Armortek

8 5.5MM TORSION BAR ASSY:



Straight forward on this page. Took the sharp edges of both ends of the torsion bars. A touch of filing to make sure the flats are well, flat.

The bar ends and the part that goes into the suspension arm need some protection as they are mild steel, best I can tell. I cannot paint them as their fit in the arm bearings and the anchor end is a fit that wont like paint. I cleaned all the parts, polished them with 400 grit wet or dry and applied gun blueing to all of them. Next they get polished with 0000 steel wool, then treated in rust-preventative oil.



Next is the grub screws. As the manual says the tips need to be flattened. Two reasons I can see why this needs to be done. The arms wont go through the bearings because the un-shortened screws interfere. Second the flat end will do a better job preventing the bar from spinning in the ends.

I locktite'd the arm end and then set the grub screws.

They look great, a shame they wont be seen once the floor is in place.

9 5.0MM TORSION BAR ASSY:

I ran into some serious challenges at this step. The parts that receive the 5mm torsion bars where not drilled to accept the torsion bars (undesized). While a relatively easy fix that only helped the anchoring end. The six torsion bar receivers for the suspension arms would not thread into the arms even a single turn. I thought perhaps a quick chase with a die would clear this up but, either I was clueless to what thread that is supposed to be or??? A M12X1.5 wouldnt start on it and the arms would not accept that size tap. Possibly a thread type I am unfamiliar with. I only tried by finger not wanting to destroy anything. I took them to a machinist friend along with good 5.5MM torsion versions (for examples) and he managed to make me six replacements that threaded nicely together.

11 TORSION BAR SETTING:

After reading on this forum, it seems there may be an issue with tensioning the tracks, especially for a runner. The least intrusive "fix I read about was setting the road wheel arms to 35 degrees which I did.





I added color dots to identify the two different sized parts for the two diameters of torsion bars.

12: BUMP STOPS:

No issues here. Just prime (if you so desire), fasten them to the hull, then add the rubber bumpers.