So I bring the Vette home and the steering feels pretty good and although my 70 Mustang has power steering (I had been driving that all week..yeah..I know..”poor baby!!!”) there really is no comparison between the two. I get home and park it for the night.
Next morning I’m up early going to wash both cars, so jump behind the wheel of the Vette to pull it forward a bit and…..nothing!!! No power, nor lights, no key in the ignition buzzer, nothing. Hey, there wasn’t even a clicking noise when turning the key. I’m think great..what could I have left on that would kill the battery that badly. Answer was nothing.
Now if you’ve some of my earlier entires, you’ll recall that electricity and I mix like, um….like..um…Amps and water!!!! As long as it stays in the wire and gets from switch to device and nowhere else, I’m good. Have that perfect universe interrupted and I’m not hanging with that. I hate electrical work. I hate thinking about, hearing about it and living through it. And this isn’t limited to car, but that’s my topic here.
So I get out and raise the hood, but for I get to far I see a huge spot of fluid laying under the car. Right about now I’m starting to get that…”all old cars should be crushed” thought running through my head and then..”I’m gonna find the guy that did that work, right now, on a Sunday and drag his happy but out of church (if such a demon would be allowed in one) and rub his noise in my…yeah…you guessed it….power steering fluid!!! (Breath…breath..that was two weeks ago….come one now..simmer dow…………..HEY IT STILL FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY!!!! Ok….ok…better now, it’s over and it turned out….OH>>>WHOA….don’t tell them now they won’t read the next two posts and your rating will drop below 2 reads a day!!!…Yes…Yes must get a grip!!!!)
So I started up the Mustang (they sit side by side together in the driveway nose to butt – have to back the Vette in or it won’t clear the end of the driveway) and maneuvered it over to the Vette so I can jump it with jumper cables. I have a fairly new jump box but it never really seemed to work, and then I lost the power adapter ( stupid electricity) and it just sits in my garage. I hook the cars together with jumper cables and allow the Mustang to run on high idle. Get in the Vette and …nothing… not even single dash light. The charging when on for some time before I could get the Vette to turnover and she started up, but she wasn’t happy. I took the cables off and then for some unexplained reason I turn the vette off.
Crap!!! So I turned the key, but I already knew how that would because there was still no key in the ignition buzzer..nope….and no click of the starter solinoid…and that would be a triple “Crap”!!!! It took just as long to get her started again only this time I wasn’t going to turn it off. I drove it over to the guys that put in the rack and pinion steering (of course it’s Sunday and I call and let some one know I was leaving it and to put it inside. At this point I wasn’t happy, the power steering leak on a new system and now an electrical issue!!!!
Next day was a Monday and I called up my friend Tim and said, “Hey..uncool to find fluid leaking and my electrical system is f ‘ ed (short for fried….yeah right).
In the end it was just a hose that didn’t get tightened, oh and my alternator was in fact f ‘ed (short for fried). The alternator came that afternoon and the car was ready the next day. And that is that…end of ……………..yeah…nope…..I wish!!!!!
If you can guess what’s next, I’ll send you a DVD.
OH..here is the new rack and pinion all clean and nice looking!!!
New Rack and Pinion This was taken today 8/31/2010
Thanks for reading and yes Steve Sears..you have to wait for tomorrow for the rest.
Every one that reads this blog knows that older cars, no matter how careful you, or how much you baby your car you are going to have problems. That’s the nature of any relationship. Things break, undiscovered issues, or even your own missteps can issues. You just can’t through in the towel “Honey, I’m going to have to find another mate, you just can’t run as far as you use too.” or “Sorry but that broken leg changes everthing…ur outta hereeee.” (Lawyer up…my wife is fine, no injuries, still running fine..no worries…just wanted to be clear!!!!)
Well, over the past few weeks my Corvette has been a serving up a bunch of consternation.
If you remember a few posts back I had replaced one power steering hose and need help with the power steering reservoir. That got done. Shortly after that, a leak developed from the front end and over the course of two days it got a little worse. So I pulled it in to the garage and crawled under neight..and that’s no small effort.
The power steer of course provided hydraulic power to make the turning of the front wheels easier. (There you got the basics of the how it works.) This entire process insists that the fluid, in this case power steering fluid stays in place. Well my beauty failed conform to the standards.
Rack Pinion
If you look at the image above you’ll see the plastic boots (A) that cover and protect the shaft. Those are supposed to be dry. When I touched the boot on the left side of the Vette fluid poured out, clearly it was no longer dry. What was also very very clear at that exact moment was the pain in my wallet.
Basically, the you have two options when something that is supposed to be dry is wet on a car, replace it or rebuild it. I chose both. Lucky for me the complete unit for my 84 Vette is still available through on-line Corvette parts houses. EEERRRRKKKK..While I’m writing this I have the Speed channel up on up in the corner of my monitor, they are testing an Aston Martin DBS against a Bentley w/ W12 engine…soft girl cars…of course that girl’s got some skills, putting eyeliner on at 150 miles per hour!!….end of EERRRKKK – I’ll let you know how that turns out.
A quick trip down the street to Tim Sisk proved my investigative results. I’m the Average guy with Average skills, there was not something I wanted to attempt. Additionally, it requires a front end alignment. So I order one, and because I hate having the car in the shop I had it expressed shipped, or at least that’s what I asked. It didn’t shipped and took a total of four days. What…you say…”oooohhh poor baby, took 4 days to get it here!” Hey, that’s a life time for some car guys!!!!
Now ordering the rack and pinion requires a core charge (that’s where you have to return the old part or pay the core fee – they rebuild the old part and resell it) but as I stated I wanted to do both so I paid the core fee and kept the part. This allows me to either learn to rebuild the part or sent it out to have it rebuild and store it way. Plus I have the original part, although there isn’t much benefit in collector value for having the orignal rack and pinion (numbers matching) 84 Vette, well least not for another 20 years!!!!
The part was replaced and the car realigned, in total it was out of service for a solid 7 days. Picked the car up and drove it home and that was that…and if you believe that, I have some swamp land out here in AZ to sell ya!!! Stay tune for what happened next
Oh…the Aston Martin and Bentley match up. Here the details:
Braking 0-100 to 0 (time speeding getting up to 100 and then distance measured for stopping-shortest distance wind) ….15 second from 0 to 100 for both cars, breaking the Aston won at 40 feet shorter stopping distance.
60-130 test on roll – Bentley win 13.2 second, nearly a second faster than the Aston
The rolling mile – top speed 165 mph for Bentley, 1 second faster than the Aston – 159 mph
Road course – 55.6 seconds for the Bentley 53.8 seconds for the Aston
Like I said – girls car..my 84 Vette has a top speed of nearly 200 miles an hour. My personal best, 174 mile per hour in the Vette – yeah that’s just last year. Dyno proven.
If you’ve been reading my “stuff” on this blog or Facebook or Racing in America http://www.racinginamerica.com/ (Henry Ford foundation) you might wonder…what’s wrong with this guy? Does he write for a living? Well if I did I’d be starving and driving a 1993 Honda Accord with only one plastic hub cap (that’s really my son’s car…he’s a starving artist – I have a plug for him on my blog – RJS Graphic design – he’s pretty good and he won’t strave..Mom won’t have any of that!!) instead of a shiny red 84 Corvette and restored 70 Mustang. I do it for fun, I haven’t made a single dollar from any of my writing. I don’t even have sponsors or advertisers for the places I leave my droppings. Actually this costs me money!!!!
So…yes..I do this for fun and the very informal approach I take…..eeeerrrrkkkkk…..ok folks…I don’t have an approach..real writers do. The way I like to do this is to just sit down and type…there’s no drafts, unless I save it to finish later, there is no real planning,(hell my poor readers are lucky if I remember to run spell check!!!) other than a Post-It-Note or an email sent to myself when I get an idea. Nope, I just sit down and type. If it is on a project I’m working, I sometimes take a break and with the fresh smell of GoJo still on my hands I just start typing and up loading pics. 99.999% of my blogs are done in one sitting. Type and post. (Sometimes I re-read them…mostly to laugh at my super great witt…HEY!!!!! DID YOU JUST ROLL YOUR EYES????!!!! That’s rude!!!)
So I have a list of ideas and one of them was to start a regular piece on engines (I mentioned this a while back.) But man, there’s a lot of stuff out there and great publishing works like the Hemmings nation and Hot Rod magazine do this all time. Am I going to add some thing never before discussed? Nope. Am I going to present it in way that nobody ever has? Well the way I write, yeah probably, no one write like this I don’t think.
My idea was to talk about an engine and include when it was first introduced and what it was used in and for how long, that kind of info. I’m a big fan of history, history of anything, buildings, streets, towns, cars, really anything that as a little history, I’m interested in hearing about.
So my issue was I just hadn’t sat down and picked one yet to write about. I was going to do the Ford 302, the engine my Mustang has, or the Crossfire in the Corvette and I will. But the other day I got my September issue of Classic Car #72 from the Hemmings nation and on the cover was “12 Dynamic Dodge Darts Fun Cars that you must own”. That triggered a memory of the Dodge Dart I owned when I was in college, I think owned it about 5 months..just long enough to remove all the rust and patch the holes and get it into primer before selling it.
As I read the articles in this issue, I remembered the 318 that my Dart had in and as I read further I decided to kick my series off with Mopar’s 318.
So over the next few posts I have some interesting details on configurations and various cars it was used in and some specs. I’ll try to remember to list the references so you can look up additional info.
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.)
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.
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.
Steve Sears is one of the readers of this blog and owner of a 1982 Mercury Cougar Station Wagon (again..I love this car).
But that’s not all, Steve does a lot of his own work, including this unique paint job on his 1992 Ranger.
Here is his recent project.
The before:
1992 Ford Ranger XLT
Tim,
I completed my project last week and thought you’d like to see it.I painted my Ranger with a roller.I only did six coats of each color, usually 8 – 10 coats are required.I like to call the color Haze gray underway and white.I spent 26 years in the Navy so I thought the gray was appropriate for me. Ha Ha.It’s painted with rustoleum mixed with mineral spirits in a 1:1 ratio thus the many coats required.The body prep is the same as any other type paint job except that a primer is not used over the whole truck.I only spot primed the bare metal and over the bondo used to fix parking lot dings.It took a full 8 days to complete the project including the paint on the topper.I have to wait a few weeks before buffing out for a full gloss.For that I’ll just remove the mirrors and the bug shield on the front.The process is well documented on the web over the last 10 years or so so I won’t repeat the process.
I thought your readers would be interested. Finally I have the truck looking like new again.It’s a 1992 Ranger XLT that I had bought new on April 24, 1992.It has the 2.3 liter four and a five speed tranny.The picture labeled 019.JPG is the before shot is attached.
And the after photos:
After Pic 1
After Pic 2
After Pic 3
Thanks very much for sharing it Steve. (A roller? Wow!!!!)
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.
