The guy at the machine shop didn't exactly say these words to me, but ... you could read it in his eyes. I had just explained to him everything from the last two paragraphs of the previous post here, and I could tell that he was already mentally rejecting it faster than I could talk. That was a little discouraging, but then he walked me back into the shop and explained to me how a smart person would do it.
I had tried to look around online about how to install a cam button and set cam endplay, and I didn't find anything that was much help, but the guy at the machine shop explained that what he does is to take an old cam button base, put some clay on it, the cam button base in place on the front of the cam, then assemble the timing cover over it, then disassemble and measure the clay to see what length cam button you need. It's so simple, I felt like a moron for not thinking of it myself. But he gave me some clay to use. So that was nice.
Then he told me that I had the wrong timing set (although in this case "wrong" means "not what he prefers"). I had the gears that Comp sent me with the cam, but he said he doesn't like those, he likes to use a timing set with a Torrington roller bearing integrated into the cam timing gear. So he ordered up one of those for me.
I ordered a disc brake conversion kit a while ago, and the kit requires the steering arms to be machined a bit for clearance, so while I was there I gave the guy the steering arms so he could machine them.
Fast forward to last Friday, I took the day off from work and went back to the machine shop to pick up my steering arms and my new timing set. I also went and picked up my rebuilt rearend on the same day, and then, because of Labor Day, I had three days to put everything together. Visions of a fully assembled suspension danced in my head.
Instead, I ended up spending three days painting stuff. I wanted to paint the steering arms, and I wanted to paint my spindles, and I had to cut my aftermarket lower control arms a bit to clear my steering arms on my aftermarket spindles, so I painted the exposed metal where I cut the lower control arms. It's a special paint called POR-15. "POR" stands for "Paint Over Rust." It is supposed to neutralize surface rust, and form a durable coat of paint to prevent future rust. But they say to apply at least two coats and wait two hours between coats. So if I do three coats, it takes four hours, which makes it a time consuming process.
I also worked on the frame a little bit. The car seems to have been in a wreck on its right front corner some time in its past, and the bumper bracket mounting holes on that right front side of the frame were all bent out of shape.
The left side looks like this:
The right side looked like this:
My best idea for how to fix it was just to make a steel plate sandwich that I could assemble around the frame, and flatten the frame wall by torqueing the sandwich together.
So first I went to the home improvement store and I bought a piece of steel, 3/16" thick, and four inches wide.
Then I cut out a cardboard template of a shape that would fit on the inside of the frame rail:
Then I traced the template on to my piece of steel, and I cut off that shape using an angle grinder and a cutoff wheel:
Then I held the inboard piece in place and marked the centers of the deformity on the bolt holes. I center-punched the marks to get ready for drilling:
I drilled one piece, used those holes to mark centers for the holes on the other piece, then drilled that piece:
I took some Grade 8 hardware and assembled the two pieces of steel on either side of the deformed bolt holes. I forgot to get pictures of that, but I think you can probably imagine. I torqued the bolts down as tight as I could, and then I hit them with a cordless impact wrench, too. By the time I was done with that, the plates had drawn the frame pretty flat, but the bolts seemed to have galled, so I cut the heads off the bolts to get the sandwich apart. At that point, I had this:
That was pretty good, but I thought it could be a little better, so I just took a hammer and started pounding down any high spots that were left. By the time I was done with that, I had knocked off some of the powder coat, but the frame was pretty flat, at least:
The next step was to paint over the area, to cover where I'd knocked off the powder coat. I used more POR-15, which I had in a semi-gloss black, so it doesn't quite match the flat black powder coat. Good thing my priority is functionality over appearance:
From a little bit different angle:
I also did get around to measuring for my cam button. I didn't have an old button to use as a base, so I bolted the cam gear on to the cam, and then I packed some aluminum foil into the cam button hole, to form a base. Then I stuck the clay on top of the aluminum foil base. Then I bolted on the timing cover over the clay, but when I went to remove the timing cover, the clay wanted to stick to it. So, I got another piece of aluminum foil, flattened it, and stuck it to the timing cover side of the clay. Then I had a clay sandwich on aluminum foil:
That arrangement seems to work pretty well. I've gone through the assembly-and-disassembly process several times over the course of a few days, and I feel pretty good now about the measurements I got.
While bolting up some of the front suspension stuff, I found some other crash damage on the frame, which I'm going to attempt to repair, as well. I am supposed to get a delivery of some parts today or tomorrow, at which time I'll be able to put the rear end up under the back of the car and get the rear suspension put together. That will be exciting, as I think it will be the first time that I start to feel like things are actually going back together. On the other hand, that's not the first time I've thought that, so I might just discover more problems, instead, but ... we'll see....
No comments:
Post a Comment