7/6/1946…..U.S. began producing car again after World War II. It is a bit misleading but some cars companies did continue to produce cars. At the very onset of the war (1942 thereabout), some of the first effort were to build the cars without all the chrome, painting the trim instead, the first “blacked out” (they were actually called “blackout specials or models” ) which became popular with the grilles in muscle cars later on. Washington dictated that stainless-steel and chrome would not be allowed on cars except on of bumpers, bumper guards, and windshield wipers.
WOT (decided to give her a name) is back in the driveway. Compression and heads all checked out. 3 cheers for American Iron!!!!
(OK..WOT is funny because it’s a crossfire with least HP in the C4 Generation.)
Took it for a spin after picking it up and everything seems to be fine.
New hoses, new thermostat, new coolant..yeah…all of the old stuff is back in town, new transmission fluid (maybe over kill but there is the a school of thought that a major overheating event can cause a failure…safe..not sorry) and oil change (I’m not sure what happens to engine oil at 300 degrees – but safe…not sorry).
The other day (7/1) was a record-setting day for me. Oh..yea..setting some personal bests, that….well….frankly I could have done without!!!!
So I thought I’d take a minute or two to jot down the events of the day, as a form of therapy, and maybe I won’t feel like having all my cars crushed and moving to a small Quaker community in PA.
Ok…. that does feel better. Now say it with me…”I’m OK and You are OK”.
So here’s the story and I’m being as dramatic as necessary!!!!
Drove my 84 C4 to work as normal yesterday………
>>>Oh..hey wait…..I did this Corvette owner thing a few weeks back…guess what it was?…..{silence….cricket…cricket….cricket..} Give up? Ok..fine I’ll just tell you. I got a personalized license plate…No..not a vanity plate that says “Studly” like my wife wanted me to get!!! {{If you only knew how funny that last statement was..my wife hates those plates, although I believe he thinks I am studly!!!}}. Nope I had to get clever, I wanted something that defined my car. You have no idea how many times I get asked…”Yo…what years is it?” My neighbor next store ask me that every time he see me outside my house…he’s 80 something…so I’m very polite about it (’cause I’ll be 80 some day), and tell him it’s a 1984, and always ask him if he wants to take it for a spin and we both laugh. (Man..you’re getting your money’s worth reading this one..three stories in one.) Any way I thought if I could squeeze the year of my Corvette into the plate and I wouldn’t have to answer it as much. ( I actually got a stamped “1970” plate at a place in a shopping mall for the front of my Mustang for the same reason…Arizona only requires a rear plate…funny..they still sent out two plates though!!!) (Geezzzeee..there’s 4 stories for ya…I don’t think I remember what the orignal was??!?!?!). The plate reads “84C4WOT”. Deciphered it means 1984 C4 (the generation) and WOT = Wide Open Throttle.
Wow was that painful to read through? Hope not!!!
Ok, back to the original post. Got to work just fine no problems. Now, this time of year it’s get’s pretty hot here is Southern AZ and I think yesterday was about 105 or 107. My work day went by as slow as it possibly could and I had to hang a little late to finish up a task. I head home and I got about 4 miles from work and I noticed the cars behind me slow down and to a little swerve in the road. If you’ve driven here in Tucson much, such things are not extraordinary, there’s a lot of weirdness here on the roads.
Approximately 1000 yards down the road I see my digital temp gauge, jump to 260 degrees. Now the 1984 C4 runs hot by factory standards. The electric fan has a factory setting of 223 degree before it kicks on…but 260…is not good…not by any stretch. And picture my expression on my face when 200 feet further it shot to 280 degrees. I’m doing about 45 and I’m in the middle lane of a 3 lane street and traffic is heavy. I know I need to pull this thing over or that which is currently going very bad..is going to get even worse. I cut off the next car where there was the smallest of a gap and dove for a Circle K (like a 7-11) parkinglot about another 500 yards away. As I pulled in to the parkinglot…my temp gauge read 299 degrees (my first new record of the day..beating the old temp by a whopping 17 degrees…”Tell him what he’s won Johnny!!” ” Well Wink, he’s won a cooked corvette and gas saving trip on the back of a tow truck!!!!”.) DOOM!!! was the only word that came to mind….ok..fine…that wasn’t the word…but it did have 4 letters.
I stopped it, turned it off, popped the hood latch and jumped out of the car to get the front lifted up…. I expected to see coolant gushing out of every place imaginable, but the engine compartment was pretty dry…I’m thinking..this is not good…nope….not good at all. There was a little fluid on the frame and a small wisp of steam, but nothing to make you think there was an Old Faithful event about to occur. I checked the coolant overflow tank and it had a small amount of fluid in it..very small, odd for something that was about to blow. I quickly checked the hoses that I could see, without touching anything….every thing was hot, and they looked fine. I could even see a portion of bottom hose, it seemed ok. I stepped back and looked under the car and there was only a very small puddle. Corvettes are pretty low to the ground which makes it hard to see anything will out getting down on the ground, but I had on white paints and when it is 107 degrees in Tucson, the pavement is about 115!!!
So what my observations imply is there wasn’t enough coolant in the car to boil…and at about 300 degree…it would be boiling!!!
There are only a couple of things that would a cause a complete drain of the cooling system.
1. A hose coming off. Since there wasn’t any coolant on the upper part of the engine, so the top ones were fine and what I could see of the bottom hose it seemed normal.
2. A cracked block or a head would have had the Vette running poorly before hand and I would have noticed.
3. Freeze out plug failing. I’m thinking this was the problem. A freeze out plug is just that, a metal plug in the block and heads of your engine. They are there mainly for cold weather climates. If the coolant was mixed wrong with too much water and should this mixture freeze, the plugs will pop out during a “freezing event” allowing expansion of liquid hopefully saving the engine’s metal from cracking from the pressure.
Freeze Out Plug
Freeze Out Plug in the engine block.
Why is that so bad? They look pretty simple to put back in. Sure they are, right…after you pull the entire engine out!!!
So there I stand, white paints looking soiled, red Vette with hood up and smelling like a burnt carrot, 107 degree, humid as hell, and it starts to rain. Can you picture it?
I made a quick call to my GM Motor Club and they arraigned for a flat-bed. 2 hours later my lovely wife meets me at the Circle K and we wait together for another 45 minutes(total of 2.75 hours) for a truck to show up (my second record of the day… breaking my last tow truck wait by 1.25 hours) and 45 minutes after that I waiting in my favorite repair facility parkinglot waiting for my poor Vette to be dropped off (where it would sit, in the dark, overnight, all alone and wounded). Too much drama?
Let’s get to the do’s and don’ts.
1. Do pull over in a safe spot as soon as possible.
2. Don’t continue driving. Don’t try to make it home or one more block/mile. You could just be making it worse.
3. Don’t keeping it running after you stop in a safe place. It isn’t normally going to cool it down and again you could be making it worse.
4. Don’t touch anything under the hood. Don’t open the radiator. Don’t open the coolant overflow reservoir.
5. Don’t try filling it with water or coolant immediately. Just let the car cool down all the way down.
6. Don’t try driving it after its cooled down, even if you filled it with water. 100% chance that what caused the overheating, didn’t go way.
7. Do call a tow truck.
8. Do call a friend or someone and let them know where you are, at the least.
9. Do get a motor club of some kind. Average Guy with average budget..right? Towing is expensive, very expensive. I like the GM Motor Club. I pay about $69 a year and I’ve used it twice this year already. I have my son’s car covered and my Corvette. (The Mustang is covered by Haggerty insurance.) Within town the towing is free up to a certain mileage, both this years tows were free, saving about 250 bucks a shot, that a good deal.
6/30/1953 – Corvette debuts at NYC Motorama. That’s a big deal. 6/30 is also my birthday. Yup…5 years later to the very day the Corvette debuted my parents had another mouth to feed!!!
1953 Motorama Corvette..And so it began!!!
What? You thought my baby pic…No Way!!!
And 11 years later to the day the last Rambler was produced that was 6/30/1969.
1969 - Rambler made a few fine cars...um...this wasn't one of them.
7/1/1908 United Motors was formed. They build car components, at one point include Hyatt Roller Bearing Company (anti-friction roller bearings), New Departure Manufacturing Company (ball bearings), Remy Electric Company (electrical starting, lighting, and ignition equipment), Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, later known as Delco Electronics Corporation (electrical equipment), and the Perlman Rim Corporation. It was later purchased by General Motors.
Also on 7/1 the Graham auto plant in Canada produced its first Prosperity Six in 1931.
1931 Graham
Again on the same day Pontiac selected Bunkie Knudson general Manager in 1956. Bunkie Knudson – race car driver and innovator.
Another biggie….7/2/1992 the 1 millionth Corvette was built. It was a C4 Convertible. Grabbed a picture of it at the National Corvette Museum while I was there a couple weeks back.
1,000,000th Corvette at the NCM. Photo from my trip.
YEAH!!!! I know!! Where have these been…right? Sorry, but I think I’m back on track.
My Mustang has an old school 4 barrel Holley and although it starts pretty quick after a few pumps of pedal to get the mechanical fuel pump to push gas where it needs to be. But if your old school muscle car or race rod sits for a while or you swap carbs often, you can spend some considerable time cranking on the engine. This might seem like no biggie, but it can cause lobe failure on a flat-tappet cam.
For my Holley there’s a better way.
You need to locate your float-level sight plugs.
Holley - image not from my mustang
A different configuration
Take a plastic squeeze bottle…. (Do you really need a pic of a squeeze bottle?) Well just in case…
Bottle Pic you don't need!!!
this type works the best…. and fill the float bowls with fuel until it trickles…(very little trickle…no fires…please.)
Float Bowls
This should be enough fuel to allow the fuel line to fill from the tank. According to the specs a Holley can run 45- 60 seconds on full bowls.
6/22/1934 Hitler contracts Ferdinand Porsche to build cars with let to..you know the VW and later the Porsche!!!!
1934 VW
In 1958 on 6/26…just four days before I was born the first Datsuns was exported to the U.S.
1958 Datsun.
We use to laugh at them. My father and I once cut a wrecked B210 in half and replaced the entire rear and 1/2 of the roof from a donor car.
That was kool!!!
6/14/1832 – Nicolaus Otto was born in Germany…”Who?” He invented the gas motor engine. An engineer and experimenter, Nicolaus Otto invented the first practical alternative to the steam engine in 1876 — the first four-stroke internal combustion engine. He called it the “Otto Cycle Engine,” and as soon as he had completed his engine, he built it into a motorcycle.
The Otto Motor powered Cycle
6/16/1903 – The BIGGIE….Ford Motor Company was established. On the same day in 1953 Ford introduced the power steering. (Two for the price of one)
Also on 6/16/1896 Jean Peugeot was born in Paris. Founder of Peugeot the auto maker. The family began with coffee mills and bicycles and then cars.
6/18/1943 Tom Gale was born in Michigan, Flint to be more exact. His Dad was a designer for Buick and his grandfather worked the assembly for Buick. Guess where he went to work when he finished school….nope….Chrysler.. Gale became head of design in 1985. He previously worked on the some of the iconic cars such as the E-bodies-Barracuda and Challenger and was a major contributor to the Chrysler Portofino concept car.
1987-Chrysler-Portofinow Concept Car
6/19/1947 the Tucker shows up in Chicago.
The Tucker-Torpedo - I love these cars!!!!
And on the same day, 1969 GM produced the 4 millionth Cadillac.
This isn't actually "THE" 4 Millionth Caddy..but you get the idea.
Coming to you live from The Witt in downtown Chicago, it’s me typing on my laptop. Three more days to enjoy relaxing and seeing the sights.
Speaking of sights..what I don’t see is a lot of muscle cars now or old…errrk… let me explain “lot” in this context it means…. “almost none”. I’ve actual only seen one newish corvette (C6 – convertible) and a 1968 Mustang. The Vette was on the street and the Mustang was parked in an alley. That’s it!!!.
Muscle Car Drought..the only Vette I've seen!!
Ok…hang on, if you think I just sit and type uninterrupted..nope…not much chance of that.
My better half is here in the Windy City, at an international interior design event, where she’ll be giving a talk on….um…some interior design subject….um….yeah…I pretty sure that’s right and I tagged along. Nice little vacation where I can tool around a big city, which I enjoy doing from time to time. What’s my point…umm…oh yeah….so I just ran out to get pick her up a couple of items while she is practicing her presentation. On my return trip back to our hotel I spied a beautiful custom 2010 Mustang..so..that makes three!!!
Would you drive your vintage or newish muscle car around a large city? Let me say that I’ve been walking and taking cabs and even ridding on top of the double-decker tour bus and I’ve seen how these Windy City dwellers drive….I’d have to day…..I don’t think I would. These folks drive 50 miles an hour between stop lights…but..still I might consider it early on a Sunday morning!!!
Oh…bTW…I know these guys!!!
My Parts Guy.
Oh and in the category of hanging 1930 Chevy’s….here ya go…a 4 door sedan at Portillo’s.
It’s been a few days since I posted last, every once in a while life gets a little busy, business travel and a vacation.
However, this blog might have been idle but I wasn’t.
For as long as I’ve owned my vette, I’ve dragged around the original Bose stereo. Yup, 1980’s technology, with a cassette and AM and FM radio. (You kids won’t remmmbbberr….hang on while I put my teeth back in…there…better…remember these and I use to walk to school when I was a kid, up hill both ways and snow up to here!!!!) It sounded really bad. The cones were mostly dried out from the AZ heat and I think I’ve spent enough on original used speaker and amps (each speaker had its own amp) to buy four stereos with big amps and have the vette vibrate down the street without starting it. I just didn’t want to get read of the thing….because it was original equipment.
Well, I finally broke down and replaced it. HOWEVER, not with just a cd player and radio. Nope. I wanted something a little more fitting for the car.
The 1984 C4, as more Corvette peeps know, was the most technologically, advanced car at the time. It was the first car with computer controlled fuel injection, electronic shifting, and a dash-board with digital and graphic displays….and you can switch it from English to Metric. So I wanted a stereo, befitting the other technology, but…..say it with me….Average Guy with and Average Budget!!!!!
So I couldn’t go to crazy. What I did find was an all digital Pioneer Media Center. No CD. USB connection for IPODs or just a thump drive. HD Radio that finds adds all the radio stations and …..wait for it…..drum roll………blue tooth phone connections. KOOL or what…my wifes’ 08 Lexus has got nothing on my 84 Vette now…..ok..well she does have air-conditioned seats and navigation (…but my phone has that) and the rear camera and a back seat (over rated!!!) and moon room (but my roof comes off!!)…away there’s more.
I did not want any thing to happen to the original speaker covers nor did I want any new holes, I wanted great sound and an original look. So I added Alpine SPS 699’s in the rear, 260 watts and 85 RM and Alpine SPS 400 for the door speakers, 140 watts peak and 45 RM. She sounds great.
The original Bose system is safe, all packed and stored.
7/7/1928 First Plymouth is made, some research suggest that it was actually built on June 11, 1928. It had engineering code (or model) Q and had a 4 cylinder engine. Check out the video on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGfwjTI1ahA
6/10/1951 A Jaguar wins the 24 hours Le Mans – it was a C-type version of XK120. Here are a couple pics:
Jaguar at a race
XK 120 C
C Type
6/10/1927 – The Graham boys purchased what was Paige_Detroit Motor Cars. The Grahams started out as farmers and glass bottle makers. One of the brothers invented a rear axle that would allow converting Ford car platforms in to light duty trucks. Oh they are still in business – owning/running Madison Square Gardens and hosting sporting events.
Graham-Paige auto
6/11/1955 Horrific crash at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Here are the details from History.com
Prior to the race, Levegh complained that the course was too narrow near the pit-stop area and the grandstand. This observation proved prescient. As Levegh was racing for the lead near the pit-stop area, he swerved to avoid fellow racer Mike Hawthorn s Jaguar as it moved toward the pits. Levegh s car, going about 150 miles per hour, came up too fast on Lance Macklin s Austin-Healey and was catapulted upward. The car crashed into the grandstand and its exploding parts went straight into the crowd. Levegh and more than 80 spectators, packed into the grandstand, lost their lives in the fiery crash.
6/12/1954 – Packard offers the first tubeless tires.
