now we're talkin'

Finally back to work in my new garage, and it feels great! In the last three garages, I've installed fluorescent lighting, but this time I wanted something more portable. I ended up with this LED tripod light from Northern Tool. The tripod is on the flimsy side, but it's fine for what I need and I get more than enough photons wherever I want them. I can see myself using this light (or one like it) for a lot of future projects.

Perfect working conditions :)

Right now I'm concentrating on getting the 68 running again as soon as possible - I want to take it to some BAMA events before the car goes for paint - so I've skipped over a few things that I'll have to come back to later.  One of those was the driveshaft, which I acquired used from my good friends at CP Designs. Normally I would have taken the time to paint it gray to match the rear differential housing, but I don't have anywhere I can use as a paint booth right now. Plus it's not exactly the most difficult part to remove later. The optimum length of the driveshaft with the T5/8 inch rear end is 52 ½ inches from the tail housing seal to the center of the u-joint at the pinion of the differential. I had to buy appropriate U-bolts because the originals were designed for the six cylinder rear end.

Around the time I installed my SSBC brake setup and new brake lines, I also installed the wider bore ⅜ fuel line I'll need for the V8. The only problem with this, apart from some of my amateurish bends, was that I directed the fuel line to the original location - or in other words, to where the fuel ump used to be when the car had a six cylinder engine. Oops! Rookie error! I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to figure this out if one of my friends hadn't noticed.

Six cylinder location at steering box

I had to take the fender off to get at the incorrect fuel line, and while I was thinking about how to make a replacement piece, and whether my custom drilled mounting holes in the frame rail would still be usable, I found myself drifting off in a completely different direction.....

Looks nice, but still incorrect

The steering box: back when the 68 was actually running, the steering was as sloppy as a soup sandwich. On a hot day. I'd always planned on figuring out a rebuilt or replacement box closer to the end of the project, but for the purpose of moving the car around I had re-installed the original part. And so, as I was staring down at the misdirected fuel line, I realized the time had come to deal with the steering box - apart from anything else, it was in danger of becoming seriously inaccessible as the engine compartment filled up.

The options for a steering boil down to:

1. Rebuilding the existing box
2. Buying a rebuilt box from NPD and using the original as a core to obtain a discount
3. Buying a after market steering box
4. Upgrading to power steering
5. Going for a full-on upgrade to electric power steering as some other folks in BAMA have done.

I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that a rebuild is best left to a specialist, and I'm not planning any power assists to start with, so it really comes down to either #2 or #3. After shopping around the various mustang parts houses I managed to find a Flaming River aftermarket box for less that $500 from Mustangs Unlimited, including free shipping. This is about $50 more than it would cost to buy a rebuilt box from NPD and pay to ship them the core. The flaming river steering box is on the left in the picture below. I decided not to paint it gray like I did the original.

Here is is in situ

After the steering box was installed, I moved on the the instrument cluster which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I had to loose the heater control panel and add the dash pad before the cluster could be eased into place. I'm really happy with the (very slightly) customized look.

Next I popped in the chrome-plated export brace that I picked up on a visit to Turlock in 2011 and have been storing in various attic spaces for the last four years. I say "popped in" but in truth it was quite a fight. For a start, installation necessitated removal of the shocks and for another it did not line up exactly right - although it was a lot nearer now the engine is back in place. I basically forced it into position by getting some of the bolts started and pulling the chassis into alignment as the bolts were cranked down. Another job done!

putting the brakes on

I finally got back to some mechanical work at the beginning of October. Longer term followers of this blog might recall that I had a few problems with my front brake system. I tossed away the six cylinder drum components and replaced them with an old Granada set up that I acquired through the BAMA mafia. Later I found that the the hub size on the replacement Granada rotors was too big for my wheels. This led to me transferring the car from the Green Room to my garage in Emeryville with a pair of Ranger wheels on the front. That was in April 2012, and that's exactly where those wheels stayed for the next two and a half years.

Ranger wheels: not very sexy.

I always planned to take the replacement Granada rotors and have the hubs turned down so they fit the wheels. But I struggled to find a machine shop that could do this for me. Later I talked to Mike Maier about the inadequacies of the Granada swap. A couple of months after that I was in Reno for Hot August Nights when I found myself being dragged into the "Big Boys Toys" exhibition hall, and slowly sucked towards the Stainless Steel Brake Co stand. A few minutes after that one of the Summit Racing guys was passing my credit card though an exceedingly hot swiping machine. It must have been hot, because the credit card was melting when I got it back!! A week or so after that some very heavy SSBC boxes showed up at the house. Around this time I also ordered the roller spring perches from Opentracker Racing that we've all heard so much about.

Roller perch (left) and static stock option (right)

After tearing off the Granada spindles (and all the related parts which I spent time restoring...sigh...) it was straight forward to install the SSBC spindles, dust shields and rotors. It's probably fair to say that the SSBC system is overkill for this car, but I just decided not to make any ecconomies with the brakes.

Getting the caliper brackets and calipers assembled and installed correctly was a bit more traumatic, but I eventually got there. Then I wiggled the car away from the garage wall and did the same to the driver side.

Wheels fit now..!

The SSBC brake system comes with a new master cylinder (MC), flexible lines, and all the hardware. It also includes some short sections of hard brake lines, because the setup requires several modifications to the stock lines. Plus you have to install a proportioning valve (PV) that wasn't needed with the original all-drum system.

One of the reasons for working on the brake system now (and the fuel system next) is that I wanted to get all the lines installed before I put the engine and transmission back in. So I ordered up a set of stock brake lines from NPD and set about attaching them to the chassis. The rear brake lines went in just so, and I made finger-tight connections to the wheel cylinders. Nice. The central line at the transmission tunnel and firewall and the connections at the front discs were also pretty easy. I was able to utilize most of my shinny zinc plated hardware with the SSBC brackets.

I bolted up the MC and connected the brake pedals and the piston. You are supposed to bench bleed the MC before installing it in the car, but I didn't because I only bothered to read the instructions afterwards. At this stage I was a little bit more concerned about where to mount the PV and how to get the lines anywhere near to the MC, never mind connect flawlessly.

Of course there was no distribution block included with the SSBC kit, so I had to dig out the original and refurbish it. That's one more time that keeping EVERYTHING from the tear down has saved me.

That's better

I guess it also goes without saying that the brake lines that come in the SSBC kit have completely different connectors to the ones that come from NPD. And they're not quite the right shape, and anyway I've never had to make custom brake lines before, so why not now? Well the answer to that questions is probably "because it's a tedious PITA!" First I had to invest in a pipe bender, and then a flaring tool, and then in some extra brake lines from the local parts store, and then some more spare brakes lines...and...well when it was all done it looked like this:

Now to me it wasn't too bad for a first time, but I know for a fact that some of the flanges are not right, and that a lot of the bends look amateurish. For now though, it's a start.

To be continued...

Buick Day

There's no question I've got a LOT of great things out of being in BAMA: tons of help with my car, a whole bunch of "car" events and day's out, and some very sore upper arms after the biannual Kart races. But of course the best thing by far is all the fantastic friends I've made while doing "car stuff."

One of the many perks of being in the "LS clan" is that rounding up a a crew for a day's blast on somebody's project is only ever a few quick phone calls away. And, apart from being highly productive, a day spent wrenching on a car is one of the things we all enjoy the most. This time around it was over to my friend Dave's house to tear apart his '66 Buick Skylark convertible. Basically the plan was to pull the drive line and suspension.....and we just about managed it. The plan is for the car to be back running again by "the Summer." We'll see how that goes....

A menu worthy of Top Chef

I'll be coming here again!

front end install

The moving deadline has been and gone since my last post, and the car is now neatly ensconced in its new home....but the whole episode was far from straight forward. When I left off last time the car was a front end installation away from rolling anywhere, so that's where I'll be picking up. Removing the front end was actually one of the first things I did after the last house/garage move, so kind of fitting to (almost) end there. This was the condition of the tie rods after I removed them:

looking a bit better after encountering the wire brush

painted brake gray at the same time as lots of other small parts

I replaced the stock outer tie rod ends with larger ones to facilitate the upgrade to V8 spindles which have a slightly larger hole.

replacement parts on left, stock on right

the threaded connecting brackets were zinc plated

In the future I plan on replacing the original steering box with an aftermarket replacement, but I'm still a long way from deciding which one to get, so it made sense to spruce up the original box and put that back for the purpose of moving the car. Fortunately I accomplished this well in advance - I actually got a bit carried away and painted the box brake gray, so it may survive a while longer.

40 years of oil and grime

so clean...

...it deserves two pictures.

back in the car again.

And now to the brakes. I always planned to swap the 4-lug drum brakes that came with my car for some decent disc brakes, but the Granada swap wasn't exactly what I had in mind....until my friend Terry donated a Granada set up that had previously been installed on a 67 Mustang.

first sight of my "new" brakes in Terry's '63 Ranchero

The dust shields, spindles and caliper brackets got worked over with ye olde wire wheel, primed and then painted with the same Duplicolor black I used everywhere else.

also had to do a bit of bashing to fix some dents here

Which takes us to here the picture below - all ready for assembly, but very little time left, before moving day, and a house to be packed up in the background....almost panic time in fact!

So I did what I always do when I need help with my car: reached out to a buddy, this time round my friend Chuck from BAMA. With his help, we got the springs compressed with the floor jack (!), installed the shocks, and then bolted on all the front end parts in just a couple of hours. Unfortunately from the point of view of this blog, I was acting as tool dolly/part locator for a lot of this time, so I didn't really have time to take many pictures.

Chuck bolts up the steering

love the black and gray look (with dust)

zinc plated shock tower brackets

more zinc, blah blah...

After Chuck left I installed the support brackets and latch for the hood and my new one inch sway bar with polyurethane bushings which I got from Mustangs Plus. It wasn't strictly necessary to put all of this stuff back but I did anyway because it means less parts to move/store The rear bumper and valance were bolted back on for the same reason.

Hope to see a lot more of this in the future (minus the garage door!)

So, just a pair of fenders and two wheels away from rolling....