well another day in the garage passes (as its soon time to get the kids) i have managed to rebuild the linkage, and i am glad i did ! what a mess it was inside. stripping it down was a pig, but then again anything on a carrier is a pest when it has not been serviced since 1945 !
firstly i broke apart everything i could without damaging it, when you pull the rod out the cylinder loads of balls drop out this is because there is a bearing inside... after collecting all the balls i noticed the cylinder had an end cap which was seized / rusted on so i plonked the cylinder into a tub of Hydrofluoric acid and went to work on the other stuff
the rod was the easy bit just some elbow grease and a wire brush was needed...followed up by some five knuckle shuffle over it with 800grit the rod is pitted but will still be usable
next was the two end cap type bearing blocks.. you can see the lower one is baddly pitted but again still servicable at the moment, this was cleaned down with wirebrush the oil gallery channels in the centres were cleaned out of rust and the whole unit was cleaned and dried then the grease nipple popped back in
i plodded on with other stuff for a few hours then returned to remove the cylinder from its bath, after being pursuaded a wee bit, it came apart and i could remove the race from inside...both the race and the balls are on their last legs but i should get some use out of them for a while.... the inside of the cylinder was cleaned then the race and balls were popped back in with a smattering of grease, cap put back on and the rod housed back in its place.... then i packed the whole thing full of grease using the grease nipple... the unit is like silk now i am glad i have done it !! i primered it then painted it ready to go back into my hull.
next i continued with my armour, i missed a few holes which needed countersunk
