Fixy, fixy

Well, went outside again tonight. The outside temperature when I started was 17 degrees fahrenheit, and 14 when I stopped. Temperature inside the garage was somewhere in the low 40s.

However, it was productive. I found the loose rocker arm that was ticking. I found out what was shifting in the front (brake pad was missing a shim, found said shim on the floor), and installed my TCI Torque Convertor Lockup Kit.

Only thing stopping me from filling the transmission and starting the car was a vacuum line, or rather my lack of one. I need about five feet of 3/16" vacuum line to run from the carb down to a vacuum switch that clicks off the TCC when you mash the gas.

I also need to find a switched 12V lead under the hood to run to the transmission, and splice a second line into the brake switch. This picture is the valvebody on the transmission after installing the TCI kit. I know I said no more camera phone pictures, but I didn't have the good camera on me, so you're going to have to live with it.

Huzzah!

Scored a new rear end. 3.73 Positrac from an '88 Monte Carlo. $350, running up to Bloomington, Indiana, to grab it Saturday.

Yay me.

It's done, sort of

Well, here it is. Hood back on, slightly rinsed. Finished up yesterday. I've put about 30 miles on it, and the list of shit left to fix is decently small, but still frustrating.

There's something shifting in the front left when you step on the brakes, I think the UCA is a little loose. There's a tick coming from the passenger side of the engine, I'm hoping it's just a loose rocker. There are exhaust leaks where both headers meet the exhaust, it won't shift into fourth, and it's still a dog. A quick check of the RPO codes on the trunk sticker shows a rear axle ratio of 2.29, which explains the dogginess. The search for a 3.42 starts now.

It's too cold today to work on it. I've managed to change some light bulbs and clean my kitchen floor. The Z is back in the garage where it belongs. Once this cold snap passes, I'll start knocking out the small suff.

Success!

What you are looking at here is an engine. However, it's not just any engine. It's MY engine, and it's done. You may think this looks just like previous pictures of the engine, but with the addition of a shiney air cleaner. You will be partly right. Look up along the cowel. What do you see, or rather, what don't you see?

That's right (if you got it right), all the wires are gone. You'll see some nice black split tubing into which all the wires necessary to run this car went. A lot of wires ended up on the floor, as well. mostly the engine side of the ECU harness. Since there's no ECU anymore, that stuff was just in the way.

What's next? Well, tomorrow I need to crawl under the thing and shim the starter. It binds up on the flexplate some of the time. After that, I call a friend over and put the hood back on. Then, I get to drive it somewhere. Don't know exactly where, but somewhere. Not far, though. It needs a front end alignment. I eyeballed it while the car was in the air, so it's way off I'm sure.

What I've been up too..

Busy couple of weeks for the 'ol GP:

 

This is my new steering linkage, on the right, next to the old stuff, on the left. Notice a difference? I managed to get all that on last Saturday.

 

Yes folks, it's on the ground, resting on its own new tires.

 

In the driveway, and it got there under its own power. I finished the cam run-in, backed it back into the garage, and changed the oil. It idles fine, a small lope. Really need to get a set of Flowmasters for it, though. The stock-style single exhaust isn't letting the nice noises through.

Next items on the agenda are to finish ripping out the computer harness, and then get the hood on and get the front end aligned. After that, I'll put 1000 miles on it with the 500cfm carb to finish the engine break-in, then swap the 600cfm from the truck onto it. Then the fun begins.

Bouncy Things

 
It was warm today, mid 50s, so when I got home, I ate bowl of cereal and headed out to the garage. The end result is pictured here. This is the front driver side suspension, all new. Lower control arms were powdercoated black, new Moog 5660 springs, new swaybar links, and nifty tubular upper control arms with Moog ball joints.

Why the nifty tubular arms? What performance enhancement do they provide? None. They look cool and have steel bushings instead of rubber. That's it.

So, about that fire...

I've been asked to explain the fire from my January 6th comment, so here it is:

I had just hooked up the fuel line to the carb, and carefully filled the bowl through the vent tubes. There was 4 gallons of BP Premium 93 octane gasoline in the tank, oil in the engine, and a freshly charged battery.

So, I climbed in the car, put the key in the ignition, pumped the gas pedal once, and turned it.

BAM! It started. Just like that. I immediately ran it up above 2000 rpm, and began slowly cycling it from 2000 to 3000. Break-in instructions for the camshaft stated to do that for 30 minutes, so I had a CD in the CD player and a plastic tube on the exhaust pipe leading outside so I didn't gas myself.

You're thinking to yourself, "well, that plastic tube must have gotten hot and caught fire," aren't you? Well, you're wrong. It did melt though.

No, the fire was in the engine compartment. I was watching the oil pressure, which was excellent at 80psi. Water temp was coming up quickly, which was good. Then smoke started coming out of the engine bay. "No biggie," I thought to myself. "That's just the engine and header paint baking."

Well, the smoke got worse. Then there were flames. Ooops. I shut the engine off and got out of the garage. The flames went out quickly, and the smoke stopped. I walked back in. I noticed moisture on the hose end going into my fuel filter. I touched it, and gas started flowing out of the filter, down onto the valve cover, and then drained onto the header, where it ignited. There was a monster crack in the plastic filter housing.

So, thirty minutes and $2.99 at O'Reilly later, I had a new filter in place. Started it again, no problems. I got ten minutes into the cam break-in before I had to shut it down again and evacuate the garage because of the fumes. I have the car parked ass end into the garage. I'll get the suspension back on and roll it outside to finish the run-in.

Dashboard fun

 
Well, with the engine running, now I can turn to more mundane aspects of this car. Here you see the speedometer and tach cluster. What you can't see is the back of the tach, which I forgot to photograph before I put it back together.

The tach is a GM model from a Grand Prix, but in an amazing stroke of foresight, GM put jumpers on it so that it can be used on 4, 6 or 8 cylinder engines. In its rush to save money, it made that selection jumper very, very cheap. It rattled around, and when it lost contact, the tach would switch to 6 cylinder mode, and read 1/3 higher than it should. It was annoying. I soldered a wire to the contacts. Shouldn't have that problem any more. I also washed the clear face while I had it apart.

It runs!

Details to follow, started on the first turn of the key, and I only caught one thing on fire.

Marching on...

Big evening tonight. No soccer game, so I hammered until 12:30am.

Torque convertor is bolted to the flywheel, exhaust is hooked up, A/C Condenser and radiator are in, fan and shroud, upper and lower radiator hoses, belts, and various odds and ends.

Then, I marked the distributor and pulled it, replacing it with pre-luber I rented from O'Reilly. A frustrating search for the chuck key for my drill followed, and then the fun began: priming the oil system.

I pulled the valve covers, and used a funnel to get about three quarts of oil into the engine (there was already a quart in the pan, plus a half a quart in the filter), then I hit the drill. Oil pressure shot to 60 instantly, and then I let it run. I was waiting for oil to start oozing from all the pushrods. I'm happy to say that all but three were flowing freely before the drill started to smoke.

13 of 16 ain't bad, and the three left were bubbling, so they were about to start flowing. I decided to not melt the drill or start a fire, and stopped. Distributor went back in, and the valve covers back on.

Tomorrow (well, today, it's late), I have to pick up a single bolt for the starter, hook up the electrical, fill it with water, and start it.

Yee-fucking-Haw.

Tits and tats...

Well, last night I got the gas tank in. I also knocked some rust off and hit the spots with primer. One of the body bushings fell out. Body bolt had rusted clean through. This doesn't bode well. I also got the power steering pump mounted and the belts on. I need to get some hose clamps, but I should be ready to put gas in it and start it soon. Maybe tonight, but probably not.