Some time ago I wrote about repairing my 1984 Corvettes door panel. The panel its self was not well made … read “cheap” and didn’t stand up well to time/use. Unfortunately, I can’t say there was any improvement in “quality” of the door panels in my 2007 Vette. But this project isn’t a Corvette door panel, but my son’s Chrysler LeBaron.
The LeBaron is 1990’s car and the door panels are 1990’s cheap, no nice way to say that. This quick project was didn’t start out about the door panel, other than we had to take it off to check the multiple window control switch. The window controls were part of a plastic insert that also has the remote control for the drivers’ side mirror poked through it. It stays put, normally by 3 prongs that push into “V” clips that are on stand-a-lone braces that are mounted on the door panel directly – but not well done.
Since the insert has slid down over the past few months, it seemed that either driving vibrations and/or normal door operations, so while we are in there we’d push the prong back in. Seemed simple enough.
The back of the panel a fiber board/plastic composite – not really fiberglass but similar and it’s pretty sturdy.
Back side of the door panel.
Here you can see the brackets I mentioned above. However, the way in which the bracket are attached to the board is meant to last forever. They are held together with bits of glue in holes along the edges of the bracket. In the heat of Arizona and the great condition our roads are in (tongue in cheek) this type of connection is not ideal.
Here you can see the glue the back of the bracket and that is oozed out into the holes.
This image below is the results of the glue pulling off – separating from the fiber board.
Part clue – Part fiber board. This was laying at the bottom of the door panel
Richard Cleer stumbled onto the 1946 Ford coupe his uncle built in the 1950s while searching for a flathead engine. He had to trade this tractor to bring the Ford back in the family.
By Angelo Van Bogart
Richard Cleer of Ipava, Ill., considers himself a Ford man and an International Harvester man, and he probably never thought he would have to betray his allegiance for one to get the other. However, that was the price Cleer had to pay when he retrieved a family heirloom earlier this year.
When Cleer found the 1946 Ford five-passenger coupe his uncle had hot-rodded in the 1950s just 25 miles from his home, he was actually following a lead to a 1939 flathead engine for another car.
“A guy said he had a 1939 Mercury flathead in the weeds,” said Cleer. “The engine in the weeds wasn’t right, so he said, ‘Maybe I have one in the barn.’”
The barn Cleer was taken to last fall was so overgrown with vines, trees and tall grass, it would have taken Indiana Jones to find it. When the owner cracked open the weathered red barn doors, Cleer saw the unmistakable shape of 1940s American iron.
Had he not been led to this overgrown barn, Cleer had little hope of ever stumbling onto the Ford his uncle built. Note the postwar Chrysler lurking in the barn; it was parked in front of the Ford.
“When he opened it up, I said, ‘That looks like my uncle’s old 1946 Ford,’” Cleer said. But he was mistaken. The car at the front of the barn was a 1946-’48 Chrysler. His uncle’s 1946 Ford was actually parked behind the Chrysler.
Cleer asked where the seller had bought the Ford coupe, and the man repeated the name of Cleer’s uncle. It had been parked since the early 1960s, not long after Cleer’s uncle sold it to the man. Cleer was able to further verify it was his uncle’s car, because all of the tell-tale modifications he remembered from his uncle’s Ford were still present. Blue paint still covered the Ford’s body, the push buttons were still in place to open the doors and the hood and deck lid had been de-chromed just the way Cleer remembered his uncle’s car.
Since the doors opened electrically and the long-parked Ford’s battery was dead, Cleer couldn’t determine whether the knob his uncle installed to open the deck lid from behind the seat was still there. Undeterred, he crawled in the side windows for a better look inside. Sure enough, that old knob was right where it should have been.
Despite Cleer’s excitement, he was told the Ford wasn’t for sale. Two months later, Cleer had worn down the Ford’s owner, although the Ford still wasn’t exactly for sale.
“He said, ‘If you want that car, you have to trade me for a John Deere tractor,’” Cleer said. “Well, I’m an International-Harvester man — I worked for International Harvester.”
Despite his allegiance, Cleer began searching for a John Deere tractor of the same value as the Ford, and one that would also satisfy the seller, to complete the trade.
“It took until May or June to find a tractor, because I didn’t want to get one he didn’t want and be stuck with it,” Cleer said.
Eventually, a John Deere was located at a dealership in Missouri, so Cleer called the Ford’s owner and asked him to call the dealership to make sure the tractor met his approval.
“He had the dealer run it for a half-hour, and he said it would be fine,” Cleer said.
After Cleer purchased the John Deere, the next challenge was retrieving the Ford from its approximately 50 years of storage. Although the brakes weren’t stuck, the Ford had been parked on a sandy floor, which helped preserve the sheet metal, but also caused the car to sink into the ground.
“It took four people five hours to get it loaded on the trailer,” Cleer said. “It had two flat tires, so we loaded it with used tires.”
After five hours of work, Cleer was finally able to retrieve the Ford from hiding. It was in remarkably good condition and exactly how his uncle had built it.
Once it was in the daylight, he finally had a good idea whether all of his efforts had been worthwhile.
“When I looked at it the first time, I didn’t have a flashlight and I didn’t know what it looked like,” he said. “It’s in really good shape — it’s really unbelievable. There’s just a little rust in the driver’s floor.
“It still has the same paint, and the interior my aunt put in it,” he added. “It looks like the seats and door panels are drape material.”
The Ford is still powered by the 1950 Mercury flathead with a 4-inch stroke that Cleer’s uncle installed with high-compression Edelbrock heads and dual 94 carburetors on an Edmunds intake. Cleer has already begun rebuilding the setup to make the Ford roadworthy again.
The 1950 Mercury flathead in the Ford still has its Edelbrock heads and Edmunds intake.
“I’m going to leave it that way,” Cleer said. “I had to pull the heads because it wouldn’t turn. I do all my own engine work but the machine work, and the machinist said [the engine] is in pretty good shape and the heads have never been ground.”
“It’s a good hot rod,” Cleer said, and one worth temporarily forsaking one tractor allegiance for another, even if the John Deere had the last jab.
“We had to use the tractor I traded to pull the cars out of the barn, and after we got the car loaded, I had to load the tractor and deliver it to his farm.”
So I spent Friday night dismantling the control valve, in order to soak it all overnight for a Saturday morning rebuild. It all came apart relatively easy. After having it all soak all night in some super clean, I cleaned it all up an then soaked all the internals and housing in some power steering fluid. I rebuilt the valve with a rebuild kit and a new ball stud kit as well. Then I coated the spool valve spring and nut with some white lithium grease and installed the end cap.
I then painted it in some chassis black semi-gloss and installed the stud boot and retainer. All done!
Meanwhile, manual-shift enthusiasts are upgrading to modern units packing more heavy-duty horsepower capacity—and more gear ratios.
“The generation that is now in their 60s can afford to build the cars that they wanted to build when they were in high school,” said Dick Hill, sales manager for Centerforce Clutches in Prescott, Arizona. And while those folks are not usually looking to build a race car, “they do want a four- or five-speed manual transmission,” he said.
More surprisingly, the trend extends beyond muscle cars and into traditional hot rods as well.
“I have friends who are building Deuce roadsters and they are putting LS motors in them, with a five- or six-speed manual transmission,” Hill said. “There are people who put Cadillac V-8s in 1949–1951 Mercs, and they want a stick. They want a three-pedal car. So that, too, is contributing to the growth of the high-performance clutch market.”
Hot rodders who already own or have owned multiple cars are now looking for something different.
“It’s like the people who buy their first Harley, they want it with every doo-dad they can get, where older bikers are turning back to the Knucklehead or even Flathead motors,” Hill said. “It’s the same with the hot rodder who already has two or three or four toys in the garage. The newest toy is going to be a stick car. And it’s for the same reason that someone will buy a brand-new Camaro, put 1,000 horsepower in it, and drive it on the street while blowing cold air and playing tunes. They want a manual not because they’re going to race it, but because they can have it. That’s what we hear all the time: ‘Because I can.’”
Rating the Ratios
American Powertrain of Cookeville, Tennessee, sells a broad range of high-performance drivetrain components, from complete crate engines to driveshafts and pedals. The company also distributes Tremec transmissions.
“The hot market right now is for the Magnum six-speed in a classic muscle car,” said Gray Frederick. “The Magnum is Tremec’s replacement for the T-56 is the aftermarket version of what you would get in a new Shelby GT500 or Camaro SS.” Frederick added that people are putting them into classic Mustangs Cougars, Camaros Firebirds, Barracudas and Challengers.
“The cars that people spend the most money on are the cars that [are] getting Magnum six-speeds,” Frederick added.
The Magnum is available with two sets of ratios, with the closer-ratio unit being the more popular of the two.
“The wide-ratio box has a 0.5 overdrive, which is very tall; a lot of engines can’t pull that much overdrive,” Frederick said.
But when it comes to overdrive, isn’t more better?
“That’s a myth,” Frederick said. “You can say, ‘Alright, I’m at the ragged edge of my cam, where if I’m on flat ground I can hold 70 mph all day.’ In a perfect world, that would be great. [I]n the real world, at some point you’re going to have to slow down for construction, and then speed up again; or you’re going to hit a rise, or something else that causes your engine to run out of breath. [T]hen you’re going to have to shift and that’s what you’re trying to avoid.
“You want to put it in sixth gear and leave it sixth gear,” he continued. “You don’t want to run down the highway at your cam’s peak performance, which would be 3,000–4,000 rpm. But you do want an rpm where your engine can pull your car up hills, and pass without dropping a gear. If every time you put your foot in the gas the engine lugs and you have to shift, that becomes very inefficient. We’re helping the customer understand that, even on the highway, you want to stay in your powerband. Otherwise the overdrive doesn’t do you any good.”
Frederick recommends the wide-ratio unit mostly for torquey big blocks.
“A Pontiac 455 will pull a stump out of the ground at 800 rpm; it doesn’t have trouble pulling a car at whatever rpm you’re running,” he said. “A Mopar 440 and some other big blocks with a lot of low-end grunt can usually handle the taller overdrive, too. And of course we’re dealing with a lot of electronically fuel-injected (EFI) engines now, and most of them have computers that can cope with low rpm very well.
They can retard the spark, they can meter the fuel differently, they can do all kinds of things.
“We help the customer choose a rearend ratio and a gear set that’s going to give them the best performance, from top to bottom,” Frederick said.
Pedal Pressure Another concern, according to Hill of Centerforce Clutches, is the physical effort once associated with a high-performance clutch.
“Our customers all ask, ‘How stiff is the pedal?’” he said. “That’s why we’ve been very successful, whether it’s a single-disc clutch for mild upgrade vehicle, or dual-disc unit that can hold 1,300 lbs./ft. of torque, we’ve been very successful in making them streetable.”
The average consumer, Hill said, could climb into a car with a Centerforce dual-disc clutch, push the pedal to the floor, and not realize that the car was modified.
“[T]he person who has a $75,000 Camaro or Corvette wants race-car performance without the race-car effort, so this is pretty significant,” he said.
Still, selecting the optimal clutch for any particular application is a complex task best left to experts.
“There are different linings and different friction materials on the pressure plate,” Hill said. “Heat is a factor. The first thing you have to know is how the vehicle is going to be used. Drag racers realize they are going to drive their car until they break it, where hot rodders don’t beat their cars up as bad. They are very proud of their cars and they want to drive them, not break them. And unless the car has been tubbed, a street machine generally runs smaller tires, so you want to tune the clutch for that.”
McLeod Racing of Placentia, California, offers its RST and RXT Street Twin clutches, both double-disc units that hold up to 1,000 horsepower, with the pedal pressure of a stock clutch, said President Paul Lee. Contributing to this low effort—and to easier installation—are McLeod’s hydraulic release bearings, “which fit most applications, replacing worn and/or outdated mechanical linkages,” he said.
“We’re selling more clutches for vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, and installing a new hydraulic clutch in one of these cars can significantly reduce pedal effort,” said Rich Barsamian, national sales manager for Advanced Clutch Technology (ACT) in Lancaster, California. The company also offers a wide range of clutches for GM, Ford and Mopar applications, each rated for torque at the crankshaft.
When installing an aftermarket clutch, Barsamian suggested, “be sure to use the right amount of lube on the input shaft—it is possible to use too much. Be sure parts are free from dirt and oil, and washed in a non-petroleum-based cleaner such as acetone, alcohol or brake cleaner. Be sure to follow the correct torque and tightening sequence when installing the clutch cover—and do not use impact tools.”
You’ve build the engine block from the ground up. You bored it, honed it and polished and ported it. The goal – MORE POWER!!! But you are going to defeat the purpose of all that work and $$$$ buy tossing the wrong size carb with the wrong size fuel line.
So I ran across the this chart that can help.
If the CID is Carb Size Fuel Line diameter
250 – 300 480-600 cfm 5/16 ”
300 – 350 600-350 cfm 5/16″ or 3/8 ”
350 – 400 650-750 cfm 3/8″
400 – 500 750-950 cfm 3/8″ or 1/2″
There is one other consideration and that is the capacity of the fuel pump, however that can be compensated for by using a fuel pressure regulator.
Each July the tiny town of Iola, Wis., is invaded by a sea of humanity and old iron. Many in attendance come strictly for the swap meet, which covers about 4,500 spaces.
“Don’t tell me there’s no recovery going on,” said Kurt Kelsey, an Iowa City-based vendor of new-old-stock Pontiac parts. According to Kelsey, his business this year is much better than it has been in a long time. “The phone has been ringing off the hook every day,” he said.
Kelsey’s observation about an up-tick in the market isn’t alone. Positive reports have come from other vendors, parts manufacturers and catalog retailers since late last fall. Despite an unsettled national economy and high unemployment, the old-car parts business seems to be in the midst of a boom.
During a Dynamat seminar at the Hot Rod & Restoration Show in March, company owner Scott Whitaker said one-day shipping of Dynamat automotive insulation products has been impossible to promise lately, because a large increase in orders has outpaced new hiring. “The bump in sales wasn’t expected and caught us off guard,” he said.
In early April, Bob Marx at Marx Parts in Arpin, Wis., came to visit us and he, too, was upbeat about his rising sales. Marx has been growing his inventory of vintage gaskets and rear main seals and is now rebuilding fuel pumps, but he said that new products do not explain all of the growth he is seeing. Like several other industry veterans, Marx pointed to the TV exposure of the Mecum and Barrett-Jackson auctions as a factor that’s helping the hobby grow. “New people are getting involved with old cars,” he said.
“After a winter of inactivity, old cars tend to leak or fail when they are put back on the road,” said Fred Kanter of Kanter Auto Products, who wonders if the business boom might be seasonal. “March, April, May every year, it’s the same thing — spring,” Kanter said. He pointed out that from spring through summer every year, his most popular items are fuel pumps and water pumps. “There’s a lot of factors that affect our business.”
You never know what you’ll see at big swap meets. You might come across a 1958 Edsel Pacer looking for a new home.
Al Suehring of Amherst Junction, Wis., specializes in ring gears and is another vendor who feels that the market is strong. We caught up with him at the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America dinner in Chilton, Wis., and he said that his business from the United States and abroad has been showing noticeable increases lately.
Ray Yager of Classic Industries said the level of growth of reproduction parts sales is “hard to keep up with.” His firm supplies MoPar, 1955-’57 Chevy, Camaro, Firebird, Nova, Impala and Chevy truck parts, and parts sales for these vehicles are moving in a positive direction. Yager thought the company’s 18-month-old MoPar parts catalog may account for some, but not all, of the huge increase in business he’s seeing. At least one vendor who solely deals in Chevrolets is likewise seeing increases in business.
“I’m having a really good year,” said Ron Kellogg of Chevy Tri-Power. “Rather amazing since I’m selling restored multi-carb setups in an era of $5-a-gallon gas prices. I’ve probably sold 25 Tri-Power units — normally a year’s worth — since November 2011.”
Kellogg’s increase proves that car collectors still want high-performance options on their classics.
In addition to new products, increased TV exposure of the hobby and added catalogs, parts suppliers said both the use of the Internet and increased advertising seem to be attracting more customers. Some big companies such as Mid America Motorworks and Eastwood have begun sending daily e-mails to thousands of potential customers. This takes time and money and employees with Internet skills, but their efforts are paying off with increased sales.
Many mom-and-pop operations that can’t afford daily e-marketing efforts are creating websites, Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts to reach the marketplace. Hobby events aimed at professionals — such as the Racing & Performance Expo, the British Motor Trade Association and the SEMA Show — all offer seminars on Internet marketing techniques to these businesses.
As their marketing efforts become more sophisticated, parts sellers are also discovering that they can use print media to drive customers to their websites. Companies that never ran a print ad before are discovering that a clean-looking space ad with the right design and not much text can generate strong client interaction. The right picture of a car can catch the potential customer’s attention and a simple e-mail address or website link is all that’s needed to bring business knocking. A good ad will pay for itself much faster these days.
While an increase in parts sales would suggest that restoration shops and collector car sales are both on the increase, growth in those parts of the hobby isn’t as clear-cut as it is when a part is “checked out” in an online catalog. Collector car dealers such as Colin Comer of Colin’s Classic Auto in Milwaukee and market players such as Joe Bortz are fairly universal in the belief that collector car prices are off 15-20 percent in today’s market. Some restoration shop owners say that they are busier than they’ve ever been, but others say the opposite.
From all of the indications we have seen and all the comments we’ve heard, it appears the old-car parts niche is improving for 2012 and this trend will presumably filter down to other parts of the hobby. The hobby is changing in many ways, and the wise businessmen in it are getting more sophisticated as the market grows.
Have you even given this a thought? Nope, not me either.
But here’s why you should and why you shouldn’t go cheap.
Engine bearings have the dual function of reducing friction between a rotating part of the engine (the crankshaft) and the stationary part (the main caps and engine block) and supporting the crank.
Because of the stresses caused by the explosions inside the internal combustion engine, the bearing material must be extremely strong, so a durable metal is required.
Engine bearings are small and relatively inexpensive components of internal combustion engines however failure of an engine bearing commonly leads to serious reconditioning works of the engine including its disassembling, regrinding the crankshaft and replacing the bearings. Sound like fun? No. And we all know that it’s not cheap to rebuild, so let’s do it right and not cut corners in this area.
So what should you get? Well considering that there are all kind of ways to destroy your bearing, like dry starting (no oil coating) some of the following:
Yes it’s true bearing take a beating. Here if you go cheap, especially if you are racing, you go home.
So double up on the cash because quality bearings like Michigan 77 or Federal Mogul competition will cost you twice as much. Pay now or rebuild sooner.
