The Story Behind the Rebuild

On a warm Saturday summer afternoon I decided to take my car out for a cruise. My 34 roadster started that afternoon looking like this…

… and came back looking like this!

 The tow truck driver bringing the old girl home.

Another view of the damage and you can see the badly damaged wheel, rear axle, fender and rear bumper.

I’m inspecting the undercarriage here, but more pissed off and seething at this point in time!

At 3:00 in the afternoon I was cruising down the highway at 60 mph (100 kph for my Canadian friends) when a young drunk driver came at me head-on driving a Dodge pickup truck. I swerved to miss him and he hit me in the rear wheel, sending me into the ditch. After the impact I tried to regain control but realized, as I was skidding down the embankment of the ditch, that wasn’t going to happen. All I kept saying over and over again in my mind was “please don’t roll” and I held the steering wheel hard to the left to keep the car upright.

When I finally came to a stop at the bottom of the ditch I thanked God that I was alive and that the car did not roll. I gave my head a shake and realized that I was still in one piece! I then opened the driver’s door to confront the driver that hit me and who was in the ditch directly behind me. As I started to walking toward him he drove out of the ditch and left the scene of the accident.

Shortly after he left the scene another driver came along and stopped to see if I was alright and asked me what had happened. I explained the situation and asked him to have a look down the road for the truck that hit me. I told him that he wouldn’t be going very far because the rear bumper of my 34 had punctured the truck’s front tire. I could hear the tire flapping on the pavement as he had driven away. The truck was found about a mile down the road. The driver was gone. I called the RCMP, filed an accident report and towed my roadster home. Later in the day the RCMP informed me that the drive had turned himself in at around 11:00 PM.

It wasn’t until a little later on that I began to realize just how lucky I was to not have suffered any injuries, though it had taken me a minute to figure out where the glass that was imbedded in the left side of my face came from. The truck’s outside mirror had struck my roadster’s wind-wing and some of the broken glass had hit me in the face. Fortunately I had sunglasses on.

This is a neat picture. You can see the remnants of the 600W oil from the differential when the rear end split open from the impact of the other vehicle. You can actually see both the point where the truck collided with my roadster, and the stream of oil pointing to where I entered the ditch. The funny thing was that when the other driver turned himself in he told the police that I was in his lane. Nothing like a photo with a stream of oil from my car and in my lane as solid evidence.

This is where the other driver entered the ditch and then drove off.

Here you can see the split open differential. The 600 W oil would have emptied very quickly.

Once I removed the rear end from the car you can see just how badly bent the rear axle housing was.

A little closer look at the rear brake housing plate. The impact also bent the rear frame cross member. I found a very good NOS one on the HAMB.

Both rear radius rods broke away from the drive shaft housing and the brake rods both bent damaging the rear brake levers.

Digger on the FordBarn found me a good complete replacement rear end which I disassembled and went through mechanically, repainted and now its ready for installation back into the 34 frame.

Another shot of the completely restored drive shaft, rear end. I know the 3 point jack stands aren’t that stable but my four point jack stands were holding up the car.