KILLVAIR

So, I'm falling behind again, and in more ways than one.  Instead of getting work done and not writing about it, this time I'm not even getting work done.  Instead, I've been sidetracked by the Corvair, which tried to kill me a couple months ago when the steering failed on the way to work.  Hence the name of this post.  A lot of people, when a car tries to kill them, will call it "Christine," ripping off the old Steven King story.  But I thought, hey, I'm a special shining star, and an original-thinker; I will rip off someone else.  So I named this post after the one and only, the great KILLDOZER.

So the steering failed on the way to work, just a couple blocks from my house.  It was a very, very, very lucky thing that I was just accelerating away from a stoplight, and not out on the interstate, and that I was already in the right lane, and that the car drifted to the right as I applied the brakes.  I got it stopped, got my phone out, and then thought, "Wait ... who am I going to call?"  So I got out, got down under the front of the car, and discovered that a cotter pin must have broken and allowed the castle nut that holds the centerlink to the pitman arm to back off, so that the pitman arm came loose and I lost steering.  To get it out of the street, I took a coat hanger from the trunk, cut off a section, and stuck it through the cotter pin hole to hold the steering linkage together well enough to get me home.

In the short term, I made the minimum repairs necessary to make the car driveable.  But the steering felt really sloppy, and according to the Corvair shop manual, cranking the steering wheel all the way to the stop while the pitman arm is disconnected can damage the steering box.  Recalling my panicked efforts to steer a car with no steering, it occurred to me that this might be the case.  So I replaced the steering box.  That made things better, but the steering still felt a little loose and wiggly.

So eventually, I decided that I should put in new bushings and ball joints in the front suspension.  I've been thinking for a while that this needed to be done, and I decided to just do it before something else came apart on me.  Seemed like the easiest way to get this done in one weekend (so that I could drive to work on Monday) would be to buy rebuilt control arms with new bushings and ball joints already installed.

I ordered those parts, they showed up, and a couple weeks ago I set aside the weekend to do the job.  The first three control arms went relatively easily, and I was in great shape to finish the job on time, but then I got to the driver side upper control arm, and everything went south.

It was Saturday night when I got to the driver side upper control arm and discovered that neither one of the bolts holding it in place would budge.  It was pretty late, and after cranking on them with various different cheater bars, I decided that in the morning I would walk over to Lowe's and buy a cordless impact driver.  I'd been thinking about getting one for a while, anyway, so it seemed like a good time to get some use out of it.

So, Sunday morning I walked to Lowe's and got an impact driver, impact sockets, an extension, and a few other things.  Brought it all home, charged the batteries for the impact driver, put it on the first bolt, and promptly rounded it off.  Thinking that maybe getting the other bolt loose would open up some other options for me on the first one, I promptly rounded off the other bolt, as well.  During an extended public schooling career, and time spent in the diesel industry, as well as some exposure to the lobster fishing industry, I have learned a few curse words, and some of these may or may not have been deployed in the garage at that time.

When I did the passenger side upper, one of the bolt heads had broken completely off, which worked out great, because it just meant that I didn't need to work the nut all the way off of the bolt, I just drove the broken bolt shank out of the hole.  So, on the driver side I thought, maybe I can cut off the head of one of these bolts with the Dremel, and maybe then I'll be able to figure out a way to get the control arm off the rest of the way.

So, I got the Dremel out, and carefully cut off the head of one bolt.  I couldn't even really tell where the edges of the bolt were, it just looked like a solid piece of metal.  I tried to use a punch and a hammer to drive the bolt out, but it still wouldn't budge.  At this point, I felt like I had basically destroyed the car beyond use, and still hadn't made any progress.  Morale was not high.

I was checking Craigslist for used car opportunities when it occurred to me that, if I were to drop the whole front crossmember out from under the car, then I could get at the back side of the bolt, and maybe then I could get the control arm off.  By that time it was Sunday night, and there is a rental car place down the street from me, so I decided to rent a car for the week, and drop the crossmember later.

It was probably the next Friday night by the time I had time to work on it much again.  So, I dropped the crossmember down Friday night.  I wasn't sure if it would balance on a jack very well, so I took all the bolts loose a little bit (also needed to disconnect steering linkage and front brakelines first), then jacked the car up by the crossmember (with jackstands still under the frame rails, as well), pulled the bolts, lowered the car to the floor, then jacked the car up by the frame rails to lift the body up off of the crossmember, and rolled the crossmember out.

Of course, three out of the six bolts broke off.  Four out of the six are threaded into cage nuts, and one of the broken ones was in a cage nut, so that was just a question of extracting the nut from its cage and replacing it.  The other two broken bolts would need to be extracted, though.

Fortunately YouTube has a couple of educational videos where they show you how easy it is to extract broken bolts that have been purposely broken off for the purpose of creating YouTube videos.  Unfortunately, that situation has no bearing on the real world.  I tried using a torch, I tried using penetrating oil, I tried using a torch and penetrating oil, I tried drilling the bolts and using an "E-Z-Out" extractor (biggest scam ever perpetrated on automotive hobbyists), and none of it worked.

Of course, there was also still the issue of actually removing the upper control arm from the crossmember.  With the crossmember off of the car, I could get at the nut on the backside of the bolt, but I still couldn't get anything to budge.  It was like the crossmember, control arm shaft, bolts, nuts and everything had just fused into one solid piece of steel.  I cut the nuts off, and I still couldn't move the control arm shaft.  I tried all sizes and types of pry bars, I tried a hammer and chisel, but I still couldn't move it.

Finally I just took an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel, and I cut the ends off of the control arm shaft so that I could remove the control arm itself, and then I cut right through the middle of the control arm shaft.  Then I took a hammer and started banging away on the cut ends in the middle of the shaft, to use them as levers to try to turn the bolts and loosen them up.  Finally the bolts loosened up and turned a little bit, and I was able to remove the cut off control arm shaft halves, and drive the remains of the bolts out with a punch and a hammer.

After bolting up the new control arm to the crossmember, there was still the issue of what to do about the broken bolts in the frame.  In the end, I decided to just drill them out and put in Heli-Coil inserts to create holes for new bolts. That was also easier said than done, but once I bought a set of cobalt coated drill bits, it went much better. Titanium isn't good enough, get cobalt.  I decided to order a Heli-Coil set online, because I've never had good luck with the ones they carry on the shelf at the parts store.  I try to get the actual Heli-Coil brand, which the packaging says is manufactured by Stanley.

By this time the second weekend was about over, and I had reserved another rental car.  The Heli-Coil set arrived halfway through last week, and I installed the inserts using Permatex red threadlocker.  I let them set up over night, and then I chased each one with a tap, to clean out any excess threadlocker.

That left me ready to reassemble.  So Friday night (of weekend number three on this project) I bolted the crossmember back up under the car.  It turns out that the crossmember balances well enough on a jack, so I lined it up as best I could and pushed it up under there.  Saturday was a question of putting the shock absorbers back up in there, reconnecting brake lines, greasing ball joints, etc., etc.  Sunday my buddy Allen came down from Austin to help me bleed the brakes and attempt a rough alignment.  It drove OK after the alignment, but felt a little squirrely, so I ended up calling Pep Boys to see if they could do a proper alignment.  They said bring it on over, and later that afternoon I was driving it home.

So ... job done.  I think it will take some time to get used to the feel of the new steering.  Everything is stiffer because of all the new bushings.  When I got the car, everything was nice and worn in, but not yet worn out.  But the car does drive a lot better than it did before I started the project.  Maybe Cordelia was just getting jealous of all the attention that Matilda gets and decided to throw a fit so I'd have to spend some time with her.  Or maybe it's an inanimate assembly of steel and plastic, subject to the laws of physics.  Tough call on that one.