Oops I'm doing it again....I lost my head...

OK, it was a balmy football night, plus raining outside....or at least rainy. Time to do some updates! I haven't been much on the computer as I've been busy with a bunch of stuff, as life does to ya.

Here's where I am in the frame repair:

 

I am working on placing the 3rd and 4th "reinforcements on the tops of the brackets. Presently am working in the ladder bar to bring all 4 holes up to 10mm size, per normal fasteners. I was cheating and using 3/8" bolts from a Cougar....

You can see in the above shot, my relocated sway bar bolt hole (closest to shock tower mount on right). Since this one went so well, I decided to do the same to the one stripped out (oversized) hole on the right hand frame rail! It too came out very nicely, but no picture. So now I can run stock 5/16" bolts all the way around. A 220V home welder is a handy thing to have!!!

Need a little time on a mill, some welding, grinding, then more welding.... stay tuned.

Just got this in the other day too! My new idler pulley standoff!

 

Yet another gift came, from across the pond...Roger Brotton had this made up to duplicate the one that was on the engine that I sent him with Goose #760. I added the black shrink wrap (not shrunk yet!) as a possible upgrade from black electrical tape....! (Shown on a stock cast iron intake.) It will work on aftermarket intakes nicely.

 

Here is a project that didn't make it far from the workbench.... It needs thinner leather, and less shiny buckles!!! ...and flat head rivets....

 

And perhaps you have been following the e-brake cable discussion in another post...or not... Here is the most reasonably priced end that I can find, that actually almost fits!!! Option that is still on the table....design table...is to make it using a simple "U" shaped piece and eliminate the little link that is on my rear brake affair..... The challenge remains to get a crimped end on the cable, and then close the opening so that the two end surfaces are touching each other in a "closed fashion" rather than open as shown. (That's why the U-thing may work better.) Top to bottom pieces... 1) Only aftermarket piece that I can find...expensive and loooonnnngggg!!! Needs to be much shorter... 2) Aftermarket "would work" but
"can't get it anymore!" 3)Side view of recent "most bestest" contender... 4) Original brazed on brass eyelet. 5) Top view of uncrimped "possible suspect".... Of course then there are probably about 3-4 different lengths to deal with, and the pesky ferules, and the different types of housing or sheathing.....sheesh!

 

I spent this last Saturday trying to get this running.....a 1962 Comet station wagon, with a solid cammed 302 and a 9" rearend in it already! We got it running fine, but stopping was a different matter altogether! Going to retrieve it with a trailer on Thursday hopefully! This car belongs to an old friend that needs to sell it, so I will do some work to it to get it operationally fit, and then offer it up to the masses! Original owner car!!!

 


So, I have been busy!!! Even on my own car!

Steve

OK, time for an update!

Thanks for the leads on the marine aspect! They have something that looks interesting...but have not had the time to stop at the nearest outlet to look at the parts....but they are viable, even with some machining required....

Back to my frame repairs!!! Here is a shot of the ladder bar installed, prior to the welding of the final two "improvements #2" to the mounts of the ladder bar.

 

I've also put the reinforcement for the trans brace in place (actually it is sitting where the actual trans mount goes...). This is meant to limit frame flexing in this area caused by the upper a-arm forces acting on the thin box tubing during aggressive turns. More on that later when I get to that portion....

Here is a closeup shot of the final area of welding that needs to be done. I missed getting by the metals shop on Friday to pick up a thicker walled piece of tubing to use as the sleeve/mount for the top of the shock tower new 3rd and 4th mounting bolts. Spare sleeve is shown standing on the ladder bar.

 

The original .500 OD tubing that I used was about .050" wall thickness once it was drilled out for a 10mm bolt. That just didn't seem like enough metal for me, in a stressed point such as this. Mild steel could tear fairly easily...only .050" thick. I upped my wall thickness to almost .120 by going up to a 5/8" OD tubing in a last minute running change....so now I'm running for new tubing and back to the neighbor's lathe to cut some new bits!

Once I have these bits in hand and fitted, I can weld them to the proper places on the top of the shock mount and I will be done with the repair portion of this adventure! Then it becomes refinishing and refining from there!!! ...and of course now we're hitting winter and barely 60 degree days....not good for painting cold steel parts!!!!! Will have to get creative and hope for an Indian summer!!!

Ciao!
Steve

OK, new bits of steel (shown on right) are cut, bored to 10mm i.d. and fitted to left and right shock supports. (That is what the flat spot is...to allow it to fit down closer to the support. Welding takes care of strength issue here as force of motion would be upwards, away from the thin flat area.)

While I had the lathe set up, I also modified my upper shock bushing adapters to a 10mm ID. Previously they were 3/8"....because I cheated and installed US bolts that I had lying around....! Now every shock mounting hole goes back to stock 10mm sized stuff....and nylocks!
 


Welded up LH support...
 

Welded up RH support...

 

All done!!! Well, almost....

 

I had to use the straps to pull the frame rails in ever so little to get all the thru bolts to slip in. At this point, all 4 bolts slide in and out loosely! That will never happen again! Seriously.... I fitted the ladder bar with body weight working against the suspension (upper rear a-arm) sitting on the ground. Once the engine etc is mounted, I may actually need to spread things apart, OR, use a combo of the jack and jackstands in different locations to get bolts to "slip easily" back in place. At least two bolts at any one time should be a slip fit!!!! Minor details....

So what now??? I want to clean up some of the welding areas to get splatter and some high spots lowered a hair, where I dwelled a bit to long with the MIG tip....

I want to make up some quick "shock dummys" to use while I refinish the rest of the engine bay....so that the shocks are not in the way of sanding dust and other such sorts of crap....while I am stripping off old frame/chassis/firewall paint in preparation for new paint and heat insulation/padding! I think I have some 1" square tubing scrap around here somewhere.....

Ciao!
Steve

Wow! It's been so long since my last update I almost forgot my password!!! OK, it's been just under 4 months since I last posted. It's been 3 months and aprox 3 weeks since I've worked on the car! Since my next task was stripping and painting, I've had to wait for pleasant weather in order to have the garage door open...and to muster up the will power to get back out there! So tough to do when it's 50ish degrees out....We hit high 60's this week, low 70's....spring is here! I'm back in the garage! I kept busy doing ebay sales and some tilt-colums...they only need parts cleaner and no paint....so I could convince myself to do them....but freezin my butt off not to mention my fingers, and trying to will paint stripper to work....nope. Not going there!!!

OK, that is a lie. I must have found some time to work on it, because I made up the dummy shock struts! Used some aluminum angle stock I got from Home Depot. Figured I could re-use it to make a fan shroud support at some time in the future... when I get ready to build a fan shroud for a new set of electric fans....but that's a different post...

So, shocks are out, struts are in, removed all the cross member bits so I could get at things with paint stripper, sanding tools, and whatever else comes up!

Here is what I started with on Tuesday this week: (5 pics of stuff so I can figure out where to put it all back to...)
 


I have not yet pulled off the sound/heat insulation from any of the forward areas of the bulkhead, nor the RH side. Only from the left side where you can see the cardboard template I'll use when I work up the new insulation material...
 

I'll be leaving the ballast resistor out. No need for it with the DuraSpark II module and coil. Good shot of the Bosch voltage regulator.
 

Here's where I mounted the DuraSpark module. Gotta watch out for the jack mount on the other side here!!! The rubber/canvas wheel well shield is not stock. PO had these build and installed way back during it's rebuild where it got the Boss 302 engine. Not sure how well they work......
 

Good shot of the original style starter solenoid. This type with the "bump" button on the top are still available! The solenoid to the right, is there to supply a full +12V to the DuraSpark module during cranking. Once it stops cranking it works off of +12V from the run circuit of the ignition. This relay was from a mid 70's Ford Galaxie or big Merc, "horn relay" is the official name, so should be able to handle the current....
 

The wire holder and the bracket for the LUCAS washer bottle are held in place with aluminum pop rivets, so I hit them with the drill and popped these parts off for refinishing, and to make it easier to clean the panel and get at stuff in general!
 

A few minutes with a long scraper/putty knife and this is what it looked like! I also pulled out the wiring on the RH side, marked the wires with tape labels, and secured it neatly with 4" pieces of two sided 1" velcro strips. Now I can move it around nicely to work around it. The four 4-link bars are removed and the chassis is actually sitting on jack stands. I will be dropping the upper and lower a-arms so that I can degrease the mounting areas, clean, and repaint. Going with a silver to brighten things up in the engine compartment! A 1" thick piece of closed cell foam on the crossmember works wonders to sit on when cleaning!!!
 

I dug out an old can of aircraft paint stripper and went to town on the LH panel area. This is where I closed it down on Tuesday night. Oops! Didn't take a picture of where I stopped on Tues! I only got the forward LH side, up to where it turns to the right. I got to this point after another night with a small paint brush, can of stripper, a couple of putty knives, a plastic pickup tub, and a roll of towels and a box of plastic gloves! Oh boy!!!

Here is where I stopped late last nite:

 

By now I'm figuring I have 10 weeks before Reno. Actually 11, but I have a trade show and a weekend away scheduled with the wife, and I'll need a break from this thing any way, end of April.... Progress will be good as long as I can get the painting and refinishing of the engine compartment done. Stuff like upper and lower a-arms go on the "optional list, as they can be done just about any time easily. The 4 link rods will be done now....they are not so easy once the engine is back in....unless you have a car lift....go ahead, make me jealous!

My plan is to take Fridays of from now until June. I have the time, and the boss is happier if I take it that way actually....his pucker factor goes way up when I'm gone for too long......

Another night spent with stripper and tools...and here is where I left off a few minutes ago. Oh, I also found that a small brass and or stainless "parts brush" really cam in handy in all of the spot welded areas, cracks, seams, and even the flat panels...


 
What I found under the black paint on the panels was some sort of white-ish filler primer sort of stuff. Sometimes it comes off easily, others, not so good. There is also adhesive glue from the insulation still on the walls....and surface rust....then there are the spots where it seems "super bonded" or burnt on! Could be the stripper not working properly...it's old.....

OK, I am out of stripper! Used up my stock of brass brushes, half of the stainless one I started with, and have one new one in reserve. Time to hit Home Depot...in the morning.


You can see that I stopped over the wheel well opening, where the rear panels meet the front panels. The rear sections are pretty flat, so I hope will go rather quickly. I hope.... Will need to be careful with the stripper around the rear valance area, so may take out the AC condensor to gain more access....it isn't charged...so....we'll see!

I was very pleased to see nice clean steel under most of the metal. It looks orange now, like rust, but it is surface rust that has formed from the stripper absorbing moisture in the air....or something like that. I will clean this off some more with sandpaper and then protect with something like Galvaprep and follow with Prepsol as a cleaner just before caulking the seams/corners, and paint.

Some of the paint on the chassis frame is very resistant to the stripper, and other sections, once hit with stripper, slides right off.... We'll see what happens with a new can....

I also may have baked this paint on via the header heat....but I repainted most of the chassis back when I was putting it back together last time. I'm pretty sure it was just rattle can Rustoleum, semi gloss black, maybe high temp..... It held up well, except the areas closest to the headers and where I ruptured a brake line and hosed it down with Dot4 fluid....

So, the bad news is that I will be spending at least 2 days more on cleaning down the chassis to get it ready to paint. The good news is that I'll only be spending about 2 more days cleaning and prepping for paint!!!! I did buy a new DA sander for this job...may have to bust it out and see what it does! I have some minor metal displacement from spotwelds that I would like to "dull" down. Small points of sharp steel formed and I hate cutting myself on them when I'm working on stuff..... I'm not going to go crazy and fill spot weld divots, only remove the sharp tips and points of displaced metal.

Here are some shots of my bulkhead juntions, where sheet metal body meets bulkhead, and where rear frame section meets bulkhead.

From Left to Right:
 

Here is the center section. Some guys have a big opening here with two large round tubes visible....not here!
 

 

Here are the 4-link attachment points. I have heard guys tell of these cracking too, so if you are in here, check it out, again L to R top, then L to R bottom.

 

 

 

I didn't get into this area with the stripper all that well. Something to do tomorrow....

 

I'm glad to be back on this!
Steve

Sunday night-late.

Engine compartment and rear chassis is in green self etching primer...

My fingers ache with every touch of a key.... did I mention I hate sanding? Didn't get done sanding until late yesterday...ugh.

One day behind schedule....was supposed to spend yesterday painting....but when I got into the chassis pieces......there are a BAZILLION NOOKS AND CRANNIES!!!

OK, wife has banished me to the showers before I can get into bed, so here is the Reader's Digest version to catch you all up to speed.

Welded up two tiny cracks I found near the rear crossmember (will post pic's later) and welded the ebrake cable support....of course I found it sitting on the work bench AFTER I had put the welder away from doing the cracks....ugh!

Cleaned the entire bay and chassis with PrepSol, washed it down, went over the entire thing again with GalvaPrep, dried it off, let it sit for a while, blew out the cracks and crevices with high pressure air, let it sit more....and started taping it all off in prep for paint.........

FINALLY, got to put the primer on.

Here we are all taped up: (taken AFTER I was done spraying...)
 

 

 

 
I did remove the rear portion of the shifter linkage...only a roll pin...drew blood...missed with the hammer...once or twice...did I mention that my fingers are killing me? Anyway, it made for less stuff to paint around....

 

 

 

Hopefully tomorrow it will be nice enough for me to do the following:

Apply seam sealer to the various joints.

Apply new silver (slightly metallic) paint!

Off to the showers....ugh!
Steve

Monday night: Seams are caulked and silver paint has been applied. The metallic in the paint was a bit more of a mess (flying around!) than I had anticipated and it is a little more metallic than I had thought.....oh well, it does what I wanted it to....brighten up an otherwise dark place!

Left side:
 

Right side:
 

Center: Now I can see a lot more of the welding and problem areas. Of course put an engine in here and poof! That all changes! ....let's not forget about the heat barrier stuff that needs to go all over the place too......won't be able to see anything of this!!!

 

Left Hand lower corner of chassis to center spine area where road smegma tends to collect! (Sorry for the blurry photo!)
 

Right Hand lower corner...note the small hole....this was one of my rust holes that I found. Not worth trying to repair from any angle in here! So figure if I hit any large quantities of water, it will allow it to drain out.... That's the story! The other hole encountered was even smaller (and in a less accessible spot) and was covered by caulk in the end. This is what painting the compartment a light color was all about. Being able to see details more easily...
 

Of course now every part I bolt back on will look like crap!

Off to the showers again!
Steve

Well, it IS that time of year again......TAXES!!! Since I owe a bunch, no sense in giving away your money too soon...so I put it off until the last minute...earn that extra penny or two....pay for Goose parts!!! HAH!

I have been working on the car....took a break for Easter with the family, and the temps have been lower than previous, so did whatever I could find that didn't involve paint.

I will update more photos....but gotta get back to the taxes first! Work before play....

Here are a couple of NEW bits that I picked up today for the car. Dug out two new rubber booties for the inner lower A-arm Unibal joints from my stash. I had two new rear brake lines made up in DOT approved braided material, with custom blue inserts(!), and a new brass heater hose fitting for the intake manifold! (Engine stuff to come...chassis first!) Not shown is some new blue 1/2" Goodyear Hi-Miler heater hose. Easier to work with than Gates Green Stripe for this application. (Gates Green Stripe will be used for all of the large "union" or connections between the 1 3/8" pipes up to the radiator.)

 

I had previously purchased a set of beautiful braided brake lines from Dana @ Mangusta Int'l only to find out that because of my "unique" 3 piston calipers on my car, that they wouldn't fit....

So looked around and found a place that did these in about 15 minutes! Great service, reasonable price! (Royal Brass in San Jose)

Friday looks like 70 degree temps here so hopefully will put some final touches on stuff that needs to be painted and then start slamming parts back on!!! Whoo HOOO!!!

Ciao!
Steve

OK! Slow night in the garage, taxes are off to the tax man...I give up this year....toooo many circles to chase...not zeros....!

So I'll take this time to back up just a tad and post the pics of the frame work that you all missed between those back at the end of page 6, until I hit the primer!

Please do not mistake the smile on my face in any pictures as being from enjoyment......my wife picked up the camera and said that she wanted to document her view of me working on the car during the week.....this was my "crunch" to beat the downturn in weather temps...which hasn't quite returned yet! (Good painting weather!)

Stripping the chassis for painting, scraping, sanding, deburring, cleaning, treating, and then covering everything up that you don't want painted....was a 7-8 day marathon! I think...now, it all seems like a blur!!!

Here she caught me in a typical position for a couple of days with the stripper!
 

No true mechanic is without his trusty junk yard dog...Pepper. Mine warns me of impending deliveries by UPS drivers! The local driver has been getting a good blow by blow on the car with each piece he delivers!
 

OK, enough old men and pets...the following progresses through stripper on the engine compartment panels, then stripping the frame, then sanding...

Here is the engine compartment after stripper and brushing, and water/soap cleaning to neutralize any stripper.

 

 

Getting down in the chassis with stripper and brush! Working on RH side:
 

View from the other side:
 

We pause for a word from our sponsor....and scraper... Pretty danged tired of sitting in this chassis!
 

Working on the other side:
 

Occasionally I busted out a small file and worked down any burrs or welding spatter that I encountered. The latter required a hammer and sharp tiny chisel to convince them that they no longer needed to be there! (Picture is a little out of focus...sorry!)
 

Agony of sanding....soooo tired of sanding! 220 or 180 grit works well....by hand...because most of it is by hand...because my whippy dippy new orbital sander fit only in about 35% of the spaces...then there are 4 sides to ever piece of frame rail, frame rail reinforcement.....
 

OK, I do believe that this now the point I was at for being done sanding. This process took one day longer than my estimates. Like I said, the chassis had much more to it in terms of hard to get at real estate, and I underestimated the time it would take to do each side.... There are some areas that were slightly pitted due to rust behind the heat shields. I sanded these as much as possible to remove the high spot surface rust.

 

 

 

 

Next shots are of the metal after hitting it with "MetalPrep" a solution of muriatic acid to remove any surface rust and oils. Brush on, keep wet by brushing on more, and then rinse off with water. I used water and a sponge to wash it down. You can see that some etching remained. Following this, I treated the metal with a galvanizing agent, GalvaPrep. Again, brush on, keep wet, then rinse well, and dry. Some of the discoloring of the rust still remains in the deepest of craters. Only way to get that out would be to media blast and that is way too messy for this job. The self etching primer sealer will serve as a barrier to any more continued oxidation.

 

 

Next two shots are of the areas that I found small cracks in. Strange little reinforcement and the fact that they were both cracked means that this area of the chassis was moving somehow...

These are located just above the bolts for the lower inner a-arm attaching point.
 

Here you can see the e-brake cable that I managed to bust off moving around in the chassis to remove paint.... I think it was already cracked...
 

At this point, this fills the void between taking off the insulation and green primer and eventually silver paint!

Next post will cover from silver paint to present!

Steve

After silver paint, here is what I have been dinking around with while we've been sitting in a little cold snap. Lots of small detail stuff.... Covering blood letting brake line and wiring clips with heat shrink, repairing old cracked wiring insulation, etc.

Follow along!

Lower frame clips for securing brake lines and on the LH side, the clutch slave line and the vacuum supply pipe as well. (vacuum to the brake booster)

NB: Find length of new 1/2" PCV line to replace bits of un-reinforced heater hose....not good in a vacuum situation as they can collapse.
 

Added new rubber hose as insulators on the clutch and brake hard lines.
 

RH side, only one line in at this moment:
 

A few shots of the wiring retainers, with new heat shrink protectors. These puppies drew more blood than anything...or perhaps I should say caused more loss of skin...than anything so far on this car!
 

 

 

Here is the new materials I used along side the main harness that I fixed up a tad. There is "hard line" vinyl tubing which was used on the "single wire" runs for the oil temp sender, water temp sender, perhaps the oil pressure sender too....and a couple of other spots where something similar was used...the "compartment light"....

I used slighty oversized heat shrink to do the two wires to the fuel sender in the gas tank. The original Italian ends were in place and I didn't have the heart to cut them off! So I searched the electronics scrap dealers in the area for some surplus heat shrink!

Larger heat shrink on the right (of the three pieces) I used for the lower rear wire retainers that retain the main power cable to the starter. Those retainers are a little wider than the rest used on the chassis for brake lines and the main harness.

 

In the pic above, on the RH side, you can see what the new coverings did to clean up the look of the harness! I used waterless handcleaner (no pumice!) with "Lanolin" to clean and condition the old vinyl! Came out looking nice! In some cases I had to re-wrap the plastic tape that was either damaged or missing.

I also found that the black plastic covering on the throttle cable was all messed up with large cracks and missing pieces. I cleaned all of that off up to the firewall and replaced it with more of the heatshrink. Not real black, but certainly now it is uniform!
 

More of the same:
 

I am out of pictures!
Steve

Loaded more pictures....

This weekend, starting on Friday, I tackled the last section of frame, that I didn't want silver.....not sure why, but maybe it was something to do with black being used on every other car, I had to have some too.......or it was the paint fumes....

Anyway, stripper was back, sand paper and sore fingers, more primer and we ended up here!
 

 

 

OK, fast forward thru black paint and some backwards here.....I got a little "thin" on the silver paint in this area around the air inlet opening and to either side of it....SO, while I was masking, I hit this area with more silver so that the green wasn't leaking through! So before black paint, there was silver paint....and then more masking and black paint!

 

You can see where I mounted the bracket for the Lucas wiper washer bottle, the hose retainer, and a new rubber insulator/grommet for the LH tail lamp wiring etc. Pieces actually going back on the car!!!! WHOO HOO!!!! Sorta like coasting down a hill after you worked so hard to pedal up the other side!

Here's the other side. Actually a picture from yesterday's progress....
 

I had mounted up the a-arms and rear hub assemblies, wiring grommets had been pushed back into their holes (to the right of the DuraSpark module) and insulation was added to the wiring retainer clips, with the starter cable now securely retained! Like I said... "coasting!"

View from outside looking in on RH side. Battery cable where it transitions to outside of frame, and new braided brake lines installed to calipers.
 

Here is a shot of my new lower a-arm inner bootie looked like after installation. Good thing I had two.....

 

BECAUSE....it took two to get one on....properly....

 

That's a torn up $12 bill or so! You'd swear that they will not fit over that great big spherical joint...but they do! I used a little silicone grease (pool pump grease) to assist rather than actual grease. Once the bootie was in place, I added additional grease to it, then installed the adapters/spacers.....

On the RH side is the original rubber grommet as found in the Left Rear corner next to the battery. Looks like acid mist had taken it's toll on the rubber. New grommet below it.

Here's a close up of how it turned out installed.

 

I couldn't or didn't want to completely remove the rear wiring harness to put the grommet on in one piece, so I cut it and worked it into position. Will do the job nicely!

Also worked on some other stuff over the past week too when I couldn't tackle a larger job!

Finished the other heat shield for the sides of the engine compartment walls:

 

Started working on my coolant reservoir clamp, only to find out that a PO had cut it apart too much such that it could not be put back easily by simply welding the pieces back together....SO, I had another clamp that was sorta rusty chrome (thank-you Greg!) that I blasted with beads/aluminum compound, primed and painted (had one or two days where the sun came out!).

 

New 1/2" high(er) pressure Goodyear heater hose delivery was detected by the dog.... This will go in after firewall insulation is cut and installed, later this week! Weatherpersons promised warm by weeks end!


Patterns for cutting insulation are ready... those pizza boxes came in real handy again!
 

Finally, Saturday and yesterday, I cleaned up the 4 strut rods for the 4-link suspension. They are deburred, sanded, washed, and ready for primer and paint.

 

Once the paint hardens, I'll replace any rubber booties that look bad (all were replaced 6-7 years ago and are still soft and pliable) and give them a shot or three of grease before dropping them back in place.

I tagged them to retain front to rear and side to side positions so that alignment is not affected.

So warm weather gives me a short list:
-Cut and install firewall insulation.
-Paint 4 strut rods
-Re-install wiring harness, coil, light, voltage regulator, misc clips and bits...that are in bags on my work table! (They should all be empty when I am done....bags and table top!)
-Install 4 strut rods
-Install shocks and tires
-Set car back down on ground
-Install rear brake pressure amplifier and connect lines up back to calipers.

After this, we go back to the engine for intake porting!

Ciao!
Steve

OK, a couple things about lists of "things to do"......they never quite get all finished, because you're always finding more things to put on the list.....to finish...!

Friday was a very nice day here, so wrapped up a lot of small stuff! Primed and painted up the rear strut arms. I used Garth's trick of aluminum foil to cover the booties! It worked fantastic! Precision taped the large lock nuts, and then the tin foil worked to cover the rest! No primer or paint where it shouldn't be!

Here's a shot of the clothesline in play...
 

I let these "age" over night after baking in the sun, before unwrapping them.

Friday before painting started, I cut and did a final fit on the firewall insulation material, and once the temps warmed up a bit, installed it all!

Installed the heat shields, wiring, coil, engine compartment lamp, voltage regulator.
Looked like this before I started on Saturday morning.
 


ONE thing I am EXTREMELY grateful for during these activities, was the digital camera. I went back in my archives to over a year ago, where I had stored pictures of the "before" I started repairs/stripping, fresh after the engine was pulled. I took fairly high resolution pictures, and when printed on standard size paper, I was able to see all sorts of details that aided me in reassembly!!!! If I couldn't see it clearly on a picture, I could always go back to the computer and blow it up 300%...or so it seemed, to check the little things that "got away" from this rusty steel trap of a brain!

Saturday, unwrapped the ends of the strut rods, disassembled them a tad, squirted a few shots of grease in each rubber bootie, and replaced three booties as they were cracked or damaged. (Perhaps header heat didn't help....who knows....)

Dug out the shocks and set them in place. Connected up brake lines to the new caliper hoses, worked on fitting the clutch slave line back in place. Copper tubing had gotten slightly out of shape, but it was convinced to cooperate!

After installing the heat shields on the front firewall surfaces I find out now that the insulation is so much thinner than the original stuff, that I don't need such long screws.....they stuck thru the carpeting!!! And also I didn't like the idea of that going on next to the gas tank on the RH side, so today, I picked up some shorter stainless #6 sheet metal screws and then cut the last 1/16" or 1/8" off of them to "dull them up!" Came out nice!

I also installed the speedo cable and brake vacuum tube on the LH frame rail and secured it into place along with the clutch line.

Rebuilt the heater hose "tree" with pieces of the new Goodyear blue Hi-Miler where I could use it, and some other bits and pieces as needed. 1/2" on the LH side including connection to intake, and 5/8" where it connects to the water pump...although I guess that could technically get swapped to a 1/2" fitting in the water pump....we'll see.....it's got new 5/8" for now!

When installing the new motor mounts I sourced out, I ran into a small problem with the LH line where it connects to the brake amplifier, mounted on the RH inner frame rail (NOT ALL CARS GOT THESE!). Piece of new hard line I formed and ran was too tall and hit the aluminum engine bracket! When the old modified frame mount was there, it cleared. Since I shortened it back to stock....problem #1!

Can't put the wheels back on, because I need to bleed the brakes....and I can't bleed the brakes...because...

I had used a Swagelok 3/16" brass union to splice the front bubble flare piece of tubing, to a standard flare piece of tubing when I replaced the hard line to the left caliper a few years back. It had a rub through from contact with the axle at some point in it's life....I got to experience the failure one year after the big show in Vegas...luckily while on a trip home from work!

The Swagelok fitting turns out to be one time use thing when it comes to the ferrules. I successfully reformed the tubing for clearance, but needed a new ferrule to install as now the old tubing was too long.... I reduced a "loop" and now had extra length....

Well, I used to have an extra union, as I bought two....but for the life of me, I couldn't find it! (I hope whoever I gave it to used it well!!!)Looked through all of my Goose parts boxes, the traveling tool box, by garage box, small parts bins....nope.

So, about 5 minutes scrounging around on Ebay, I found a new stainless steel version for $5, and a brass "T" for another $4 which I will gut for parts so I can re-use the old union as a spare in the tool box! Those should be here by Tuesday or so.

Today, I added some tie-wraps in critical places (used them danged pictures again!) and washed up the wheels and tires. Cleaned up the coolant overflow tank a bit, gently knocked it on the workbench to loosen up some scaly bits stuck to the bottom....

I tried to find some 1/2" PCV line hose, or vacuum hose, but struck out at the local parts houses... will keep looking. I used a piece of heater hose from the brake vacuum tube to a piece of hard line which connected to a fitting on the intake, but noticed that it was very collapsed. If it collapsed under braking, that could be bad....so I need to find a length of reinforced rubber line that will not collapse so easily.... Hard line to the fitting on the intake may all change too...since this intake is not as tall as the Boss intake was......so will keep this on the list for engine stuff!

Didn't yet install the last piece of shifter rod. Helped the wife re-pot some plants....least I could do!!! I'll wrap this piece in shop towels to protect the paint....be careful with the hammer this time!!!!

So, without further delay, here is my new engine compartment, "almost" ready to receive an engine!

First, a (slightly fuzzy) reminder of the old, from up in page2:
 


And now, TAH DAH!!!
 

 

What to do next:
Repair brake line
Fill and bleed rear brakes (pray for no leaks!!!)
Install RH motor mount
Install rear wheels
Install rear shifter rod piece
SET IT BACK ON THE GROUND!!!!
Start an "engine" list!!!

I will install the drive axles once I put in new seals and grease, when I get closer to putting the trans in...no sense banging up all the paint with spinning axles....well, they will not be spinning at a high rate of revolutions...but you get the idea!

Parking brake cable will also get tied into the whole deal once I get the new stainless (Mangusta International) mufflers fitted up. Always install these buggers with the full weight on the rear wheels! They fit easily with the wheels hanging in the air....it's when you put them into the "at rest" position that the problems start happening!

Ciao!
Steve