85 351 4door Vic **DUW**

[johnunit]

Yikes, this was on the 3rd page? That's not right.

I got a nice shipment from Rockauto a while back.

Speedo cable, calipers (actually from canadian Tire, took a month for the right calipers to come in), pads, u-joints, bearings, intake gaskets.

I screwed up and only bought one each of the inner and outter wheel bearings. Once I fix that (hopefully this week) I'll be throwing on the pads, bearings, speedo cable, and previously purchased rotors. Also on the list is finally getting summer tires on. Burnoutfest with the old winters maybe?

The intake gasket set is probably going to be used when I finally get my hands on the variable venturi tools and rebuild the carb. I'm going to pull the intake and do some mild home porting on it, and maybe gasket-match the runners on the heads. I know porting is sort of considered a "best left to the experts" thing, but I figure if I use un-aggressive bits and don't go greedy, there has to be some improvements on such a low-performance manifold without narfing things up.


I also spent about 8 hours under the car scraping off almost all the undercoating that was covering rust, and then coating the rust in rustoleum semi-gloss black. I'll do the other side at some time, and finish off painting the rear axle.

I found a pleasant surprise under there in the form of newly (2-3 years) replaced brake lines and a section of both fuel lines.

Enough positive, now some negative:

The gauge pack and a few other things are on hold, as I still haven't nailed down a summer job. This is also putting my attendance at Scottfest (300+ bucks in gas + contributions to the food/preparations) in jeopardy.

I found a nasty hole in the trunk pan, near the front passenger side. There was a hole under the rusted out area, opening onto a boxed-in area about 2 by 7 inches. I'm not sure what purpose it serves, and why there was no plug there (or in it's twin hole on the driver's side), but it sure did a good job of holding sand and salt in there and rotting a bigass hole.

Preliminary plan is to cut out the nasty rust, which doesn't seem to go beyond the metal covering the aformentioned box, fill up the entire hole with fiberglass (yeah it's overkill, but why not?) and then put sheet metal in place over the hole using more fiberglass as a glue and sealant.

Does the hump/dome to the left of the hole serve any purpose? It seems to just be a random lump, but I want to know if it "does" anything before I just roughly pound the shape into the patch panel. I know just fibreglassing it in is sort of hacking it, but I don't have access to a welder. Is there any way to get access to the boxes beside the one with the hole for rivetting or rustproofing?



Also, am I right in assuming this UCA bushing is thoroughly shot? yes those lines are cracks.

[1987cp]

Yep, looks like a good time to order up an ES bushing kit. PN 4.3150, wasn't it? (check mrltd's sticky to be sure)


I want to say that English lowrider dude showed pics of fixing rust in approximately that area. Seems he actually cut out a good section of good metal so he could make a repair beneath it, then welded it back in.

[johnunit]

Not a lot of real work, just more rustproofing and finally getting the summer tires on.

I've added some lightly used cargo coils for the rear ($9 from GM_Guy in good enough condition to pass for brand new) to the ever-growing list of parts that rain and school have prevented me from installing.


However, I've been having a ball with the car and she's been running like a top, so I thought I'd share some pics and a video.



I went to the Saint Thomas Assembly Plant for a tour of the factory and mini-carshow. About 40 cars were there total, as well as a guy from CarCraft magazine. Coolbeans.

It was a 300+ mile (450KM) round trip in sweltering heat and the car never missed a beat. The brakes shudder like a beeotch once they get warm, but that's why I have all new front brake stuff sitting around.

Sophie was the oldest car that showed up. You'd think I'd be used to having the oldest car in a parking lot by now, but it still felt pretty cool.


Photo credit to GM_Guy and/or some people from the "other" site.



Also a quick video of a test-run to get the car to run in consistent fashion. I seem to have gotten rid of most of the low-rpm deadspot. This may be because the STAP trip blew out the carbon and allowed me to advance the timing more before the knock sensor pulls it back out again. It still seems inconsistent though in terms of power. I did virtually the exact same run as in the video 4 times, and 1 other time it chirped like in the video, another time it left a 4-6 foot set of stripes, and another time it didn't bark the tires at all. I guess it's better than just bogging every time, even when I load the convertor which is where it was a month ago.

[87gtVIC]

Car sounds healthy to me.

[marquisman]

that first pic is timeless. id love to take my panthers there

[johnunit]

Next year is the last chance if you wanna do that. It should be pretty big.


And thanks 87GTvic, it does sound pretty healthy in that video now that I actually listen to it.

[hemihotrod402]

Next year is the last chance if you wanna do that. It should be pretty big.

I'm planning on going!

I'm looking forward to having my interior look like that lol. I say we both need to finish our cars, and we should get together and do a picture with the "twins" lol

[johnunit]

that sounds pretty cool. Assuming I keep her stock looking, it could make for a nice game of "spot the differences."

Might as well update the thread a bit:

I've got the front brakes completely replaced from the spindle out. The feel still isn't right. I'm thinking either a master cylinder issue or something sticking in the drums.

There's a whole bunch of crap I need to get around to doing, from speaker wiring to speedo cable to steering rag joint to carb rebuild. I've been slacking...

I seem to have a job lined up, so assuming that works out, I've got brake shoes, ball joints, tie rods, and all sorts of chrome parts, plus some engine goodies I'll be buying.

Might as well put this out here:

If you have stripless bumpers, meaning no horizontal rubber strips like in Hemi's sig pic above, in good condition and within a day trip of Toronto PM me. The front must have the structure in behind it too. I'm also looking for a manual remote driver's mirror, red wheel centers (check my pics to see what I mean, need at least 3), passenger side headlight bezel, and a few other chrome pieces.

Tomorrow if I get around to it I'll post pics of the front brake pads as they came off. Lesson learned about new brake pads and old discs (though I had little choice at the time). Nasty stuff.

[1987cp]

Tomorrow if I get around to it I'll post pics of the front brake pads as they came off. Lesson learned about new brake pads and old discs (though I had little choice at the time). Nasty stuff.

That sounds dashed unpleasant. Forgot to do the sandpaper routine after deciding the rotors were still OK?

[johnunit]

That sounds dashed unpleasant. Forgot to do the sandpaper routine after deciding the rotors were still OK?

yeah. live and learn.

On the plus side, I just got a vacuum gauge after going in to buy a sold-out computer chair (impulse buying for the win!) and I have a fairly steady 21 inches of vacuum in park.

[johnunit]

An update or two about things I've actually done, a few purchases, and a lot of planning.

I'll start with something I only said I'd post 2 months ago, the full front brake job with lots of seized-caliper bad-rotor goodness.


Here you can see that the caliper slide bolts were completely effed. This meant that most of the braking action was done by the inner pads.


this is the outer pad (passenger side brake assembly was similar). While I would have replaced this anyway because it was worn to fit the gouged rotor, it obviously has a reasonable amount of pad life left. Keep in mind that the movement of this pad against the rotor requires the caliper slides shown about to, well, slide.


So with little to no ability to apply pressure to the outter pads, this is what the brake piston did to the poor inner pads



This is why you ALWAYS, ALWAYS check both inner and outer pads and, if possible, rotor surfaces when inspecting brakes. If there is a caliper issue it will usually result in the inner pads wearing faster. if you just check the outer pads, you may never know that your inner pads look like the ones pictured.

That said, I only let the situation get so bad because I knew the entire system was going to be replaced, so as long as brake actuation was reasonably good, wearing out the old parts wasn't an issue.


Here she is with new calipers, rotors, pads, bearings, and a shit-ton of painting and undercoating

[johnunit]

Next, something that will probably never save my life, but only cost me local shipping and some time (thanks to Bluemobile/Redmobile, who runs Vicsters.ca and has organized STAP meets in the past).

These are fender braces found on (IIRC) town cars, certain grand marquis, and wagons. The holes were already there from the factory to mount these up.















here is the combination I used to mount to the fenders



I used a nut below the same lockwasher and then washer for the underside of the rad support side.

A winter mini-project is using some metal-reinforced filler to fix the leftover pitting you can see in the first picture near the front.

Still, I think it came out good considering what I started with



end result: A little bit of factory bling, and a somewhat noticeable decrease in rattling.

[johnunit]

I heard a clunking sound coming from the front end over bumps on the way home one day. A quick check showed the battery hold down was completely loose. strange.

Removing the battery, I found this



Well that explains it. The tab on the battery tray had rusted right apart. Oh Canada.

More of the general crustiness in that area:



I had to drill holes in the bracket, using an L-shaped pieces of stainless steel, with one end ending up below and to the engine side of where you saw the piece ripped off, and the other end going where the support to the fender attatches. It seems very solid now, but eventually I will replace the entire hold-down bracket. This is a bit of a job though, because the charcoal cannister has to come out.

I have this thing where I cannot leave anything rusty looking if I have a choice. I smoothed and painted the metal line to the charcoal cannister, as well as the bracket-to-fender support and all the hardware in the area. The rubber lines to the charcoal cannister going to the metal line and from the metal line to the engine and hard lines under the car were also replaced.



Here is everything all cleaned up


I also re-painted the battery hold-down and related hardware. I have since replaced the negative battery cable.

As you can see, the battery cable rubs on the newly installed fender brace. That is something I will sort out over the winter.


I have recently started working at a great independant shop. The downside is that it is a 50KM round trip.

rolling over to 160,000KM, or very close to 100,000 miles.


After checking plugs, I thought it looked a touch lean, though I freely admit I havent seen a lot of SBF plugs, so I may be way off.



Considering that, and my long-bemoaned hard starting and climate control issues, I sprung for a vacuum gauge, instead of a chair as mentioned above.

The bad news is, I am still sitting in a ratty chair, the good news is this is what the vacuum gauge showed at warm idle

21 inches of vacuum... so probably not an issue

[johnunit]

a quick rev video as it sits now. TOO QUIET!

[johnunit]

Given the amount of driving I'm doing for work, and that being an apprentice mechanic who can't drive manual is embarassing, I picked up this thing as a winter beater



It's a 98 esteem. Ugly as hell (dented and scratched to hell), but has a 5 speed, no options (light weight and simple), and a decent stereo. It gets obscene gas mileage.



Here's a video of me attempting to wax poetic about my baby going to sleep for the winter, some incar revving, and some other stuff.