The Improbable Car Company

3:14pm: Box is back
Got Box back from being repaired today. He still hasn't been painted as I negotiated with my cousin who is doing the bodywork for a complete repaint (including fixing all the dents & dings) as part of the repairs. He needs to clear out a backlog of cars he's working on before Box can go in for paint, but at least I can drive him again.

8:50am: Brakes still Broke
I attempted earlier this week to fix Emily's brakes. I finally bought a new master cylinder, after two rebuilt ones in a row were defective. I was also adding a proportioning valve to the systems to get the braking balance right with the new front disc brakes.

I made a custom bracket for the valve, and painted all the bits in preparation for the install. The last thing I did was disassemble the used proportioning valve to double check it. At that point I discovered is was badly corroded inside to the point of unusability. So now Emily's old M/C is removed, and I can't install the new system until I get another prop valve.

So I'm now at two of two unusable cars. Lucky thing my sweetie is letting me borrow her car long term.

On a more positive note I finally tracked down a fourth of the rare 14" mustang rims I needed for Emily, so after repainting and some new tires I can have four of the same size rims on Emily instead of the 13" rears & 14" fronts on her now.

8:14pm: I broke my Box
I had a relatively minor accident with Box on Saturday, pulled out in front of someone and they hit me in the left edge of the bumper, pushing it right.

Today I heard back from the insurance company. They appraised it and cut me a check. After taking out my $500 deductible, I am getting just over $4000 from them.

The damage is pretty substantial with the whole front radiator support (and everything attached-to/associated-with it swayed off to the right. So $3000 of the $4500 estimate is labor alone to disassemble everything, straighten the frontend, then repaint the few new parts and re-assemble it all.

So I'm going to talk to my cousin the professional body man, and see what we can do. I'm willing to be that especially if I'm willing to put some sweat-equity in that I can either have some $$ left over at the end of this, or possibly end up with a new complete paint job (rather than just the bumper & one fender).

I've even been pondering a two-tone paint job, or some other interesting variation. Maybe just getting the custom vinyl designs Velvet & I had talked about and started designing last summer.

We shall see...

11:25am: Plans
These are my plans for my cars this year.

( Read more... )

10:12pm: Starting this back up
I've decided to finally exhume this journal and put it back to use again.

Since the last time I posted here a few changes have happened in the cars here.

I still have Emily the '62 Comet. Still a lot to be done on here. This year I'm trying to concentrate on work to get her to more useable on a regular basis, and with any luck get a real start on stripping the 4-coats of paint off her panel by panel, doing bodywork & getting proper paint on her.

My daily driver is now Box a 2004 Scion xB. I have been hypermiling it to try and maximize my MPG, this has included various mods to this effect. More recently I've gotten into autocrossing and have now also been making mods to that effect.


This past weekend I finally got my new springs into Box. The stock springs were replaced with Swift Sport Mach racing springs. In the process I also cleaned off a surprising amount of surface rust off the rear axle and put a couple coats of Masterseries rust sealing pain on it and the brake backing plates.
I've been trying to pre-emtively fix issues the moment I spot them (or a risk of them) on Box because I'm planning to keep this car for a *minimum* of five years and want to keep Box from turning into a beater at least in that time (and preferable much longer).

This weekend is the Rookie School for the FCSCC autocrossing club I'm a member of. I've lept on this chance to get proper lessons on how to drive an autocrossing course well so that a) I can improve my skills and b)know what I *should* be doing so I have something useful to compare myself against for future improvement.

8:54pm: Interior Re-do parts 2 & 3
Day two:

  Velvet came over to look at the floors, and decided it was within his welding skills. So we spent the day cutting out the bad section of the driver's side, grinding away the paint, rust and undercoating from around the hole, and fabricating a patch panel. The patch panel is from a section of roof cut out of a junk Omni in Velvet's yard. Nothing like bringing the quality of an '80's Dodge sub-compact to bear on my project.
  We also did more grinding on the passenger side and found more rot, looks like we're goign to need two decent sized patch panels to get it all. Feh.
  Would have welded the patch in, but we had the wrong guage wire in the welder.

Day three:

  Velvet came over and we welded the patch in. That's it really, but it too for bloody ever. I also cut out the first area of rot on the passenger side, but wasn't able to finish prepping that side as I couldn't run power tolls while Velvet was running the welder (circuit overload).

Need to gridn down the welds on the driver's side and make sure there aren't any gaps or pinholes in the welds. Then need to grind down and prep the passenger side, and form patch panels. Minimum two more days work on the floors I'm thinking.

Rug showed up today, haven't had them out of the box yet, but I'm excited.

11:24am: Day one interior pics.


For those interested, click on the above pic for a gallery of pics from the first day of the interior re-do.

7:29pm: Interior re-do, part the first
And so it begins. With Fey's help I got the seats out. Then I started in on pulling up the old rugs and underlay. I had originally planned to hang onto the old underlay and padding so I could use it for patterns. However it was all incredibly nasty. Falling apart, full of grime and dust and just generally disgusting. So I filled a trash can with the carpet, underlay, and all the other crap I pulled out. Then I vacuumed up all the loose crap and surveyed the situation.

Not as good as I'd hoped, but not as bad as I'd feared. There is rot in the floors, but not too bad. Two 1/2 dollar sides spots on the passenger footwell, and one 4" x 10-12" section in the driver's footwell. All in areas fairly easy to access from both sides, and easy to make patches for. Velvet is going to come over and see if it looks like something he can weld up, and if not I know someone else who'll likely do it for a reasonable price.

Next I pulled off the sill trim, and the trim for the insides of the B pillar. There is a weird bit of red vinyl trim glued between the sill trim and the floor that I'll have to use some seat/door panel vinyl to recreate it.

Current status: Interior gutted, can't move forward on car itself until floors are welded.
Next probably step: Need to scrub seats and other removed parts, and figure out what trim pieces need repainting/dyeing.

6:29pm: Next big project on Emily.
So I was planning to redo and upgrade emily's brakes this winter, but the place that sells the adapter kits I need are being insanely slow about actually making them available. So I have decided to back-burner that, and rip her entire interior out, since she's not going to be driving around in the snow anyway. Fortuitously I just got a bonus from work which will help finance this endeavor.

So to that end, I need to acquire:

• new carpet ordered online, be here in a couple weeks.
  
• new carpet underlay (need to find the best option)
  
• new heater system seals (probably from mustangs unlimited)
  
• new window channel fuzzies (upholstery shop?)
  
• new door seals (upholstery shop?)
  

What will need doing:

• pull out seats, carpet & underlay
  Done 3-10
  
  • Bring seats & door panels to an upholstery shop. Find out if they can get seats properly clean. Get price for replacing one damaged section of font seat and making new door panels.
    
  • If price for door panels is prohibitive, buy vinyl and make own door panels.
  
  
• Remove rear package shelf Done 3-10
  
• rip out heater system
  
• fuckton of plastic sheets and tape to protect dashboard and headliner from dirt rust and paint
  
• grind rust on floors, patch any rot, POR-15 the whole floor
  
• check that firewall/cowl isn't rotted at heater intake. Done 3-10 It is
  
• added 3-10 Have holes in floor welded up.
  
• added 3-10 Scrub trim panels & sill plates.
  
• added 3-10 Repaint/dye and trim panels that need it.
  
• find front seat-belt mounts, make sure they are solid and usable Done 3-10 They're in great shape actually.
  
• find good locations for rear seatbelt mounts. Drill holes, find/fabricate solid mounting plates, install plates.
  
• Cut and install carpet underlay, install carpet. Cut relevant holes for seat and seatbelt mounting bolts.
  
• Re-install heater system with all new seals.
  
• clean (repaint if needed) interior trim panels.
  
• re-dye rear package shelf, fabricate replacement if old one is too degraded.
  
• Decide if I want to repaint dashboard top. If so, do it.
  
• replace rear passenger door glass with '61 glass with good channel bracket
  
• replace window channel fuzzies on all four doors
  
• install door panels, with proper vapor barriers. Clean and polish interior door chrome
  
• install seats and seatbelts.
  
• install door weatherstripping.
  
• Rock out in a sea of red and white vinyl glory.

6:31pm: Sweet jesus


I want to have sex in, or possibly with, that hearse.

10:06pm: Oh that's the floor...
Took advantage of the insane weather today (70+deg? On January 6th? WTF?) to get the garage cleared out, organized and cleaned. I threw out a fuckton of junk, and useless parts and such, sorted though the rest of the stuff and arranged things more logically, then pulled nearly everything out and scrubbed the floor with heavy duty concrete cleaner.
  Much better. Floor is not one giant oil slick anymore, and I'm not tripping over the remains of the last four projects every time I walk through there.

As for the cars:
  Roo has gotten a replacment driver's door, so it works properly, though I seem to have screwed something up wit hte door lock, possibly getting confused ion which was the correct one, cuz the key doesn't work in it. But it is way better than what I had, and has a mirror! Also her front brakes were vibrating, so I replaced the pads and rotors. Except I discovered the caliepr sliders were frozen, so I replaced those. While repalceing those I discovered the passenger outer CV boot was torn, so I repalced the entire halfshaft, while doing that I tore the balljoint boot, so now I need to replace that. Fun.
Emily's brakes are still giving me fits. They refuse to work properly or stay working when I do fix them. I need to pull the back ones apart again, check for issues, then replace the rubber line back there and rebleed everything and hope that fixes it. In the front I've decided to upgrade her to discs (found an easy source for 4-lug discs). That'll give me better brakes, and eliminate the damn front brakes which have never once been right since I bought her. I also need to replace the carb and futz with timing and tuning to get her to run smoother at idle. But I have to say the current drivetrain is miles above the old one. This winter's project will be the aforementioned disc brakes, and pulling the entire interior to check the floor for rot and POR-15 the whole thing, then get the front seat and door panels redone so the interior looks nice. On and reseal the heating system so it works well and eliminates tjhe massive drafts.

10:07pm: Shiny...
I went to the DMV today and updated Emily's registration.  In addition to renewing it I switched her over so I could run 'Yer of Manufacture' plates on her. This means she has a set of the old blue & white 1962 CT plates. They aren't *on* her yet, I had to do a bit of rust removal and paint touch up, but they'll be on her soon.
  And this Saturday I'm taking her to a traditional hotrods show here in CT. It's in South Glastonbury, and I'm thinking I'm goign to take the Ferry across the CT river. Should be fun.

10:50pm: Took Emily out and did a fairly significant amount of driving with her this weekend. I'm pretty sure I put over 100 miles on her. It may not seem like much, but considering when I took her out saturday it was the first tiem she'd been more than around the block with the new drivetrain.

  I was a bit nervous as she still doesn't have a heat guage, but she didn't seem to have any problems getting to warm (maybe everything in  the cooling system being almost new and a radiator that is overkill for her engine helped that).

  The two probloems that presented themselves were:

• a) the shift linkage I cobbled together is crap, I am prone to missing gears when trying to shift, and regularly I'd get reverse when I wanted park.
  
• b) there is a distinct clunk in the drivetrain when I shift gears or accelerate hard (and sometimes when letting off the gas after hard acceleration). It sounds like a bad U-joint, bu the u-joint is brand new. I'm going to ahve to see if I can track it down as it makes me a bit nervous.
  

But overall she performed fine, and now actually has power, can keep up with highway traffic better, and is much quieter. I am pleased.

9:56pm: long overdue update
I haven't been keeping up with this journal, as the whole emily project has been frustrating me too much. Trans was bad, had to get that rebuilt, and get a rebuilt torque converter. Then I put the trans in and it didn't want to go, turned out the be misadjusted bands in the trans. Just tonight I finally got her driveable for the first time since *june*

Things to still do:

• sand/repaint hood hinges
  
• grind rust on underside of hood
  
• POR-15 underside of hood
  
• repaint underside of hood
  
• install hood
  
• figure out temp air cleaner solution
  
• figure out permanent air cleaner solution
  
• adjust engine timing
  
• double check carb for gas leaks
  
• figure out temperature guage solution
  
• replace wiring harness w/ '61 comet unit
  
• replace starter cable
  
• adjust front brakes
  
• get/install correct rear brake hose
  
• bleed brakes
  
• replace tierods & adjusters
  
• have front end aligned
  
• fix turn signals (switch?)
  
• tighten belt
  
  

11:16am: Update
Got Emily together and transmission didn't work. MEss with it, messed with it some more, took it out and messed with it and put it back in (full removal, partail disassembly, re-assembly and re-install in 6.5 hours) and it still doesn't work.
Have resigned myself to the fact it needs repair/rebuild or replacement. Have not yet lined up a source for either of those. Am annoyed and frustrated.

10:02am: drivetrain swap updates
( part 12, engine/trans install 6-22 )

( part 13, attaching stuff and getting the annoying parts 6-23 )

( part 14, more hot attaching action 6-24 )

( part 14, all attaching all the time 6-26 )


( part 15, in which the rain lets up long enough to work on the damn rearend 6-27 )

Stuff still remaining:
-need to install and hook up both engine compartment wiring harnesses
-need to secure trans dipstick tube (won't fit in the stock maverick location due to the heater hoses)
-fill rearend & transmission
-assemble driver's rear brakes, hardlines on rearend and bleed system
-install rear shocks
-modify air cleaner
-install hood and hood hinges

12:29pm: This is an improvement
As of noon today I finally had in my posession a modified set of spring plates (brought them to another shop this morning and they had them done in a few hours), and a driveshaft which looks likely to be correct.

Last night PG & I got the engine and transmission in Emily and solidly bolted in place.

Now I just have a massive re-assembly project ahead of me.

12:33pm: fan-fucking-tasitc
When I dropped the shock plates off at the machine shop on Monday I was told 'Tues, mabye Wed'. Weren't done on Wed. I just called now and was told they hadn't started on them and that they might be done tomorrow. Assholes. Not like I need that part of anything. Not like my car is sitting with its ass in the air waiting for them to get around to doing a job they said they'd do.
Going to call some other machine shops, if I can find one who can promise to get them done for tomorrow I'll go pick them up from the first shop and bring them elsewhere. Last thing I want to do is give these jerks my money after them dicking me around on this.

Also it looks like possible rain and even thunderstorms today. Was supposed to put the engien and trans in Emily, but between the rain and the chanec I might not be able to get the boom high enough to get the engine into the engine compartment it is looking like it might not be worth bothering to try. And why can't I get the engine high enough? Because Emily is stuck halfway in the garage due to the fact I can't roll her out because the shock plates are missing.


Grr. I think at this point I can officially say the show on Saturday is *not* going to happen.

9:42am: drivetrain swap pt 11
( Read more... )

11:02am: Drivetrain swap pt 9 & 10, and state of the Emily
( Sunday )
( monday )

State of the Emily:
Engine: Done as it can be on the stand, waiting for motor mounts but otherwise ready to install.
Transmission: Done as it can be on the stand, waiting for torque converter to install.
Rearend: sitting on leaf springs, but need shock plates back to install. Still need to change axle bearings & seals and reassemble brakes.
Interior: Barely started, steering column needs upper half painted to match interior, need to figure out where/how to install Maverick gas pedal.
Engine Bay: started in on grinding paint. Need to finish that, sand things down and POR-15 surface rust. Then repaint everything. I think I'm going to go with the original forward wiring harness as the modificatiosn the front one needs is more than I want to deal with at the moment. Plus it is easier to try getting the new engine running with wiring I already know will work.

If I get every piece I need in good time (especially if the damn torque converter finally shows up & is correct), and if no new problems crop up, I might have her back together by Friday.

10:59pm: Drivetrain swap pt 8
( or, adventures in pressure washers )

10:30pm: Driveline swap pt 7
( Read more... )

12:40pm:

I want one of these grilles! I want one to use to build a custom Falcon, those are without a doubt the coolest grilles I have ever seen on a Falcon.
Of course given the Frontenac was a 1 year only Canadian car, finding a useable one I can rationalize affording is slim to none. But they are pretty.

10:33pm: Driveline swap pt 6
( Read more... )

6:55pm: car problems & drivetrain swap pt 5
Saturday night after I fueled Emily up in Springfield and was about ot head home she stalled out, then wouldn't restart. No crank and the interior light would dim when I turned the key but that was it. Poked at stuff, tried jumping her and figured it was something in the starting system and called AAA. 2.5 HOURS later and a lot of pissy calls to AAA a tow truck shows up. All told it was past 1am when I was rolling Emily down the driveway. Once I had her in the driveway I figured I'd fiddle with stuff some more since I was still awake. Messed with the battery connections a bit and she had full power and started fine. Turned out there was just some corrosion between the terminal and cable end that wasn't allowing enough power for the starter.
  Sun morning I go to start her and I get nothing, not even like before, but in fact no indication that turning the key was doing anything. Decided to leave it for another time and left her.
  Sunday afternoon Fey's minivan ate its transmission on the way back through Springfield. Seriously ate, like chunks of the casing were in the bottom of the torque converter area. Ended out waiting for another AAA truck and getting that towed home.

  Today I fixed emily, turns out in my prodding last night I knocked a wire loose from the ignition switch, so she is all set.

( drivetrain swap pt 5 )

( EDIT, more stuff done )