Ken G's Journal

The car hadn't been run in a few days and it took a few minutes of cranking to get it to start. It really hates being cold. Once it is warmed up it starts pretty easily.
So today I fixed the broken accelerator with a bike cable. Easy job, such a simple design, I don't really like the way the cable is routed on the top and very close to the valve cover but it is working.
So the first was that I was able to back the car up out of the garage and then drive back in. That was the first time it had moved under it's own power. One thing I found out is it has no brakes, not needed for my slow motion experience but certainly high one the list.

One thing that has been brought to my attention by my darling wife is that it is loud, too loud. So I need to work on that. I think it is a combination of no hood, headers, and old exhaust but I need to do something about it.

Since I did run it today I decided to do a compression test. I ran it twice on all cylinders, I think the numbers are decent:
1- 140, 2- 120, 3-125, 4-130
1-142, 2-123, 3-125, 4-140
2 and 3 are down 15-20 compared to 1 and 4, not sure if this is a concern but none are really out of wack so I was happy with that.

The other day I had the single radiator fan running, so I found that the sub harness connecting fan 1 to fan 2 was shorted out. I rerouted so that only fan 1 was hooked up but then I couldn't get the fan to engage. Today Fan 1 started up as expected, but I didn't do anything with it. I'm guessing that there is another short in the wire, or the radiator switch is bad. I am planning on putting in an aftermarket pull fan on a relay eventually which will make me resolve these issues at that time.

It finally got a bit of warmer weather and a free weekend so I started working on the rear brakes. The screws were rusted tight and the drums were a bear to get off.
I attempted to adjust the brake pad using the adjuster but is was rusted solid, decided I'd take it off and clean it up on the bench and broke both nuts clean off. Another order in to Moss.

So the broken parts were received from MOSS today. It was a nice surprise since I wasn't expecting them until Monday. I was a little bummed that Moss didn't include the nuts for the adjuster, so I had to make a trip to ACE hardware and picked up a few.
I got it all on and back together, but if anyone has any tips for an easy way to get that retainer clip on the back of the brake cylinder I'd love to hear it. It was a bit of a pain.
Tomorrow I hope to attack the other side.

Yesterday I started working on the removal of the rear axel. Lots of help from previous articles on this site. The worse job was removing the bolts from the drive shaft. All the nuts were rounded and wouldn't hold a wrench.
I feel like I need to invest on PB blaster, the bolts on the suspension are so totally locked up, each one was a fight. In the end I was able to get it all removed.
One thing I could not figure out is how to disconnect the shocks. I ended up removing the from the car cause I couldn't get them to disengage, Hopefully tomorrow when I start the clean up process I'll be able to figure it out.

I continued working on the rear axel tonight. Removed the shocks, arms, break lines and leaf springs. Everything seemed to take longer than it should with all the rusted bolts but I feel like I'm making progress. Next step is to clean the axel, and strip the springs and get them all ready for repainting.

So how do you decide if it is time to replace the metal brake lines?

I have continued to work on the rear axel and leaf springs. I cleaned up the axel and painted in with a rust proof primer and then rustoleum black. We will see how wears in the next few months. The first set of springs is sanded down and primed. I hope to have both sets of completed by this weekend and ready for reassembly.

The springs were in pretty bad shape, completely rusted together and with the bushings rusted into the rings. I'm cleaning them and will reinstall the originals and see how they work or if I will need to replace them.

The biggest problem I have had so far is the rear sway bar. The bolts are rusted to the inner sleeve of bushings and I've been unable to remove them. I also attempted to cut them out and wasn't really able to get at them with the car on jack stands. So for now I'm going to leave them as is until I get the car on a proper hoist and cut them out.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the progress to date.