Tag Archives: Chevy

84 Corvette – Power Steering Work

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Two guesses as to my next project on my C4……cricket…cricket…cricket…Give up?   Fine, its replacing the power steering reservoir and connected hoses.

Just for fun?  Nope, who’d want that mess of a job, just for fun?  No…no it is not an upgrade but a serious leak. 

Hey kids its story time!!!!  Let me tell you about the big shiny Vette that ate all of the average guy’s car budget.  Grab you binkies…it’s horrifing.  

If you’ve been reading my posts, you may recall (“come..you ‘member!!!” {I stole that from the comedian George something}…..What you don’t hang on every word I type?…You don’t re-read my post to memorize all my car woes and tips and humor???..that’s what I figure…yet I keep on typing….its good therapy for me!!!) that my vette over heated, not once, but twice!!!   Freak catastrophic radiator hose split and then the fan frying it’s self.   

After I got it back from the shop, where I had them check the electric work I did when installing the new fan, I noticed a leak under the car in the driveway.  I hate leaks under my cars, almost as much as the Ms. hates the side affects they have on our driveway (I’m not crazy about them either).  The leak was not too big and when I cleaned it up, I chalked it up to left over coolant from the over heading, it had the right consistency. Then I washed the car.  Nice shiny beautiful red…money swilling Corvette!!!! 

Drove the car to work and home again and came back out a bit later to put the garbage cans on the curb….errrkkk…hey…Tim..no one, not one single person, cares why you came back outside, and just as many care where you put the trash cans… and I’m going out on a limb here…but I’m betting the total is the same for whether you drove it to work…to the store…or Japan…got it bro???!!!  These are valuable minutes of our lives being spent here reading this!!   Ok..I got it. The pool was bigger than before and it no longer could be mistaken for coolant.  It was without a doubt, transmission fluid, or power steering fluid.  Whether it is GM or Ford, either of their recommend power steering fluid looks and feels similar to the transmission fluid. 

Dreading the worse news, I decided to first check what I hoped was the problem, power steering fluid, I’d hate that less then tranmission issues.  Luckily…(isn’t that the way it is with older cars..your happiness is measured by the size of what’s broken, or needs replacing)…it appeared that it was just the top of the hoses on the reservoir, near the hose clamps…perfectly understandable….it’s an old car..and simple to replace (remember that later on in this post). 

Here are the hoses: 

Hoses leaking near the clamps.

 

I’m thinking…oh..”SLAM DUNK” easy fix.  Perhaps, but come on….really….does it really ever turnout that easy…yes it does…but not this time!!! 

After further inspection, I noticed something else..oh…you’ll love it!!  I’d tell you but you know a pic is worth 250 cuss words (most of those aren’t real words but I do have some unique arrangements of the classic 4 letter ones and a few bigger).  Ready???  NO!! For the pic… make up your own cuss phrases!!! 

Sigh!!!

 

Well that does make it a clean sweep…everything above the pump up needs to be replaced!!!  Ok, still not horrible, so I’m much happier knowing it’s not the transmission!!!!  Just order the parts and we are home free. 

And that’s the end of the story…expect for the part where the hoses aren’t available any more and OMG, you betcha, they aren’t straight hoses.  Here…take a look!!! 

From the reservoir, down to the pulleys, nothing but bends!!!

 

Better look at the hose going straight down the Front of the engine block

 

They are molded to hold shape, there is no room for anything but the exact bends or they will rub against the pulleys and last..oh..maybe a week!!  

And finally… 

And a little wider view.

 

The reservoir and one hose that is supposed to fit are on their way…be here tomorrow. The other hose is not available…no not out of stock and on back order…not made any longer.  

But I have an idea….I’ll give that to you tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading 

Tim

Auto Factoids for the Week of 7/4/2010

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Here ya go, enjoy. 

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. 

1942 Chevy Front.

 

1942 Chevy Backside

 

I think it looks great!!! 

7/8/1909  The first Hudson was built. 

Hudson Roadster from 1909

 

Thanks for reading 

Tim

1970 Mustang – Replacing my Pillar Post Moldings Part III

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Caulk another tasks down on the restoration of the Mustang. 

I finished up the pillar post molding last night.  Here is the before: 

Pretty?

 

Now these were not as labor intensive as the dash-pad but here were some issues. 

We’ll walk through them. 

The removing the dash-pad was chronicled in my earlier post and that was pretty quick now that I’ve done it twice. 

Once the dash-pad was removed there is an additional piece that needs to be removed, or at least a couple of screw removed on each side. That is the top molding: 

Top Molding

 

 In the picture above I’m pointing to one of the screws in the top molding that runs the length of the windshield.  That screw  is actually through the pillar molding which is partially behind it.  The top molding has 5 screws, two on each end and on my coupe the fifth is in the center and holds the plastic snap for the ends of the sun visors.  That screw does not have to be removed there is plenty of play after the removal of the four other screws, to safely (without forcing anything) remove and install the new moldings. 

The next step is removing the two additional screws that hold the pillar molding to the pillar. 

Screw Marked Remove

 

and this one: 

Second screw to remove.

 

It’s tough see there but here is a good clear picture…that old mold was so deteriorated it actually fell apart. 

Lower molding screw.

 

When I said it fell apart……. 

Yup. It was in bad shape.

 

The other side came/fell off the same way, in pieces, nothing left to do but snap the other pieces on and…eeerrrrkkkk(insert braking sound)…”Yeah..anybody know if you can insert sound in there a WordPress blog??” ….cricket..cricket…cricket……huuummm where’s my…oh I have no staff…well, only when my son visits (he does some on my graphic design..more on my new logo search later..maybe you all can vote on one??) back to my eeerrkkk…we need to discuss quality of workmanship for reproduction parts.  That won’t be a long discussion..”sucks”…there ya go, end of discussion. 

But really I know that they try, and I am grateful for something that looks almost as good, especially for a rare car like mine (…meaning not very sought after..at least not yet…therefore the profit in making any unique parts is next to nothing.) 

One of the first things about this particular molding is that is about 1/2 the thickness of the original and made of light plastic.  This worked out because the holes are not exactly lined up and there was a larger problem. 

Offset isn't correct.

 

As you can see the molding on the right (the original) where the screw driver blade is located, is recessed about 1/2 an inch, if not a little more.  On the left (new molding) there is almost only about 1/4 of an inch..maybe a bit less.  If the material for the new molding was as rigid as the original there would be no flex in the material and the lack of offset for tab on the new molding would not have allowed the use of the original screw, it would have been too short. Additionally, screw holes A and B  in the picture below were not aligned properly and would not have enough ”give” but allow installation, if it was stiff as the original. 

Improperly aligned.

 

 Was this engineering genius or happy mistake? 

Generally, the fit was close, not contours car show inspect-able close, but close enough for the local guys.  But if you can find parts made from “original tooling” (we talked about that when I was install the dash-pad for the first time) buy those, if your Average Budget can handle it.  These molding just aren’t available in any other tooling. 

With the holes in the wrong place it took some pressure and jostling to get them into place.  One tip I can pass on is do not tighten the screws until you have them all started.   I had to leave the top two screws out far enough to allow movement to get the bottom screw in. 

Keep the screw loose to maneuver the piece around.

 

 In the end the result were pretty good. You be the judge. 

Left side

 

Left side bottom (and my vette in the background)

 

Right side (and my neighbor's truck...like you need to know that!!)

 

Left Side bottom

 

Over all it took about 3 hours with interruptions with phone calls and neighbors stopping to chat.  It’s like Soaring over on www.MustangV8.com forum said..”Those are the kinds of tinkering jobs I like.  You get satisfaction you can actually see.”  (BTW – I like that forum, the Classic Mustang section is great.) 

Thanks for reading. 

Tim 

Vette troubles Overheading Do’s and Don’ts Part III

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The news is all good.

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).

Thanks for reading

Tim

Auto Factoids for the Week of 6/13/2010

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Oh..yes I’m behind. 

There was a huge one last week.. 

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.

Thanks for reading 

Tim

Auto Factoids for the Week of 5/30/2010

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5/31/1927 – Mr. Ford produces the last Model T

6/2/1899 – Locomobile Co. Founded – they were in business until 1929.  They made a lot of cars, I hadn’t realized that.  Here are a couple.

1901 Locomobille - Cool..wonder what the 1/4 mile time were??

Love this one..Steam powered????

1923 48 Series Sport

6/3/1864 Ransom Olds was born in Ohio.  He developed and build cars named after him,  Oldsmobile and REO (his middle name was Eli, hence REO, hey that was a band name REO Speedwagon.

An Reo Speedwagon

I’ve never heard of the next guy, until now and did a little reading.

Barney Oldfield was born 6/3/1878.  He was a race car drive, but started out racing bike and wining silver medals in the process.  Here are a couple pics:

Early 1900's

Oh Yeah..that Henry Ford standing next to his car.

Auto Factoids for Week of 5/23/2010

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Few major milestones this week. 

Brooklyn bridge opened for traffic on 5/24 1883 and the Golden opened 5/27 in 1937. 

Race car driver Mauri Rose was born 5/26/1906 currently in the racing hall of fame, placed second in the 1927 Indy 500.  Actually won the Indy in 1941, but that was a tough victory, spanning two Maserati-powered Elgin Piston Pin Specials cars, after the first one had mechanical issues.  He tossed a fit and the car owners pulled one of the other drivers on the time from the race and give Rose that car. 

The Pin 

Elgin Pin

 

What powered that thing? 

Power Plant

 

The first Kaiser-Frazer was produced 5/28/1946 – cars weren’t sold until 1947. 

1947 Willow Run Plant

V8 Reference Book

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I grab every book I think is useful in any of my hobbies.  I happened to be at the mall the other day and had some time kill and wonder down to Borders books store.  Pick up a book entitled “Ultimate American V-8 Engine Data Book” 2 Edition  by Peter Sessler, published MotorBooks.

This book has engine identification codes, component casting codes, internal dimensions and specs, and power and torque ratings.

It goes back as far as 1952 and covers Fords, GM, Mopar, and AMC, Packard and Studebaker.  It includes big blocks and small blocks.  There is a lot of information.

I learned from this book that all of the engines possible for the Corvette in 1984 were rated @ 205 hp.  The CFI was the main power supplier, but it also had listed a couple TPI’s (engine suffix code ZFC), TBI (engine suffix code ZFJ – supposedly for export only) and a 4v for California (engine suffix code ZFF).

They also inform you of the transmissions that go with the engines.

There are listings for cylinder heads parts or casting # as well as intake and exhaust manifolds as well.

I think this one is worth the  $30.00.

This is a great transition to introduce an up and coming feature for this blog.

I love engines…(duh).  To me the history of development, what was used when and where and maybe even why can be fascinating.  I’ll be tossing out specs and the like and hopefully some, ” I would have never guessed that” information.  Now, I don’t have this all in my head, it will be researched stuff or some experiences. (My 1974 Torino was a good case study..tell you the story soon).

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Abandoned Cars – Contest – Win a Hot Rod DVD

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One of my favorite things are abandoned cars.  Every year I get the Hemming calendar of abandoned vehicles and look forward to various car publications that have a section where they highlight these photos.   

One of my fondest memories growing up was playing across the road from where we lived with an old Plymouth, 1950’s vintage that was left in the field.  I remember my dad saying after I asked him if it would run, that it needed a carburetor.  My brother and I tried to fashion one out of can and some metal fins from an old ice tray.  This was back in the late 60’s, we were pretty young.   

Out here in the southwest you use to be able to see them all the time.  The desert really knew how to tear down a car.  As late as the mid 90’s you could still find them along the side of the road of major highways and if you dared to head out in to the mountains of southern Arizona, trek up the nearly impassable mining roads you’d find them.  There would be anything from the 1930 to late 1950.  Some would be sitting right beside the road or a mine and many could be down the mountain a ways, not a road in sight.  When they died the owners left ’em where they fell. But often, since the road was so narrow, they would push them off the side and down the mountain.   

During the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s I spend some time in the mountain, looking for ghost mining towns and generally in join the trips with relatives.  You would find abandoned car dotting the dirt roads that wound up and down the canyons.  Somewhere in the mid 1990’s the Forestry Department started fencing off the old abandoned mines and as part of a plan to allow the areas to return to their natural state, blocking off the mountain roads to make impassible to all but the most daring 4 wheelers. eeeerrrkkkkk….I’ve been places in a 1970 Monte Carlo that some folks with 4 wheel drive won’t go.  Part of that initiative was to haul out the old wrecks that had been there for decades.  So a lot of them are gone.   

I recently began look for abandoned cars as a hobby and photograph them.  So I thought maybe some of my readers might what to join in and catalog the wrecks and their locations and well as photographs.   

Then I thought, maybe a contest would be fun.  So I’m looking for the readership to email me photos of abandoned car that you run across.  Of course there are some rules.   

What qualifies as an abandoned car?  I’m going to be pretty liberal here and we’ll extend the criteria to include neglected backyard finds as well. It has to appear to be pretty much untouched and neglected.   

Two more rules:   

You have to provide a general location and it has to be an original photo, not snagged from the internet.   

Here is one example.   

The house in the photo had been empty for some time according to the locals in Tombstone, Az.  These three cars were in the back yard covered with weeds, trees and debris.   

This a 1950's Chevy pick up. I wasn't allowed to get any closer.

 

Next in the same yard was this:   

Chevy Monte Carlo

 

And this Ford coupe:   

Ford Coupe

 

I’ve one more good one..but I’ll save that for later.  

For the first two individuals writing in with a good photo of an abandoned or neglected car, I have a DVD from the Hot Rod Magazine Library “Dream-Build-Drive” collection.  

You can email it to me (timsweet@cox.net) or post to my Facebook page (look me up: Tim Sweet).   

Thanks for reading.   

Tim

SCCA Event 4/25/2010 Auto Cross Part III

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So let’s get to my runs.  As I mentioned, there were 2 sets of runs, one for time and points and one for just time.  Each was five trips on the course.

One thing they have you do is of course walk the track which is to get you someone familiar with the corners.  I walked it twice.  Once on my own and once with the novice “coach”.

This is my second auto cross.  If you’ve been a constant reader you might recall that was on Jan 25 2010 and it was mainly corvettes. We rented the area and set up our course.  I did fairly well there for my first time.  But this course was different.  A lot tighter corners in a row and two sets of very tight slalom.  Nothing a vette couldn’t handle with the proper speed and a good surface..this was not a good surface, however.

My first run was a darn right awful.  I look like some crazed speed demon with a severe hatred for orange cones. I over drove every tight corner.  My second run wasn’t much better, I didn’t even hit the first corner and then a took a cone for a ride under the vette. 

So now I feeling like a knucklehead.  I had the oldest car there and maybe the one with the most torque, but certainly not the most horse power.  My third run was better and I took along one of the novice coaches but I still had a CD (course deviation) on the backside by missing the second slalom set of cones.  I dropped off the novice coach and my 4th and fifth runs were clean as far as CD’s go but I still got a cone on each run.

So here is how it end up in the first set of 5 runs.

 84 Chevy/Corvette BS
1. DNF
2. DNF
3. DNF
4. 56.355
5. 54.616

My next runs were much better.  I did have on CD and I did get a cone, but the times were getting better. The 5th run below I took a cone and spun on the back side of the course.

1. 51.643
2. 53.146
3. 52.622
4. 51.645
5. 54.188

So I ended the day with the following times and points.

PAX Time         Points

46.260              753
43.575                  796

PAX time is like a handicap in golf, it takes the class of your car and the skill level reduces your time to keep you somewhat competitive.

Not bad for my first real “formal” event.

By the end of the I was worn out.  That is a lot of driving, in the heat (ok..only 88 degree..little hotter on the course). 

The vette performed perfectly, no over heating issues (one of my biggest fears) and nothing broken, did have to rub out a few cone marks….but I showed them whose boss!!!!

You’ll notice a lack of pic or vids on this one, didn’t have my son along as a camera man, and when I wasn’t running they put you to work resetting cones.

If you want to see the scores go to  http://www.azbrscca.org/results/index.php and you can review the results.

Thanks for reading.

Tim