Thanks Allan, yes the pinion snubber should not be too hard, no worse than the top shock bolts in the rear, it mounts on the rear cross member over the axle, it is just a stud in the snubber and a nut on the other side, of course it will be Much easier now...but places like rock auto etc do have them....

 

I just did my rear suspension and had it resting on the ground when I torqued it, but the car wasn't level, the rear end was much higher up and the tank almost empty. It now sits way higher than it should in back. I'm going to do it again level, it might not drop a huge amount, but I believe it will help.

FWIW, I used wood blocks under the tires instead of jack stands on the axle. This gives you full access to the underside. My car is a G-body, but I believe the suspension is similar to an A-body. I found the torquing process much MUCH easier than the initial removal process. Even with new OEM locking nuts and bolts, it didn't take much effort to get them close to torque by hand.

 

Well today I got my package from ILT! Finally my snubbers and axle gasket are here. That means the axles need to be completed. I had a really good look at the old wheel studs and noted some of them had mushroomed or had folded the threads on the way out. Funny how you need to look really close to see that.

Anyway I did some phoning around and the only store around that has 7/16" studs is NAPA. The threaded part is about 3/32 too long but since the wheels will be using acorn nuts it won't matter. I did look at ILT and they have the 'correct' studs but I can't wait for another 3 weeks.

So to install them I used a little trick Brian shared with me. I cut a thick piece of plastic and drilled out a center hole. Put that under 2 large washers and threaded the stud though the middle. Unfortunately I didn't have a regular flat nut so I used several of the old acorn nuts I'm planning to throw out. The reason for the plastic is it protects the new paint from scratching. Not as clear as I wanted, but you get the idea.


Using my impact driver I snugged them down. The new compressor really gave the impact gun the ooomph it needed for this job. Also make this fairly quick. Sometimes you think it's a done deal and go on to the next stud. BUT double check!!! There should be NO GAPS between the stud head and the axle. After I had snugged down this set I went back and looked using my mini LED light and saw this problem on the back right. Impact back in action and it was fixed in less than 30 seconds. Double checked all of them for good measure and I'm ok.


Sorry the angle and lighting aren't as good as I like, but dang! These look like brand new!


Tried to get you a better shot of them with more light. Not much better. Maybe drop over and have a look, they are really sweet.

 

Should have mentioned it was not that warm today. So I bought some white gas for my Coleman stove and fired it up. When I started the garage was around 42°. Ran a tank of fuel with the burners on full and in short order it was a balmy 68°. Turned the burners down and it stayed that temp till I packed it in at 8:30.


I wanted to get the snubbers in, so I had Graeme hold my trouble light (axle is in the corner (sad - getting dusty even tho it's covered with a blanket). I found the easiest way to get these things in! Take a small smear of Vaseline and lube the slot the snubber anchor goes into. Lean the snubber over so one fin is almost in the slot. Then take a LARGE flat blade (seriously large) and push the corner closest to one end down and in. That will seat both sides of the snubber fins and it literally sucks right down into the slot. Took all of a minute for each side.


A point of interest. The replacement snubbers are not the same size as the OEMs. They have the same base footprint, but they are about 1/4" shorter in height. Still, for what this car will be doing after it's done I don't think it will make any difference.


Decided to see what would happen if I sprayed metal cast over the caliper paint on the drums. The result is amazing. It gives a finish this pic doesn't do justice to. The metal cast gives an almost anodized depth to the drums and changes the color from a very bright silver which I didn't really want to something that looks almost like OEM metal. Metal cast is rated for temps up to 500°F (just like engine enamel) so I think it will be fine.


Next, I got out the masking tape and paper and masked off the back of the car, and the exhausts. That took some time. Then I took my trouble light and went under the car. Found all the areas I missed on the first go around when I was spraying the bottom. With that info stored away I went back under the car and sprayed it again. This time it has all the areas covered - even the nooks and crannies that are harder to get into. It was too dark to take pics tonight so I'll get that for you tomorrow.

 

Allan, glad to hear your latest order from ILT finally got sprung from the postage jail. Now you can get the differential assembled and back in the car. Axles look really nice too. When you get a minute, can you post a photo of the metal cast paint you are using? I've not run across that down my way and wanted to see what this was. Hope you get a little warmer weather too.
Brian

 

Brian, I was excited to see them too - they got shipped as 'commercial samples' which probably confused the post office. Good side is I didn't have to pay customs or shipping on it.

Thanks on the axles! Also got my lower rear control arms back yesterday. I farmed them out to have the inserts stitched in; turn around time was only a few hours from drop off. Wish I had that skill. My neighbor who offered to lend me his welder or supervise has been on out of town work for the past 2 weeks or I'd have hit him up and saved a few bucks.

Yesterday I got a master ball joint press kit (tool loaner program at Part Source/Autozone) so today I'll be trying to get all the bushings installed, then paint the lower control arms. I can't believe how much burring damage AD caused getting the sleeves out. I should have waited till my new compressor was on line and used my own impact chisel. Anyway I spend almost 15 minutes on just one end getting the burrs off and smoothed out nice. That should give an indication of how much they botched it up.

Yes, I'd really like to get the diff and axles back in fairly soon too. At this stage I don't care if the brakes aren't installed, I just want to get the car back onto the dollys so I can get Joanne back in the garage. She is NOT a big fan of snow or cold, so having to clean off her car or go out to an icebox in the winter is not her idea of a good time. Jeepers, I even put an in car heater into her car so all she has to do is flip a wall switch inside to turn on the block and in car heaters. That is, if she remembers to plug in the car...No fair picking on her-this is my doing so it's up to me to make it right. Just wasn't expecting the weather change so soon. Last year I had till almost Nov 5 before this happened.

The Metal Cast is made by Dupli-Color. I also noticed they have a product new on the market called "Stainless Steel". I was intrigued by it but didn't buy it. Don't know what the pricing is in your area but up here it's 10.00/can

Last night Joanne was complaining about the 'smell' coming from the garage. I think it may have been from using the Coleman Stove AND the undercoat at the same time. Strange, the garage is insulated and there shouldn't be any off gasses coming into the house. I have to be more considerate; don't want to end up sleeping out there....

Here are the pics you were asking about.


The forecast for the next week here is 30° or colder with more of this shyte, and overnight lows of 14°. Normals for this time are supposed to be 50° so you can imagine what kind of sunshine this is putting in my life. I guess it's not the weather in your life that matters, it's how you weather life that counts!

 

Thanks for the picture Allan and I'll have to look for that paint in my local stores. Regarding your other picture....I don't even want to think about the white stuff....definitely not ready for that. Say, did you recently install the Christmas lights on the house or do you keep them up all year? I'm thinking you probably do this earlier than us because your weather changes sooner than ours does and is usually much colder.

 

If you call recently installed last Nov 4? Then they're recently installed. I don't take them down because every one of those 150 lights has it's own attachment on the eaves. They are LED lights so they aren't affected by UV and IR like the old 7W bulbs were. Besides, they only cost around 7 bucks a string so they're easy to replace. They are switched from inside the house so I never have to go out to plug them in. What I still have to do is put out the candles and motorized deer - sometime after Halloween.

 

Dupli-color ; is this the paint at NAPA, or can you get it anywhere?
Motorized reindeer?!

Ted

 

Oh Snow!

 

Ok, with the garage now a comfy 70 it's much easier to work out there. Only thing is when I open the big door it cools down in a hurry. The outside temp only reached 33 here. So as promised here are the pics of the bottom of the car I was working on for 2 days. I was really quite lucky actually because there was very little rust to sand off. I did have to knock down a lot of overspray on the back part of the frame. And, yes I know there's still some overspray on the upper silver that needs to be cleaned up.

I wasn't concerned too much about the resonators because they're coming out. But I masked everything off anyway.


Looks as good in person as it does in this shot. Great hole shot to the transmission tunnel.


The bumper brace gets mounted here. There's still some crud on the frame, but to be honest I would need to do a frame off to get it out. Most of the ugly stuff was removable by 80/100/180 grit sandpaper.


The other side (BTW that sort of orangy looking finish is a reflection off my orange coveralls - when I wear them I feel like the Great Pumpkin. hee hee hee)


The fuel venting cannister and fuel line

 

Passenger side shock mount and spring seat.


Drivers side spring seat (more orange reflections)


Shock mount - and still more reflections. I need a dark blue set of coveralls.

 

This is incredibly beautiful, Allan, especially after seeing it in person the other day! (the rear drums also look great in the "cast" color...think I might have to change mine from black in the spring! You keep giving me better ideas-

 

Bushings can be a PITA or they can be ok. I found that if I approach this with a positive frame of mind it's usually OK. First off I went to Part Source and rented a master Ball Joint Press kit. Guess who was working today? Yup, that idiot Chung. He acts like his shyte don't stink. So I waited for Ernie. Worked out fine. I love that the kit is 'free' as long as I don't break anything. What I don't like is other people who rent it usually leave it dirty. So I spend about 5 minutes cleaning the clamp and worm gear, then lubed it.


So I know the big issue is to make sure the sides of the control arms don't bend in when pressing bushings. Here's a page out of what I learned last year. Start with a piece of 2" ABS plastic - something like this


Cut a slice about 1.5" wide and the cut it in half so you end up with a C shaped wedge. This is before trimming to fit and taking off the rough edges


Once it's de-burred and fits very snugly (must not be loose) it gets positioned like this so the control arm ends are stabilized during pressing. The semi circular design is incredibly strong and if you noticed, the side wall is pretty thick. You can put it in this position, or out on the open side. It will pop out with the help of a stout flat blade after you're done.

 

Took more time than I really planned to do the bushings today. But I wanted to make sure they got done right. Part of the problem was the bushings didn't want to cooperate a lot on the control arms. I had to restart 3 of them because they started to go in crooked. What's really strange is how FAST time flies when you're doing this. I'm not the speediest but this group of 6 was about an hour and a half. To help get the bushings in easier, I ended up lightly sanding the seat areas till they were very smooth and clean. Then I put some Vaseline on the bushing and openings and pressed them in. It went smoother and easier than if they were dry. Now you know - Vaseline in the garage works just as well or better than oil, plus it doesn't leave a mess.


Then I had to tape off the new bushings and shoot them with black. The taping is very time consuming too. Trimming was done with a small exacto knife. I know I could have just painted over everything, but that's just not the way I do this. Given that I just got these back yesterday, the paint wouldn't have cured long enough to survive bushing press. Oh yes, the e brake cables did leave deep enough wear patterns I can easily tell which side is which.


Now comes the MAJOR PITA. Diff housing bushings. I got Graeme to help me with these because it was awkward to set up with just one person. The right side went actually easy. I set up the press and the receiver fit nicely on the top of the housing. I used my impact driver and set the line pressure to 110 PSI. The bushing went in slowly - man is it tight even with a dab of vaseline on it. I guess I should have sanded the paint off the bushing.

Then I tried the left side. No Dice! The receiver wasn't going to fit because the housing has a different shape on that side, and there's not much room to work with for that receiver. Crap! I went through every receiver in the kit and NONE of them fit there. So I ended up using an open end receiver and a fence post structural plate as a backer. I had to stop several time during the install to reposition the worm drive as it wanted to move off center with the adapted receiver I was using. Finally it was in. Looks like it's not far enough, but I measured and both are the same extension so I think the housing ears were machined differently.

The finagling scraped some of the aluminum paint, so I taped off the bushings and other areas that would need protection and did spot repairs to the paint. Came out nice. I also test fitted the upper control arms and they fit nicely onto the housing bushings.


This is 1/8" plate steel. You can see how much force the bushings were pressed in with. I had to actually use a punch to get the adapter ring off the housing ear.


Ok, so now the paint is curing overnight. In the meantime I decided to start re-assembly of the axles into the diff. Before I was called for supper I got the backing plate and axle dry fitted on both sides, and dry fitted the new brake lines. It's starting to look like a real rear end. I don't know how much I'll get done tomorrow but hopefully the differential will be complete and ready for gear oil. I'd like to get it installed tomorrow if possible. Still have to replace that center brake hose - haven't forgotten about that either.

 

You can pick up Dupli-Color at Canadian Tire. I think NAPA has their own brands of C-MAX. I just happen to like this stuff. Yup, motorized deer. They light up and the one deer has a motorized head to make it look like it's keeping watch over the other one. I also put 2 big 4' candles out by them. When the snow gets somewhat deeper it looks pretty nice. Multi color house lights, white deer lights, and red/orange candles! Works every time. So far Santa has never missed his landing spot!

Oh yes!

Glad you like it Bil. It's a world of difference since you were over. My wife is 'motivating' me to get finished asap. Don't you just love our extended forecast?? Ideas? LOL that's what this hobby is all about. You know of course that this isn't a 'concourse' resto. If it was I'd have the body off and pissing off my wife with 3 years of no parking in the garage!

 

lubing up the cam

 

Allan, do you think freezing the upper control arm bushings would have made them easier to press into the housing? I will be doing mine in a couple of weeks and those are the only ones I will have to replace.

 

Wow, that really does look fantastic Allan! Never thought of the ABS pipe! I used a clev-ice, that is shaped in a similar way when I put my control arm bushings in. Has the tailpipe been hitting the body, by the gas tank, or is that just a reflection of your coveralls?!

Ted

 

Steve, are you serious?
No, the uppers were the easiest of all to get in. Just clean up the holes nice and lube the bushings when you press them in. You're not doing the bushings on the housing right? Just the uppers that mount to the body? If so, you won't have any problems. I expect you'll be supporting the pumpkin anyway and you won't be unbolting your shocks.

 

Actually that is a reflection off the jack stands. The entire surface of the underside is uniformly black. There's enough sheen to catch and reflect from bright colors. I only had the door open for 5 minutes to do those shots. Too cold outside in AB right now. Currently -2 and wind chill to -8. You guys are enjoying temps in the teens? Wish we were too.

 

No, I am just going to replace the bushings on the housing. Everything else is getting replaced with this:



I'm taking the whole rear end out, it's getting blasted and powdercoated, new bushings, a set of 3.73 gears, new axles, and a disc brake conversion. When it goes back in it will be mounted with all the new control arms and tubular frame supports

 

Wow Allan .... I guess I missed a lot lately . I'll have to reverse and re-read some of your latest and greatest posts on here . I've been busy messing around with my kids room lately and other chores that I'm falling behind on some of these threads .... Good Job ! You get an A+ for having patients with all this stuff .

 

Lets Go Racing

 

Awesome job your doing , nice weather in your neck of the woods. lol.

 

Allan that looks seriously sweet, and great documentation. So sorry the weather has gone south on ya. Looks like all you lack is finishing up.

 

Just make sure the powdercoat place doesn't bake the color into the bushing holes on the housing or you'll never get the bushings in. You're doing the bushing press yourself? Watch out for that left one-it's a real bear. I watched a DIY video on this install that showed how EASY it was? What a load of crap - maybe for a Chebby, but not on an Olds.

LOL I looked yours up on weather network. I'd trade in a heartbeat. Either that or you send me your shop to work in

Pretty much exactly that-all the really hard stuff is done. Add 80/90, install diff/control arms/braces, replace brake hose, install springs, shocks & brakes, drive shaft, gas tank/hoses and bumper. I was not expecting this round of cold weather so soon. Thanks for the kudos.

 

I'll make sure they tape off the inside of the ears. So for those bushings, do you think freezing them for a week before installing them will make it any easier? I don't know how tight they were for you, I know you said they were a pain.

 

I don't think freezing them is going to help a bit, in fact it may be harmful to press them when the rubber is that cold. IDK for sure. I understand what you're thinking about shrinkage but I don't think it will be enough. The bushings are VERY VERY tight. If you try pressing them using a breaker bar for leverage? You're a better and stronger man than I am - and be prepared to break sweat and curse a lot. Oh yeah, better get someone to hold the diff for you cause it will want to move doing it the armstrong way.

They will still be a pain. Use your impact driver and set up your pressure to at least 110, use high impact setting. The press and air pressure will do the work so you don't have to. Also since you said you're going to powder coat the housing and axles? I'd do the bushings BEFORE you send it to powder coat. Why? Because when you try to install that left side one? You'll end up damaging the powder coat finish - guaranteed! The bushings can withstand the temp of powder coating without any problem. Just make sure the shop tapes off the bushings. Honestly that's what I'd do if I was in your place, or there to nag ya.

 

Thanks Allan, I'll do just as you said. Does it make a difference that the bushings I'm using are polyurethane? They'll still hold up to the heat right?

I'm going to be in for a battle because I don't have an air compressor let alone an impact

 

Rut Roh!!!

 

Powder coating usually runs temps of about 250° for around 10 minutes to get the finish to melt/bake.
Poly bushings should be able to take that heat - but check with the manufacturer to be sure. I know that in order to mold poly they have to be in the 400 - 450° range.

I'm not a real big fan of poly bushings mostly because of the squeak factor. That said, you might have some that don't make any noise at all.

Yes my friend you are in for a real battle. Why don't you have the bushings installed at a shop before dropping the diff off at the powder coater? BTW, what shape are the bushings you're removing in? If they look good.....just saying.

 

This is all going in the silver car, so if they squeak I would never know it...you can't hear much over the exhaust. I believe my stock bushings to be in decent shape, but I hate to replace everything else and leave those in...especially since I already have the new bushings. This is a MAW do it right the first time job. Plus, this car sees the track with some regularity so I want the best components for the job. I'll see about paying someone to press them in so I don't break something (my back lol). Glad I ask because I could've wasted a day or two trying only to come up short. Thanks Allan!

 

Allan,

Looks like things are coming together nicely and I'm sure it won't be long before you'll be posting photos of that differential back in the car where it belongs. Nice job.

Brian

 

Steve, I agree with the new bushings. You "Have a whole lot of twisting going on". Somehow, I get the feeling you right foot is more subseptible to gravity than Allan's is Also, you need to let Allan talk to your wife about a new compressor, he seems to have a way with the ladies and getting new tools.

Allan, with the new bushings, boxed control arms, and posi; you are going to have a new animal next spring. You continue to do great work, and I appreciate the work you are putting into this thread.

 

i fine when using a puller or press,it helps to use a hammer,screw in the worm until it is very tight then remove socket and give the end of the worm a good smart tap with a heavy hammer,the part being pressed in will move with a 'pop',then retighten and tap it again.

 

Allan, I knew you were doing some work but hadn't read this post since you first started. Guess it turned into more than originally expected but we know how that goes. Just wanted to say you're doing a great job! Very nice attention to detail.
BTW thanks for your concern with my gas tank trouble

 

Got the axles installed yesterday. Won't be on here for a while - dealing with something personal. Updates later, I promise.

 

Hope it's nuffin serious.

 

x2