" the thread.
-brino
Click to expand...

That makes at least two of us. I doubt this thread/subject could be boring, even if everything went perfectly. The fact that you've been able to overcome so many challenges on this project is pretty cool in and of itself!
 
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