tingtingtingtingtingting...

Well, at certain RPMs, the flexplate is still contacting the cover somewhere. Damn damn damn...

Odds 'n ends

With major mechanical operations now completed, attention turns to the little annoying things.

Today, the annoying things that were scratched from the to-list were the flexplate cover and the driver side exhaust leak.

The flexplate cover was a pain. I had two OE plastic ones, and neither fit. Apparently I bought the wrong flexplate, and it's too big around for the stockers. So, I called Jeg's and got a chrome cover for a TH350 or 400. It fit better, but was still contacting the flexplate in one spot. I spaced it off the bellhousing with three washers and moved on.

The leak was at the junction between the driver side header and the tube that runs under the engine over to the cat. The donut gasket wasn't thick enough, and the pipe was contacting the oil pan, causing some misalignment at the flange.

Ten minutes with a ball peen hammer solved the clearance problem, and the nice guys at O'Reilly managed to dig up a thicker gasket, which I shoved in.

I also drained the 500-mile break-in oil and dropped in four quarts of Rotella and one quart of Mobil 1.

I started it, exhaust leak gone. There's still another on the passenger side, but we'll leave that for another day. Tonight I get to take it out on the highway to a soccer game and the grocery store.

Done, sort of, again

Okay, got up this morning, and got the brakes together rather quickly. No big problems.

Then came putting the gas tank in. Well, not so much fun. The new tank was just a smidge larger than the old tank, and the straps didn't fit around it. After FOUR HOURS of laying on my back, bench pressing the tank up, lodging my knee on it to keep it there, and fumbling around, I managed to get the bolts run in.

I hate gas tanks.

I then put the gas in it, and drove to the Carl Casper Custom Auto Show. Of course, it had started raining, hard. The car spins the tires at will in the wet. Yippee.

On the way back from the show, I was driving down Preston, and scared the crap out of myself. I was driving past a known speed trap, looked down, and saw the speedometer reading over 55 miles per hour. I was in a 35... but not passing anybody. D'oh. Speedometer is off. I was prepared for it to be off, but not by this much.

After getting home and crunching the numbers, the speedometer should be reading about 44% FASTER than I'm really going. I've ordered a new speedometer gear. Until it arrives and I can put it in, I'll be taping this into the car:

Gear	Speed	RPM	Indicated
3	25	1206	36
3	35	1689	50
3	45	2171	65
4	45	1455	65
4	55	1778	79
4	65	2101
4	70	2263

Yes, a cheat sheet showing the gear I'll be in, the actual speed, the engine RPM, and the indicated speed. As you can see, simply poking about on the expressway at 65 is going to have the speedometer pegged to the pin (it only goes to 85, indicated speed at 65 would be 93).

Should be a blast.

I hate drum brakes with all my body and soul

It has been a very busy day today. I crawled out of bed around 9:30, ate some toast, and ventured outside. My first task for the day was swapping the carburators between the truck and the Pontiac. The truck came with a 600cfm Edelbrock, and I put a 500cfm Edelbrock onto the Pontiac last summer.

With the new engine, the Grand Prix was very under-carb'd, and the truck always had been over-carbed. That's all changed. A scant two hours, and both vehicles were running again, with idle and chokes properly re-set. Idle quality on both was greatly improved. A drive in the Pontiac to O'Reilly to get some bushings revealed a completely different car.

So, with that done, I set upon the rear axle. I had to replace the upper control arm bushings, which I had to buy. I have a set somewhere in the garage, but I couldn't find them.

Anyway, they weren't coming out easily. I ended up cooking them with a propane torch to chunk up the rubber, then collapsing the outer sleeves with an air hammer, then beating them out with a ball-peen hammer. Installation of the new ones was accomplished with the same ball-peen hammer.

The next task was removing the 2.29 third member from the GP. Taking it out was actually very easy. The part that sucked is visible in the first picture. My gas tank was leaking, and not at someplace easy to fix. In the picture you can see an upper water line of sorts. Fuel was seeping through the pinch welded seam of the tank. That isn't fixable. So, I piled in the truck and headed up the road to Roppels. That was when I realized the truck was now a completely different animal. Throttle response was better, it ran smoother, and the transmission was shifting in the right spots. It was wonderful. What a difference having the proper sized carb makes. Amazing. Remember kids, before you buy that 1000cfm Road Demon for your 3.8L six, be assured it will run like shit. More is not better.
$170 later, I had my new tank. That's it in the second picture, with a nice coating of whatever paint I had at the time. The tank came in bare steel. To keep it from rusting and eventually looking like shit, I painted the bottom with the last of my can of satin black RustOleum, and the top with the last of my Rustoleum hammer finish gray.
The last picture is the new rear in the car. yippee...

Anyway, after a nice dinner consisting of a 6 oz. filet, green beens, and rolls, I headed out to put the rear drum brakes back together.

Holy shit I hate drum brakes. Putting the parking brake lever back onto the cable? Nearly impossible. Took me two hours to get them both. After that, reassembly on the passenger side was pretty straight forward, except for those damn capped springs that hold the shoes to the backing plate. They pissed me off, too.

I finally had to give up and come in around 11pm, though. It was getting cold, and I was missing a very small piece from the driver side. Hopefully the morning and some fresh eyes will let me find it. Once I find that, I can toss the new tank in and put it back on the ground.

Pictures again!

Well, camera was charged, so here are some pictures. The first one is an image of my new seats. Very good shape they are. I think I'll have to swap the tracks with the seats on my car, but that shouldn't be a big deal.
This second picture is my new rear axle. It is #3 on tomorrow's to-do list. First is getting up early and heading to Hi-Way to fix the exhaust leaks, then swap carbs, and then this guy. Lots of work will this guy be. I have to swap the drum brake hardware from my current assembly, and then swap the assemblies themselves. I also have to beat out the UCA bushings you see in the pictures in the ears on the top of the pumkin. That is not going to be fun or easy.

No pics, but...

Camera was dead last night, so no new pictures.

However, I did pop the back off the new differential, drained the nasty stuff, cleaned up and painted the cover, filled it with Redline 75w90, and put the cover back on. Also managed to get the old wheel cylinders off, and one of the lower control arms. Next is to get the other LCA off, and swap the UCA bushings that are pressed into the housing.

My new seats showed up today, and they're purty. The gray is going to match almost perfectly. Now to order new carpet...

Snow, snow snow

Yes, snow today. Not quite as cold as it was yesterday (11F, ouch), but snowing. The dog is loving it, I'm stuck inside watching basketball and NASCAR.

However, all is not lost. Yesterday, my Federal Income Tax refund hit. Tack on the fact that payday was Thursday, and I have a bit of a chunk sitting in the bank right now. So, naturally, I had to spend some of it on car parts.

Item one was a pair of very nice seats. Scored on EBay, they're a nice set of tweed and leather buckets from a 1LE Camaro, and they're gray. The significance of the 1LE designation is large. 1LE was an option code for 80s F-Bodies that gave you a lot of go-fast parts. You got larger brakes. You got higher durometer rubber bushings in all the suspension parts. You got a baffled gas tank that could be run down to almost completely empty without having to worry about the pickup starving due to fuel slosh. And, you got more durable, better supporting seats. The tweed doesn't wear like the regular GM cloth, and the leather is high-quality and in places where it won't crack.

Items numbers two, three, and four are on the way from Jeg's. First up is an Edelbrock Carb calibration kit. A nice assortment of jets and springs and other pieces for the 600CFM performer carb that will be transferred to the car from my truck. Once the weather gets better and I get the new rear axle in, I'll be getting an appointment at the dyno and will actually take the time to tune the car.

Second up is a bracket kit for the carb that will allow me to properly connect the cruise control to the throttle linkage.

Last up is a flexplate cover.

Next weekend is supposed to be in the 50s, I'm planning on making it a busy weekend.

And on a completely unrelated note, have you seen the lastest iTunes commercial? That song, Flathead by the Fratellis. Insane. I grabbed the album last night, and it's one of those you simply cannot turn up loud enough. Amazing. Highly recommended.

FastAr!!!11

Well, got bored yesterday and worked on the car some last night. The goal was to fix the choke and the TCC lockup, neither had been working properly.

A bit of testing with the multimeter found that I'm retarded. An electric choke is nothing more than a heater. I didn't think about this, and spliced the choke and the TCC lockup into the same switched 12V line. The result? Voltage grounded through the choke, TCC clutch got nothing.

So, fished the original choke lead out of the harness, and plugged it up to that. Used the other 12V lead for the TCC lockup.

My next adventure was checking the TCC lockup's vacuum switch. When I plugged the Mity-Vac into the line off the carb, it wouldn't hold vacuum. Turned out the distributor vacuum advance module had failed. I checked the damn thing before I installed it, but it would appear that use has torn the diaphram. No biggie, I didn't really need it anyway. I recurved the distributor based on results from an engine simulator. I pulled the line off and just hosed the timed port to the TCC lockup vacuum switch.

Lo and behold, the car performs much better now. Much peppier at the low end. Still a little sluggish on the top, but I think the carb is too small. TCC Lockup works now, but only with the engine almost at idle. Seems that the cam isn't generating enough vacuum at part throttle (the switch needs to see 10" to close). I'll pull the switch off tonight and set it closer to 5".

Where's my decoder ring?

Since it was Sunday, I had nothing better to do, and it was cold so I wasn't going outside, I decided to sit down and decode all the Regular Production Option (RPO) codes on the trunk sticker of this car.

Amazingly, there were not a whole lot of surprises. The car is actually a high-optioned grannymobile. There were a few codes I couldn't find any information on, but the important stuff was all there.

Notable exemptions? Well, this car was optioned with a THM 200 transmission (RPO MV9). I pulled a THM 350C out of it, so the transmission has been replaced.

It was also optioned with an AM/FM Auto Reverse Cassette (RPO UK5), but when I got it, it just had an AM/FM radio. I thought it odd at the time that a Brougham with the gauge cluster, A/C, and Cruise would not have had a tape, and that oddity has been confirmed. Somebody ganked it.

The ratty 2.29 rear gear ratio has been confirmed again, and the VIN decodes properly.

I really want it to warm up. I need to get this new rear end installed... and fix the cruise control... and find out why the torque converter isn't locking...

On the road again...

or finally, rather.

Drove it to work today. Had a good weekend with it. Drove it to sleeves Ric's party Saturday. It did OK. Well, no, it ran like crap. No fourth gear still, idle all fucked up. I pulled over at a gas station on the way home and adjusted the TV cable again. Voila! Fourth gear.

When I got home, I went to work on the carb. Set the mixture and fixed the low idle. Started it stone cold Monday morning and fixed the high idle. I also tightened the left upper control arm. It got loose and all the shims fell out. No biggie, alignment appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning, 8am. After the alignment is done, I'll be hitting up an exhaust shop to take care of my two leaks. I have some vibration low in the RPM range, I think it's the exhaust hitting the cross member under the engine, which the exhaust leak fix hopefully will space that tube down away from the oil pan and cross member.

It's really great to be driving around with a radio again. I missed my XM badly.

On the ground again...

I've just lowered it to the ground, filled the transmission, and started it again. No major leaks, ticking is reduced more, but not gone.

Tomorrow I go to get my new rear end. Maybe, if I'm crazy, I'll actually try to install it in the frigid weather we're going to get this weekend.