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Nice job! One little project at at time still keeps you motivated.
Yeah, I've been struggling to find the motivation to work on or even drive the car lately. It was nice doing some little cosmetic things.
I started off today by trying to wet sand the air cleaner lid, but I burned through the paint very quickly, so I decided to strip the paint again and spray it with a rattle can. I tried 3 different cans that have been sitting around for a while, and they all had enough paint but evidently no gas because they would start to spray and stop working pretty quickly. I gave up on that for today. Maybe I'll try to spray the paint I initially used with a spray gun.
I spent several hours messing with the front bumper today. I found my touch up paint and tried to touch up the gouges the car transporter put in the paint. The two small ones came out ok, but the biggest one is just too big to touch up with a brush. At least it looks better than the black fiberglass that was showing before. I don't think the photos show it but I was able to wet sand the big gray scuff on the tip of the bumper that I thought was paint damage. I burned through a small spot on the tip but was able to touch that up without it being too noticeable.
The fit of the bumper cover with the crash bar in place wasn't as good as it was when I first tested the bumper with no crash bar installed a couple years ago. I pulled the bumper cover off, loosened up the crash bar, and shifted it to the right side of the car a little bit (with the help of a big hammer). The cover lines up with the front clip pretty close to how it originally did now. The grilles also never fit quite right. I had to install them with the inner sides of the grilles up higher than the outer sides so I could get a couple screws in there. It worked, but looked pretty bad to me. To fix this, I made a small cut in the corner of the grille opening, heated the fiberglass with a heat gun, and squeezed it with a clamp and let it cool (I have flex fiberglass bumpers, I don't think this would work with regular fiberglass). I only needed to do this to the driver's side opening. I bent the brackets a little bit to help the alignment of the grilles, and now they sit in there straight and with minimal gaps on the outer sides of the grilles.
I stared at the car for a while after I was done and was thinking about lowering it... That may be my next project. I'm tired of the 4x4 look.
Just finished reading the entire thread and WOW you've done an awesome job. There may be some flaws in the paint but, to me, it looks FANTASTIC.
I agree with lowering the car. I think it will look awesome. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next, good sir.
Thanks. The paint flaws bug me but I guess if I consider the fact that I hadn’t done it before and only spent $400-500 on paint, it looks pretty good.
I ordered some control arm bushings because from what I can see of them, they’re cracked. I’ll replace those when I lower the front of the car. I also ordered longer bolts for the leaf spring so I can lower the rear. This weekend I’m planning on inspecting the rear wheel bearings to see if I need to start thinking about sending the trailing arms out to get rebuilt. Hopefully next weekend I’ll have my parts so I can get that thing lowered finally.
On Saturday, I checked the end play on the rear wheel bearings. Both sides had 0.002" of play, which is within spec, and they didn't sound bad to me. I was expecting to have to send the trailing arms out for a rebuild soon, so I'm glad I can put that money towards other projects. I will be replacing all the bushings in the rear suspension in the next couple of months. I'm pretty sure the trailing arm bushings are at least part of the reason my car feels a bit unstable on bumpy roads. While I had the car jacked up, I was able to detach the speedometer cable from the transmission and confirm that the lower cable is not broken. So either something is wrong with the drive gear, or the plastic driven gear broke. I wanted to check out the driven gear but I barely had enough room to undo the speedometer cable with some needle nose pliers, so I figured that would be worse. After checking that out, I inspected my steering components to try to see where the play is coming from. I still haven't figured that out. I expected the box to be worn, but I was turning the rag joint back and forth while under the car and there was no delay at all between when I started to rotate the rag joint and when the pitman arm moved. I saw some slop where the pitman arm connects to the power steering control valve, but read that when the engine is running that play should go away, which it did. The rag joint itself looked fine, and I didn't see any other slop in the system, so I'm wondering if I just got too used to driving newer cars.
Yesterday I went out and bought a new spring for the heater core shut off valve that's mounted under the dash. I have an aftermarket valve, and the spring that comes with it is way too strong and I couldn't control the temperature. I found some instructions on this forum for replacing the spring and decided to give it a try. The spring I ended up with is about 3/8" shorter than the one included, but I stretched it out a bit and it works fine. I'm hoping it'll be a little cooler in the car now that the valve is working properly.
I finally decided to clean up the back window. One of the previous owners started to remove the window tint, and I got overspray on it when I painted the car. I scraped off what was left of the window tint and did my best to avoid damaging the defroster line at the top (not that it really matters when the rest of the lines were scraped off). To me, that made a huge difference in the appearance of the back of the car.
I found my can of SEM trim black spray paint and repainted the grilles. They definitely look better up close, but from a distance, you can't really see much of a difference.
I bought the Willcox temp gauge adjustable resistor and installed and calibrated it yesterday. It’s nice to be able to trust that gauge now. My 8” leaf spring bolts and control arm bushings showed up yesterday too, so I can start on the suspension this weekend. Last night I ordered bushings for the trailing arms, strut rods, and the leaf spring bolts. I already had two rear Bilstein shocks that were given to me a couple years ago that I haven’t installed, so I ordered matching front shocks too. I’m looking to seeing how the car looks and drives when I’m done.
Wow! What a difference in that rear window!
It's like the first time I used a magic eraser to get rid of the film buildup on the inside of the windshield. Night and day.
Wow! What a difference in that rear window!
It's like the first time I used a magic eraser to get rid of the film buildup on the inside of the windshield. Night and day.
I need to do that to my windshield. I drove it last week and when I was driving into the sun at the end of the day, I couldn’t see anything.
Update:
My dad and I tore the front end apart Saturday afternoon and I got it all back together last night. We put in new rubber control arm bushings and Bilstein shocks, and cut one coil off both springs. I wanted to take measurements before taking it apart but forgot, but I think the front was sitting at 29.25 to the top of the wheel opening before, and it’s now at 27.75 on both sides. There was a crack in the frame on the bottom of the drivers side spring pocket which I had my dad weld up. I also ruined the threads on one of the tie rod ends, and a boot tore off one of the other ones, so I’m gonna replace all 4 of them next weekend. All the control arm bushings looked fine when I got them out, so I guess I did that for nothing, but at least I know the history now. I was originally planning to paint the control arms while they were out but I didn’t feel like scrubbing parts for hours.
Today was was one of those days where nothing goes right. I intended to replace the strut rod bushings and install the new leaf spring bolts and cushions. I got out the first strut rod and found that the bushings were in really bad shape, so I removed them, and that’s when I found out that early C3 strut rods are different than the later ones, and the bushings I bought are for the earlier ones. So I couldn’t put that back together today. Then I decided to try to pull out the trailing arm and replace the bushing (which I had originally planned to put off for a while), but the bolt wouldn’t budge. I was hoping it wouldn’t be that bad since it’s a CA car but what I could see of the bolt was very rusty. Then I went on to try to replace the spring bolts and cushions, which almost worked, but the polyurethane cushions I bought don’t give at all and I couldn’t get the little plate for the sway bar link to fit between the taller head of my 8” bolts and the top of the trailing arm. Luckily my dad had some new rubber cushions, but there were only 3 of them, so I put those in and used one of the old worn out ones temporarily. With 8 inch bolts and new cushions, the rear wheel arches dropped from roughly 29.75” to 28.625”. I think it’s only .5” higher than the front.
I’m gonna return the spring bolt cushions and the strut rod bushings. I’m considering ordering adjustable strut rods instead of bushings. I’ll also order the trailing arm bolt and shim kit and the last spring bolt cushion. Tomorrow I might install my new tie rod ends and inspect the steering again to see if there’s anything else I need to add to my order.
Outer strut rod bushing
Inner strut rod bushing
The gap between the tire and the fender looks pretty even between the front and the back when you stand back. It’s sorta hard to tell in this photo because I have no strut rod installed and the camber went about as far negative as it can go.
Start soaking those bolts with PB Blaster or similar now and every day until try again.
Seldom if ever do things go right the first time for me, the last major pooch screw was frt nd rebuild on 64 PU, i failed to check all the parts before I started. Half the hardware was missing, misboxed/mismatched parts and used parts in new boxes were just awesome to deal with.
Don't forget to throw a little anti seize on those strut rod bolts...
I did the tie rod ends last weekend and that went fine, although I didn’t do a great job of making sure the toe was the same as it was before. I was hoping I would get my rear end parts before this weekend so I could get that done but it looks like they’re gonna get here some time this week. I did some reading about DIY alignments over the last couple weeks and decided to give that a try on the front end this weekend. I’m not sure what I’ve got my caster set at on the drivers side, I need to come up with a better way to figure that out. I had the toe set pretty close yesterday but that changed when I tried to mess with the caster today. Now that I’ve started messing with that, it seems easier than I was expecting. Definitely time consuming but it’s kinda interesting to learn and I think I’ll be able to get it right.
I’m considering not doing the trailing arm bushings right now. It looks like it’s gonna be a lot of work, and I feel like if I’m gonna go that far, I should just send them out and get them rebuilt, but I’m not gonna do that this year. I’ll put the new strut rods and shocks in for now and see how it drives for now.
I spent some time on Wednesday night putting the driver's side rear suspension back together. Installing the strut rods wasn't as much of a pain as I expected. I bolted up the inner end first and had to jack up the trailing arm and use some muscle to get the outer end into position. The shock was a pain in the ***. For whatever reason, it took a lot of effort to get the bushing to line up with the upper shock mount holes. I think I got impatient, got the hole lined up with the outer hole and got the bolt started, and used a prybar to push the shock down and used a hammer to force the bolt through. Luckily I didn't damage the threads. The passenger side went together without any issues.
I spent the rest of the day yesterday messing with the alignment. I didn't mess with the toe in the rear. According to the most recent alignment sheet from the previous owner, the toe and thrust angle were good, so the only thing I set was the camber. The front alignment took a lot of time but I think I got it pretty close. If my tools were anywhere near accurate, my camber should be -.25 degrees on all 4 wheels, and the caster should be about 2.7 degrees on both sides. I might have to adjust the toe again later because I didn't check it after I changed the caster on the passenger side, but I changed it by such a minor amount that I don't think the toe would have changed much. If anything, it moved in a bit, which is ok because it needed to come in slightly before I adjusted the caster. I've only driven it at low speeds up and down the street so far, but the steering feels a bit tighter and it goes straight. I noticed the ride felt a little bit rougher than before, but not too bad. Here are a couple photos of the ride height before and after lowering the car:
Before
After
This is basically what I did to set the toe, and I just used a piece of wood cut to the diameter of the rim and held a digital angle gauge against it to check camber. This user has some other posts on the forum with a little more detail about how he does it. I set up a spreadsheet on my computer to calculate angles for me so I didn't have to do the math again after every change. https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1597926939
I drove it to work today. Most of my commute is 55mph, and it felt good. No pulling, no darting, bumps seemed less harsh than they did with the worn out old shocks. The steering wheel is a little off, not sure if that’s because I didn’t center the steering box properly when aligning it, or if I put the steering wheel hub on wrong again. I tried to fix that recently because it was a tooth or two to the left after I did the turn signal stuff, but now it’s off the same amount to the right. For now I think I’ll just leave it alone and drive it. Winter is approaching fast. I used to feel bad for the people that had to park their cars for the winter, and now that I live in the rust belt, I get to see what that’s like.
Bushings make a HUGE difference in my experience. I'm sure the shocks were a welcome addition as well. Good call on tackling that.
Maybe winter means bigger projects? Assuming you have another car you can drive.
Yeah both inner strut rod bushings were basically gone. I’m sure that wasn’t good for the rear camber settings. The control arm bushings looked ok after we pulled them out so I’m not sure how much of a difference the new ones made there. Either way I’m glad it drives better and it’s nice not having to wonder about the condition of them while I’m driving.
I have another car to drive during the winter. I was originally gonna do the suspension and maybe send out the trailing arms for rebuild during the winter but changed my mind. I think I’ll pull out the transmission this winter and sort out the issues I have with that. The speedometer drive gear needs to be changed, and I need to figure out why it’s hard to shift into 2nd and why it pops out of 4th gear. Hopefully it’ll be a good driver for a while once that’s taken care of. I’m running low on projects that won’t cost me big money.
I was planning on letting the car sit for the winter, but my uncle passed away last week and I needed something positive to focus on to distract myself from all that (easier said than done). I fired the car up and drove it a little bit on Saturday for the first time in about 2 months, and found that I had no heat. Brought it back home and started taking the dash apart but ran out of motivation. I did find that it was a simple problem, one of the vacuum hoses had disconnected from the heater switch. But the heater core has needed replacing for as long as I’ve had the car, and I’ve had the new one for two years, so I figured it was about time I replace it. I forced myself to get off my *** and start on that today.
I’m kinda surprised I couldn’t smell this in the car. It looks like the leak is around one of the tubes. I might give it away if anyone out there wants to try to repair it. Not sure if it’s original, but it seemed to fit well.
The “new” one was given to me by a forum member a couple years ago. If I remember correctly, he only ran it for a little while before switching to vintage air. It’s thinner than the old one, so I crammed some of my left over radiator seal foam in there to keep it from rattling around.
While the heater box was out, I attempted to fix the stripped out hole that the center duct screws to. First I tried filling it with epoxy, but that didn’t work, so I bent up a little piece of aluminum flashing and drilled a hole through it and the heater box to screw it together. I used a sheet metal screw to attach the duct to the aluminum which seems to be holding for now. I know it’s ghetto, but I wasn’t interested in buying fiberglass supplies to make it like it originally was, only to have it most likely strip out again.
After getting the heater box back in the car, I attempted to fix the center duct that hasn’t lined up with the vents for as long as I’ve had the car, no matter how rough I got with it. I heated it up with a heat gun and bent it down a bit, and now it actually fits like it should.
Here’s how it fit before
My blower motor switch has been acting up lately, and I attempted to take it apart to fix it but broke it. I ordered a new one of those, a couple courtesy light sockets, and a bunch of LEDs to make the center cluster match the speedo/tach LEDs. I feel like most posts I’ve read about changing the heater core made it sound like a major pain, but I really didn’t find it to be that bad. I’m glad I was able to get my original ducts to work, because I was considering making my own.
Today I topped off the coolant and started putting the dash back together. The vacuum valve I changed the spring on a while back doesn’t seem to be doing it’s job very well. I guess it’s not enough spring pressure. So now I have to take that back out and see what I can do.
I’ve had the drivers side AC duct out of the car for a long time because it hung too low and it kept getting in the way of the pedals. Now that I have the center duct lined up properly with the center vents, I was able to put it back in. It took a bit of force to get it tucked up where it needs to be but it’s working. I think that center duct is slowly returning to its previous position though, because it was difficult to line it up today.
09-15-2018, 09:24 PM
