Click here for photos of when Baby first arrived
and the beginning of her makeover
Photos below are from the second phase of the makeover of Baby
(a major makeover).
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Well we are at it again.
Today was day one of tearing baby apart for her rebuild. The interior has been gutted again. This time we not only took the seat and floor panels out but we also took out the steering wheel, gas & break pedals, fire wall (leather), AC ducts and kick panel.
We took the hood off and the side panels after gutting the interior. Now the panels were a little bit of a challenge. George had to get under the car to find the "nut" whie I was on the outside with the rachet and socket. George reminded me that left is loosey.
We started this morning around 9:00 - 9:30 AM. We took a break for lunch at noon and started back in when we got back. We finished up for the day today at about 7:30 PM.
We have one side of the motor to the point of just scraping what's left of the gasket. On the right side we have a head to pull and exhaust to disconnect. Then we will pull the front plate and go after the cam. We discovered today that we will probably have to pull the front grill off also. There is no enough room between the front of the motor and the grill to get the cam out. Tomorrow we will probably put out engine hoist back together so we can pull the motor out.
I pulled all of the rocker arms, push rods and lifters out of the engine. Boy that was one greasy mess. Trying to get my fingernails clean was a bit of a challenge.
Carole
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Today was a shorter day. George took the grill off the car by himself. We ran out of baggies and I had to go back home to get more baggies. All of the small parts/screws/nuts/washers/etc are in baggies and labeled for the area of the car that they came off of. He took the grill off while I went back home.
George is going to find a transmission guy tomorrow that he can talk to. We had transmission fluid leaking under the car. When we took the dust cover off, it had a little bit of fluid in it, but the area on the bottom of the car that should have been wet was dry. There's a plug on the transmission pan. We are going to drain the transmission and check the seal/gasket whatever it is on the transmission pan to see if it needs to be replaced. Hopefully that is why it was leaking.
We are down to scraping and cleaning off the junk along with what little there is left of gaskets. We bought a shop vac today so I could vacuum out the area where the pistons are. The shop vac is cute. Yeah that's right It's cute. It has 5 hp suction. When we are done, it will be in our garage and I can use it to vacuum the cars instead of taking my vacuum out of the house.
George is also going to tear the radiator apart and have it flushed and pressured checked for any leaks.
I am sure glad we made a decision to tear the motor apart. It was not put together the way we would prefer. Some of the screws had washers, some didn't the carbuerator was falling apart. George says it was put together in a very sloppy manner.
Oh! George was excited when we finally got the oil pan off. The Motor is a four bolt main. You guys will know what that means.
It also looks like we will have to do the new hood release assembly now. The old assembly is all rusted and we don't want to put it back on.
More to follow
Carole
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It was to hot to work on the car yesterday. Today is day three of the rebuild. George removed the pipes today.
He will be making a slight modification to them.
I started out by cleaning the frame up. I pulled a George and climbed under the car with rag and spray bottle in hand.
After I was finished, George scrapped what was left of the gaskets off the heads and the bottom of the engine. Then he put a wire wheel on his drill and cleaned up the heads while I was manning the vacuum to suck up debris. After that, he went at the heads again with a grinding wheel. Again I manned the vacuum to suck up debris.
We installed one new piece today. The lower gear to the Petersen Gear drive that I requested for the car.
You can see it in the photos of the front of the block.
Then we covered the frame and front of the firewall as painting the block was the next step. After waiting in between coats of paint, we were done for the day.
Looks like we will be replacing the distributor also. It more of less came apart on us. The inside is completely rusted. So I told George to order that part from Super Shops when he goes in Friday to pick up more parts.
Tomorrow he will match up the paint for the frame so we can do some touch up before we put the motor back together.
Oh! We have also tracked down the artist who did the graphics on the car. George is going to call back to Florida tomorrow to talk to him.
Next installment next week.
Carole
The progress on Baby has been slow to none while George was working days and weekends.
It seems that we have ran into a few hurdles. Minor set backs really. We think we have everything that we need and wind up going out to find more parts. We now have a note pad and write down a shopping list for items needed to work on baby for the following week.
Today we discovered that instead of two braided hoses of -6 and one of -8 that we were shipped two of -8 and one of -10. We hit three different shops today trying to find hoses. Two were closed and J&M didn’t have what we needed. So we returned to the garage and did some more insulation on the fire wall. I made the patterns, cut the insulation and George put it in. We have a small area left to do. I'll take pictures tomorrow showing the fire wall completely insulated.
I've attached a few pictures of the different stages. We cut a hole in the bulkhead/firewall and mounted a special bracket with fittings for the A/C and Heater hoses. We also mounted a new over flow tank, much bigger that the old one, on the bulkhead and the coil is also on the bulkhead.
The wiring under the dash is an absolute rats nest. We were going to try to work with what we have but made a decision to rewire the car completely. The wiring harness is on order and should be here shortly.
Carole
