costpenn

Nice to see some tangible progress (3 hours)

Today I finished the rear end housing assy. Painted the tubes in the bumper semi flat black, and the diff. case in Cast Blast. After all that work, it was worth it to see something undercar looking like it could be reinstalled. Looking forward to getting my ILT order tomorrow that has things like the detail stickers, vent tube, backing plate to tube gaskets, brake lines, etc...in it so as to finish the reassembly of the unit. Still needing a differential cover that isn't pitted to hell - anyone?

Got the axles back yesterday with the NOS GM barrel roller type bearings installed along with the 712146 seals to avoid future problems. Also had the drums and rotors turned, and this morning/evening went ahead and wire-wheeled certain areas of the drums/rotors, then taped off the turned surfaces and spindle cavities and painted in Cast Blast. I then went back and shot black over the drum fronts (found out in another thread my drums are NOT original - damn)

Lastly smoothed out the roughness of the backing plate surfaces. Painted one side of one with Aluma Blast from Eastwood's. Will let it dry overnight and see what I think in the AM.

jensenracing77

Inventory that ILT order real close. I like most of there products but almost every order I get from them has at least one part wrong. They fix it every time but only if you catch it right away.

costpenn

Will do Eric. The customer service level on this order has been pretty crappy so far.

costpenn

No work, but got my completed parts back from 70Post (0 hours)


1) Red OE wells - original to this car. Patton repaired the damaged well to fender j nut mounting tabs, installed new flaps, and cleaned off a lot of the tar on the underside. Color looks acceptable as is without any surface conditioning, but will probably spray a little low sheen protectant on before installing.

2) Open face alternator (with diamond back case) - Patton put this together from various units. I really like the pulley and fan finish along with the yellow/orange varnish used on the internals. Not going to restamp this - I am being honest on every component on this car, and there are so many correct, born on this car parts on it I don't want to start playing games.

3) Rag Joint - very nicely detailed with the correct finishes

4) TCS switch - replated without damaging all the internals

5) Front Grilles & Headlamp Surrounds - I don't know what all Patton does to get this finish, but it is awesome. You have to see it in person to appreciate it. I'm so lucky that somehow these were never damaged, and have zero sag to them.

6) Intake Manifold - I like that it is not too shiny, nor dull.

costpenn

Today was good, bad, and ugly (4 hours total)

Started off with the news that my frame that was supposed to be back last week after pit filling and painting will now not be ready until early November, since a SEMA show truck has to be completed first.

My late (now because of the above not so urgent) ILT shipment arrived. All was pretty well packed and no shortages, but some quality control issues (covered on another thread)

Went ahead and reassembled and detailled most of the rear end. Chris came over and torqued down the pinion yoke nut with a cheater bar until we got the 12 inch pound number on his torque gauge required to start turning the rear end.

Also went ahead and reassembled the air adaptor/air cleaner housing. The seal will be coming from Fusick.

Lastly mostly reassembled the dual gate with the rechromed slider and other goodies.

Sent off my rear end cover and upper control arms to 70Post - the patron saint of pitted surfaces.

costpenn

Hello Joe, let me see what Patton can do with my arms and rear end cover first.

Hope I got the rear end markings correct. It is a mixture of what I actually found on mine (the yellow paint pen on the yoke flange, filler plug will spillover onto the strut, the large "4" on the top, the green spray paint blob on the RH side of the case), and what I read in the PIM and you told me (the blue mark on top of the case right by the pinion yoke). Will add the white paint on the yoke nut now that it has been tightened, and the yellow paint daubs on the retainer plate nuts - couple of mine still had some faint traces on them.

Have you checked on that date yet?

Joe

bkeese

What are they using to fix the pitted frame? Just curious.

Who do you guys get to refinish your aluminum items, like intakes? Do you know about re-skinning aluminum?

costpenn

The body shop is using some body filler and or a epoxy primer to fill in the pits depending on depth. As far as the aluminum, 70Post used his own process.

costpenn

A little work and some play (1 1/2 hours)

Received my used OE style idler arm bought off ebay. Below are before and after pics of it. Work included scraping, wirewheeling, detailing, painting the cast parts spray gray, polishing the steel metal cap, and cleaning, brushing and conditioning the rubber boot. Of course, the grease zerk is broken off, so another item for Chris to try to extract another broken fastener from.

Also, for fun I mocked up the intake with the carb and a few other items on it. Anything look wrong to anyone?

Boilerz25

Intake looks amazing. How did you get it so clean and shiny? Glass bead?

dc2x4drvr

Patton did a fantastic job on your intake, he must have secret recipe no glass beading here..

gearheads78

Thought about you today. Talked to a guy next to me at Goodguys with a Ralley Red 4speed W30. Was restored 25 years ago but still a real nice car. He picked it up from up north a few days ago from a word of mouth tip.

Funkwagon455

The detail work on that intake is nothing short of spectacular.

costpenn

Thanks Heath. How is the powdercoating coming on your stuff?

costpenn

Wow - there are still some great cars out there, and the best deals (and jobs) always come from knowing someone.

Funkwagon455

Powder guy just picked up the frame on Wednesday, should be back later this week I would suspect. To be honest with all that is going on with changes to the new place it would not hurt my feelings if it were next week that it came back. I may have to let it sit outside on 2x4's

costpenn

No work today, but placed my final resto parts house order with Ames for a few items. When I receive the order from Ames and Fusick, I plan on writing a new thread featuring a detailed review of the customer service experience I received from ILT, Fusick, The Parts Place, Supercars Unlimited, and Ames.

Also today received my date coded (VV - Dec 69) front windshield from Pilkington. Arrived undamaged since it was very well packed.

jensenracing77

I assume the windshield has the antenna in it? I am not sure yet what way I want to go. My original has a deep scratch in it. I have a pretty nice used one but not perfect. All my other glass is good. For $275 I may just order a new one. Are you going to use the rope seal or will you use the windshield polyurethane glue? I am leaning for the glue but not sure of that yet either.

costpenn

Eric, it is the one with the antenna. Has the dark band running along the top. The car has the tinted glass option, and, like yours, all the other 5 windows are in excellent, date matching condition.

As far as how it will be sealed, I do not know how the paint shop plans to install it, but you can bet I will make sure there's not giant globs of glue squishing out everywhere.

costpenn

Have I mentioned recently how awesome it is to have one of my best friends be a professional machinist who specializes in fixing old equipment? (0 hours)

Last week I gave Chris the final items I need to have rebuilt prior to reassembly - the original "born with the car" calipers and wheel cylinders. Three of the four units have the bleeder screws broken off, and all of them appeared heavily corroded. Surprisingly, the cylinders, although full of a orangish, foul smelling goo cleaned up well enough that no re sleeving was required, but the calipers are a different story. Both caliper pistons are frozen tight in their bores, so Chris is going to drill a hole through the center of the piston faces, tap them, and use some kind of slide hammer/dent puller to get them out. It remains to be seen what the bores will look like - hopefully he would be able to devise some kind of sleeve if they are pitted out of spec.

Also, think I will be able to have 10 or so 406768/409759 cams ground by one of my suppliers to the EXACT factory specs with Cam Doc sheets for each unit. The ones you buy from Supercars Unlimited are not right - they are a 402194 W-31 cam relabeled to the 406768. Since most people don't happen to have a Cam Doc laying around, they would never know.

costpenn

A little work this morning (1 1/2 hours)

Got my order in from Fusick yesterday, so this morning thought I would start putting my dual gate back together. Applied the wood grain inlays to the dual gate bezel and the console insert. This is one of the very few interior parts I am having to replace along with:

Bucket seat chrome trim
Bucket seat adjustment *****
Headrest escutcheons
Door sill plates
Window cranks
Dome lamp lens
Dash pad and bead - only replacing this because of a slight sag above the gauge pod area
Package tray (had holes in it from the aftermarket

Everything else, including carpet will be the original 1970 installed components.

Also changed out the RH outside mirror glass. The LH is OK as is.

Sent off my original upper and lower front A frames to Frank Waggoner to have him reblast and epoxy paint. Another CO member has graciously offered his arms for me to use if these do not work out.

Lastly did some digging on CO and found out why, depending on what radio system the car is equipped with, some package trays have the fiber mesh top surface, and some, like mine, have the plain cardboard unit.

tru-blue 442

Looking good bud. Keep up the good work.

costpenn

No actual work - more parts chasing (0 hours)

Received my final specialty house order from Ames Perf. Bought repo spiral shocks, door sill plates, some stickers, a few mIsc boots, and a couple of stickers from them. Easy ordering, good prices, great quality, awful shipping - took eight days to receive and shipping box was a mess - no void fill, lousy box....

70 Post rescued my rear end cover from pitting Hell. See pic below. It looked like the surface of Mars after a meteor strike.

Frank Wagoner finished with my front A frames. Will assess after I pick up, but looks like the upper DS is unacceptably pitted.

Also forgot to add about wheel cylinders and calipers. Looks like Chris will in fact be able to extract the pistons and one broken bleeder screw on the calipers, but the rears are toast. The cylinder bores are salvageable, but the the bleeder screw remnants cannot be removed without damaging the threads to an unusable state.

TK-65

Franks Pontiac Parts for California fresh A arms.

http://www.frankspontiacparts.com/en...nsionparts.htm

costpenn

Thanks. Congrats again on your BOC at the Nats. Got my JWO today and saw your car's pic in it.

costpenn

More parts chasing (0 hours)

Picked up my exhaust manifolds from the specialty coating place. I really wanted to save these since they are correctly date coded (9) for Jan 9, 1970. There is some pitting, but thankfully it is all pretty much hidden - one of the few times I am glad it is a A/C car. Picking up A frames tomorrow.

HWYSTR455

Eh, pitting adds character!

.

DocOldsW30

Survivors with pits nonetheless is fetching big $ on the Mecum Market these days.

costpenn

A day of miscellaneous rat killing (2 1/2 hours)

Today I worked on taking care of some lingering items.

1) Got my lower half of the OEM idler arm back from Chris after he removed the broken zerk. Installed a new zerk, touched up the finish. Thanks to Patton for the tip on the upper section being more of a black oxide color. Simulated it by going with Zinc Phosphate, then dusting with the Stainess Steel paint.

2) Yesterday, Chris returned my original calipers after removing the stuck pistons. Started this morning trying to wire wheel them clean, but there are just too many corners and inacessable surfaces. So I went to Frank Waggoner's shop this morning to pick up my A frames, and he let me use his awesome bead blast cabinet to clean them. Brought them back, removed the one stuck pin guide bushing, removed all the o rings, and painted the surface with high heat Duplicolor Cast Iron paint. Installed new bushings and o rings, bleeder screws, and will return to Chris for bore honing and piston installation.

3) Gas tank ground wire - could not find anyone already selling a finished unit, so I cut off the completely broken and corroded terminals, cleaned the insulation with carb cleaner and crimped on new terminals after removing the cheap plastic Radio Shack insulators from the terminals. Hope it will still be long enough - I probably cut off about 1/2 inch of total length.

4) Front A frames - as mentioned, today I picked them up after sending them to Frank for further blasting and painting. Three out of 4 arms came out OK, but the LH front upper was unacceptably pitted in visible areas. I left this one with Frank and he is going to sand smooth/fill with epoxy to get it matching the others. There are a lot more stamping marks on upper arms after Frank finished these, so to me it is worth it to fix my original one - even though I do not know how to read these marks.

5 ) Front crossmember to brake pipe clamps - these 3 clamps had a different color to them than all the other original undercar line clamps - kind of like a sparkly green finish. The repos are not this color, so I shot ithem with a medium green metallic paint, then a dusting of flat olive green. I think it came out just OK, but can't think of anyway to get it closer.

costpenn

Couple of more pics

costpenn

Stuff still coming in (0 work hours)

Today I received a white, embossed lettering PF30 from a ebay seller. There are a few small chips in the paint that I am going to have to somehow touch up, and the paint is almost a off white very light ivory color so matching the shade is going to be a challenge.

Also have a correct Daka Ware dual gate ball on the way. This car had a vintage Hurst T handle on the dual gate - the original was long gone.

Still looking for a correct gas cap. Sadly, I had the right one on my car, but threw it out along with the gas tank that was beyond salvage.

costpenn

A tiny bit of work, but mostly still amassing parts (1/2 hour)

Got my correct dual gate ball in. Had to give it a polishing on the wheel, but it came out pretty well. It does not polish up like the service part. I think the original Daka Ware ball is made of a Bakelite type of material, and the service items are a hard plastic.

Received my center link and inner tie rod from RocketmanV269. The inner tie rod dies not have the Saginaw logo, but it looks identical and has GM in raised letters on it.

Got my rear end cover back from Patton. Just wow man. I put it up to the rest of the finished rear end and it looks awesome. Also received the pit free rear upper control arms and they are an exact match with my originals. Have to push out the old bushings, strip & paint.

Have ordered the correct gas cap from Ron Memmer. This has been one of the more difficult parts to find.

costpenn

Some more undercar part detailing work (2 hours)

Dug out my previosly "finished" upper control arm shafts, and repainted with the high heat cast paint. I had painted them in the semi gloss black before - wrong!!

Put a heavy coat of clear on the GM inner tie rod. It is a little darker than the other tie rods, but looks to me, at least, close enough to where it coud have originally been that way.

On the drag link, after cleaning and masking off the ball joint studs and backs, I shot it first in stainless steel paint, and then shot a lighter coat of the zinc phosphate over it. I like the way it came out, and am putting that combo in my bag 'o tricks for the next resto I do.

Repainted in detail gray (again from black) the rear axle to frame crossmember reinforcing struts.

Stripped and sanded my rear upper control arms received from 70Post. Patton, I tried to replicate that goopy paint/undercoater stuff on the outer upper surfaces, but no go. Wound up painting them in the a Eastwood Silver Cad paint, and then shooting the outer surfaces (with some overspray on the inside) in the SEM Landau black. Now I know what all the fuss is about - that stuff is damn good paint.

Received some cheapie upper ball joints bought off ebay for 22.00 delivered just to get the grease boots out of them. They will work just fine.

Spent some time deburring and cleaning the epoxy paint out of any holes in my front control arms where the ball joints or bushings are installed. That was more work than planned. The epoxy paint is pretty tough stuff.

also, yesterday I was going to try to hang all the rear end brake hardware. First off, the brake shoes purchased from Rock were not even close, too narrow and too big in application circumference. The part number on the box was correct for my application, so it must be some kind of mis box. Also found I have misplaced the 4 T shaped pusher rods that go from the cylinder to the shoe. Had to order those, but will be in tomorrow, and will finish up the rear end assembly then.

Now, if I could just find the right rear end cover gasket.....

70Post

Rear diff cover gasket.....try FelPro RDS 55008. I have one here and just unboxed it and it's a dark grey/black material. Hopefully they are still made of the same material instead of the bright blue material Felpro uses on a lot of their gaskets. If not....well, you have some of that Landau Black paint

70Post

Maybe you've compared some later version of the gasket?? I put the gasket against the inside (gasket side) surface of two '70 O-type "12 bolt" covers and it lines up with the bolt holes perfectly.

I'll try ordering another one and see what happens.

costpenn

I'm in the process of hunting up that 402783 gasket now - Joe do you have an extra to sell? My rear end cover mounting face does not have those grooves cut in it - the casting is Julian date 343, and the assembly date is December 10, 1969.

costpenn

Found one.

http://www.riversidegear.com/differe...67---1970.html

costpenn

Rear brake reassembly woes (1 1/2 hours)

Began again trying to reassemble the rear drum brakes. Thought the only pieces I forgot to get new were the cylinder push rods, but no

First, I bought wholesale close out name brand rear adjuster kits and full hardware kits off Rock Auto. Got the Wagner branded stuff, but apparently these boxes have been broke into many times throughout the years and would up missing the LH adjuster arm, the three finger piece that clips onto it, one of the weird oval shaped springs that goes over one end of the bar strut, and one of the self adjuster springs. I had enough correct parts to assemble the RH side, but will have to go and find the missing pieces to finish the LH side.

Then I realized that no one's kit has the emergency brake arm included. Had to spend about 30 minutes wire wheeling those nasty pieces and clear coating them, along with the "bow tie" looking thing that goes over the anchoring post at the top.

So far, the reassembly of the car - beginning with the rear end assembly has been trying. Did find a supplier that makes the correct 70 rear cover gasket, and looks like I'll have a correct camshaft shortly.

Going on a biz trip to Phoenix next week. Hope more goodies arrive while I'm away.

costpenn

[QUOTE=joesw31;761209]Joe do you have a pic of the correct one? Patton said the finish looked wrong to him. This is the one that was on the car - since it looks like the carb has never been into, thought it was correct.

costpenn

Some progress again (2 hours total)

Finished rounding up all the rear drum brake hardware needed this morning and completed this part. Took some pics before putting the drums on.

This evening I received the correct style diff cover gasket. Filled the unit 4 1/2 pints plus the anti spin additive, and sealed her up with liberal amounts of Permatex Ultra Black. Installed the AMK cover bolt kit along with the posi tag. Going to let it dry in this position before positioning it level again. I can't wait to see it under the car. Incidentally I was able to reuse the original axle tube suspension rubber snubbers - the repos are a little smaller and don't have those lines in the rubber running around them.