enough suspense

It's late December, the weather is getting colder, the year is drawing to an end.  It's a time to look back in review, and to look ahead in anticipation.  At the end of last year, I'd just finished assembling the engine, and mounted it on the chassis (for the first time, at least), and had also started assembling the front suspension.  It's a year later now, and it feels in many ways like very little has gotten done, but actually I suppose there has been some significant progress.  In fact, in October it was looking like the Chicago Cubs had ceased to be "the Chicago Cubs" and had instead become an actual baseball team comprised of baseball players, which just happened to be called "the Chicago Cubs."  What does that have to do with Matilda?  Well, when they knocked the St. Louis Cardinals (who looked almost as if they had ceased to be "the St. Louis Cardinals" and had instead become merely a baseball team comprised of baseball players) out of the playoffs in five games, it appeared that the Cubs were on a trajectory that would end with an inevitable World Series Championship.  And considering that the Cubs had not won a World Series since 1908, it seemed like it would be very embarrassing if they were able to win one before I could get my chassis back to the body shop.  I decided, then, in October, that even though there was one more thing that I could do before sending the chassis back to the body shop, I would do better to just call it "close enough" and get on with it.  So, I called up the body shop and told the owner that I was ready to bring him a chassis.  He told me he didn't have a place to put the chassis at the moment and suggested that I wait until he had some floor space clear out in his shop.  So, I decided I would have to settle for just having the chassis ready to go back to the body shop before the Cubs won the World Series.  But the point is, the chassis is ready now.  And, as a footnote, the Cubs were (much to my shock and amazement) swept out of the NLCS by the New York Mets, so I very much hope at this point that the chassis will still make it back to the body shop before the Cubs win a World Series.

Anyway, as I'd mentioned in the post about the oil pan mod, I had started assembling the front suspension a while ago.  I had thought that when I had the engine and transmission on the frame it would be enough weight to allow me to compress the front suspension springs, but it turned out it wasn't.  I guess I hadn't thought as far as the rear suspension springs, but of course there wasn't enough weight back there, either.  I'd like to be able to claim that I thought of the solution myself, but in fact my first attempt at a solution only made things worse.  I tried using a couple ratchet straps to help compress the springs in combination with the jack.  This did allow me to compress the spring, but trying to release the ratchet straps once they have that massive spring compressed is difficult to control at best, and dangerous at worst.  In fact, when I first did the front passenger side, I hadn't thought it through properly and when I released the ratchet strap the upper control arm slammed down onto its bump stop.  At the time I thought I smelled something like an electrical fire, but that didn't make any sense, and the smell went away in a minute, so I didn't think anything more of it.  Well, a couple days later I found a chunk of rubber on the floor and realized that the smell had been the smell of the rubber bump stop exploding from the impact with the frame.  So, that meant I would need to disassemble that side again to replace the bump stop.  I decided I needed a better plan.

YouTube to the rescue!  I found a video (can't find it now, unfortunately, or I'd link it) where a guy showed how to use ratchet straps to solve the problem, but he was running them over the frame and under the jack, instead of just strapping the two control arms together like I'd tried to do.  This allows you to use the jack to control how you release the spring compression.  I criss-crossed two ratchet straps over the frame, and crossed them again under the jack:

This allows you to use the jack to release the load safely and properly.  Be careful to make sure you don't pinch anything under the ratchet strap, though, such as the brake line that I ran the ratchet strap under while doing the rear suspension:

So, that is basically how the suspension went together, but it all came apart and went back together a couple times.  The rear had to come apart when I found the front seal leaking on the rear end, as described in my last post, and the front had to come apart when I went to grease the ball joints and found that two of the dust boots were torn on the ball joints.  I had probably fouled those up during one of the disassemblies/reassemblies.  Nobody seems to sell stock rubber boots loose, they just come with new ball joints, so I ended up ordering some polyurethane boots through Summit.

Anyway, you can see that the suspension is together, and the hubs are sporting some shiny new disc brake hardware.  I got a disc brake conversion kit from CPP.  Front and rear sway bars are from Hotchkis.  Control arms and springs are from Global West.  I try to get everything I can from the same supplier, in hopes that they've done some engineering to make it all work together.  But Global West didn't offer a rear sway bar, so I got the sway bars from Hotchkis.

One thing that was frustrating about the rear suspension, and another good reason to try to get everything from one source, was that there was an interference between the Global West mounting brackets for the upper rear control arms, and the mounting hardware for the Hotchkis rear sway bar.  The Global West brackets each offer two mounting holes, one in the stock location and a lower one.  The lower hole is intended to provide "anti-squat" geometry.  This was something I didn't know about until I got the Global West hardware, but it's kind of interesting.  As a car accelerates, the weight of the body shifts towards the rear of the car and the back end of the car "squats" on the rear suspension.  This affects balance and weight distribution.  Anti-squat geometry counteracts this effect by altering the angle of the rear upper control arm.

The diagram below represents a side view of a wheel (in black) on a car being accelerated towards the left side of the drawing.  The black arrow shows the direction the tire is being rotated.  The blue lines represent a sideview cross section of the rearend housing.  The reaction force of the rotation on the rear wheel attempts to turn the rearend housing in the opposite direction (blue arrow).  The blue horizontal rectangle at the top of the diagram represents a sideview of the rear upper control arm.  The rear upper control arm stops the rearend housing from rotating in the direction of the blue arrow, which puts the upper control arm in tension (orange arrow).  There is also a lower control arm, which runs parallel to the upper control arm and attaches to the bottom of the rearend housing, but I left it off of this diagram because it was already too cluttered.

So the bottom line is, when the car accelerates, the rear upper control arm is in tension.  Anti-squat geometry moves the forward mounting point of that rear upper control arm down, so that the arm is at an angle to the ground, as shown below.  Now it is still in tension, but because it is at an angle, that tensile force now has a horizontal component, and a vertical component (shown with orange arrows below), whereas it previously only had a horizontal component.  So the horizontal component stops the rearend housing from rotating, just like in the old arrangement, but the vertical component now pulls up on the point where it is mounted to the frame, essentially pulling the back end of the car up by its bootstraps, fighting the normal reaction to "squat."  Kind of neat.

Well, the problem was that the mounting hardware for the Hotchkis sway bar was designed to clear the stock upper rear control arm, as it is mounted in the stock position, but it is not designed to clear the Global West upper rear control arm as it is mounted in the Global West anti-squat position.  This was frustrating to me, because I wanted this anti-squat deal to work, so I spent a whole bunch of time trying to figure out how to make it all go together.

To make a long story short, in the end I decided to mount the rear upper control arms in their stock geometry, and give up the anti-squat feature.  The more I studied up on anti-squat, the less it sounded like something I needed.  It sounds like the most interesting application of it is in circle track cars with three-link rear suspension.  The three link suspension has two rear lower control arms, but only one rear upper control arm.  That arm can be shifted off center so that the anti-squat effect also provides an anti-roll effect.  For that to work, you'd have to be racing on an oval so that you always know you're going to be turning the same direction.  I have a parallel four-link rear suspension with a panhard bar, and I don't plan to always turn the same direction, so I decided that I would live without anti-squat.  For now, at least.  If I decide in the future that I really need it, all the hardware is there and I can always try to make it work some other way.

So, the suspension is mounted.

Needs wheels.  I ordered some plain steel rims from Summit, and tires.  I looked at Firestone, which supplied tires to NASCAR teams in the '60s, and I looked at Goodyear, which supplies tires to NASCAR teams now, but neither one of them had a tire in the size I was looking for.  As it turned out, though, Hoosier had just started offering street tires less than a year before I started looking for tires.  They had the size I wanted, and they're super cool.  Hoosier's always been just a race tire manufacturer, mostly to "grassroots" level racers.  They tried to crack into big time NASCAR for a year or two in the '90s, but Goodyear ended up beating them out.  Anyway, I ordered some Hoosiers.

I wanted to get the rims powdercoated, and I needed to get the tires mounted and balanced.  I didn't have a pickup truck yet at that point, but I did have a Corvair with no back seat...

Turns out you can fit five steel rims and five tires (planning for a spare in the trunk) in the back of a 1966 Corvair with no back seat.

There were a couple hang ups with getting the tires mounted and balanced, but in the end I got them back, and I used a Dupli-Color tire paint pen to color in the lettering so it would be white.

Now that looks cool.

World's coolest go-kart.

You may notice that by this time I had made some block-off plates for the open holes on the engine.  I put masking tape over the holes, then cut cardboard to size and poked holes in each piece of cardboard to bolt it in place.  Hopefully that will keep the tape from peeling up.

You might also notice in the earlier pictures that there is a shift linkage on the transmission.  I had been pretty intimidated by the thought of installing this shift linkage, because I'd never done it before and I really had no idea what went where.  Well, YouTube to the rescue again, I found a video that was made by the guy I bought my transmission from, and he showed how to install a Hurst shifter on a Muncie 4-speed.  It's about 45 minutes long, but by the time I'd watched it all the way through, I no longer felt intimidated.

Everybody says the Hurst shifter is the best for the Muncie, but there is no Hurst shifter available specifically for the 1965 Impala anymore, so I got a universal Hurst shifter.  It all went together smoothly, though, just like the video showed.

The only problem was that the universal shifter does not provide a place to connect a linkage for the switch that turns on the reverse lights when the transmission is in reverse.  My first thought was to just drill a hole in the reverse arm from the universal kit, but when I started to look into that, I realized that the hole was going to have to go in an area where there was already another hole, or a clip, or some other interference.  My next idea was to try ordering some of the stock 1965 reverse linkage parts off of EBay, but they were not compatible with the universal linkage.  If you watched the video, then you saw the adapter clips that go over the arm mounting studs.  I ended up using this piece to solve my problem.  The stock clip is shown at top in the photo below, looking vaguely reminiscent of a Batman logo:

The yellow piece in the middle of the photo is a paper template I made, for a custom piece that would do the job of the adapter clip, but also provide an extension that could take a hole to mount a linkage to the reverse light switch.  The black piece at the bottom is the piece that I made out of steel to do that job.  I also gave it a little "shadetree heat treat," getting it red hot with a Bernz-O-Matic torch and then quenching it in water.

Below are pictures showing the assembly put together, first with the transmission in neutral, and then in reverse.

You can see that in reverse the reverse arm moves back, and it pulls the reverse light switch arm back as well, switching on the reverse lights.  I got the switch from Year One (I think), and I got the switch mounting bracket off EBay.  For the linkage between the two arms, I used threaded buttons and clips that are used in the Corvair throttle linkage, and I ordered those from Clark's Corvair Parts.  I ordered the rod they're threaded onto from McMaster-Carr.  I bent that so it would curve up over the switch mounting bracket.  Because the buttons thread onto the rod, you can adjust its effective length by changing how far they are threaded on.  The arrangement seems to work OK, as verified with a multimeter.

For now I have a black shift knob on the shifter as a placeholder, but I had to check out how it would look with this cool white knob with 4-speed pattern.

So that's pretty much the point I'd gotten to by the time I called the body shop to let him know I was ready to bring him the chassis.  When he said he wasn't ready for it just now, I decided to start trying to figure out how to mount all my engine accessories (alternator, water pump, power steering pump).  The problem is that I took this engine out of my 1972 Monte Carlo, which used Chevrolet's "long" water pump, so all the brackets I had were made to go with the long water pump.  The 1965 Impala used the "short" water pump, so those brackets won't work with it.  Below is a photo showing the old Monte Carlo pump (right) and the new Impala pump (left), and you can see that the "long" pump sits a little higher off the ground.

I would have just used the Monte Carlo arrangement, but I wasn't sure if the long water pump would fit behind the radiator in the '65 Impala.  Also, the more I looked at 1965 Impala stuff, the more I decided I just liked the look of the '65 accessory arrangement, and I wanted mine to look like that.

As it turns out, it's probably a lot easier to mess with all that accessory stuff without the body around the engine, so it probably works out better that the body shop wasn't ready for the chassis just now.  Details on the accessory drive, etc., still to come....

shop truck

There have been many times when I haven't updated this blog because I was getting things done on Matilda, but I was too lazy (or too busy, but most likely too lazy) to write an update.  These past few months, however, I simply haven't been getting anything done on Matilda.  I had gotten to a point where I thought that I was almost ready to send the chassis back to the body shop, and I figured I'd catch up on the blog once the chassis was out of my garage.  But, one of the last things I did before I thought I was going to be ready was to put oil in the rear end.  A couple days after I'd done that, I noticed a puddle on the floor under the rear end, and then I saw this:

That is a photo of the front of the differential, with the front of the car towards the right side of the photo, and the rear of the car towards the left.  The gold-colored piece in the middle of the photo is the pinion seal.  At the top of the seal, you can see a gap between the seal lip and the housing.  And at the bottom, you can see that gap is filled by differential oil, which is slowly leaking onto the garage floor.

I had taken the rear end to a local shop to be rebuilt, because you need a press to put the rear end together, and even then there is some guess-and-check that might require disassembly and reassembly and so on, requiring a press each time.  I don't have a press, and I also thought it would save some time if I had a shop rebuild the rear end while I rebuilt the engine, so I took it to a shop.

Having paid someone to do the job and then finding it leaking was aggravating, and I decided it was going back to that shop for them to fix it.  I'd originally borrowed a friend's truck to take the rear end to the shop and to pick it up, but by the time I found the leak, that truck was "out of commission," awaiting driveshaft U-joint replacement.

I had, however, bought a truck in January.  I've been feeling for a while now that the Corvair was on its last legs, and it doesn't seem to respond to investments of time, effort and money, so I started looking for a replacement.  A truck seemed like a handy thing to have, so I started searching Craigslist.

I looked at a lot of different Chevy trucks, but ended up settling on the mid-'60s Chevy C10s, and for whatever reason I thought I'd like to have a straight six.  I test drove a '64 that had a new clutch in it, and the clutch pedal was at a very awkward angle, which was compounded by an awkward bucket seat that the owner had installed.  When I got out of the truck, I about fell on my face just because my leg felt so weak from working that heavy clutch at that uncomfortable angle.  When I got in the Corvair and pushed in the clutch, I thought the clutch cable had broken, just because it went to the floor so easily after working the heavy clutch in the truck.  It took several miles to get used to it again.  At that point I thought maybe I'd look for a truck with an automatic transmission, just because I know the Impala will have a manual transmission, and I thought maybe I didn't want more than one clutch pedal feel to keep track of.  But, the automatic transmission is a nice thing to have for a variety of other reasons, too.

Anyway, it seems that the overwhelming majority of (if not all) straight sixes came with manual transmissions from the factory, so when I saw a 1965 C10 with an automatic, it got my attention.  Turned out that a previous owner had replaced the original manual three-speed with a TH350 automatic.  Someone had also installed a nice front disc brake conversion kit, another plus.  The truck needed headlights and taillights and some other items, but seemed to drive around the block OK.  For better or for worse, we struck a deal.

I named her "Clementine."

When I bought her, I thought she just needed "a few small things" to put her on the road, and I thought I'd be driving it in February.  Well, it was May when I found the leak from the differential, and Clementine was still not on the road.  I had been working on her pretty steadily, but the more I got into it, the more things I discovered she needed.

For starters, I tried to drive her home, with my buddy following me closely in another car, since the truck had no taillights, but just as I was about to get on the interstate, the truck started to sputter a bit.  I quickly changed tack and started moving from the left lane over to the right lane.  Also known as ... "the breakdown lane."  I ended up in the parking lot of a Harley-Davidson dealership, and the truck was idling fine there.  It drove around the parking lot fine.  But, as soon as I started to drive out of the lot and back on to the road, it started to sputter again.  I pulled into a McDonald's parking lot, and wound my way back to the lot behind the Harley dealership.

We noticed a bunch of rust particles in the inline fuel filter, and our best guess was that fuel tank must be full of rust, and had plugged the filter.  We went to the parts store, picked up another filter, and hoped that would be enough to get the truck home.  But, Clementine still didn't want to go.  So, I decided to leave the truck over night at the Harley dealership, and come back in the morning to try again.  The next day I drained everything out of the gas tank, and replaced the inline filter again.  My buddy came out to try and help again, and play chase car, and we tried to make the drive to my house after putting in clean gas.  This time we made it maybe another mile up the road before the truck started to sputter again.

We pulled into a movie theater lot, and again the truck idled OK, but didn't want to go at all with any kind of significant acceleration or load.  We tried playing with the timing, but without any significant effect.  Finally I decided to just get the truck towed to my house.

When I bought the truck, a lot of people told me that I should finish one project before I start another.  I'll file that under "Great Advice I'll Give, Not Take," as they say on the editor's page of Hot Rod Magazine.  It's an idea that makes sense, but the two projects (Clementine and Matilda) actually dovetailed pretty nicely, to where I could work on one while I was waiting on parts for the other, and vice versa.

The very first thing I did was to put a couple headlights in, just to make it look a little nicer for the neighbors.

I also knew now that I was going to rebuild the entire fuel system, and that I had a lot of wiring to do, as there were no wires running to the taillights, and the wiring to the headlights didn't seem to work.  As I got into the wiring, I decided that the job looked simple enough that I would just re-wire the entire truck.  The distributor in the truck looked to be an HEI piece out of a junkyard.  It didn't look good to me, in terms of aesthetics, and also in terms of the wiring looking old and cracked, and the whole thing looking very much like it came out of a junkyard.  It also had a large cap that interfered with access to the number one spark plug.  For all these reasons, I decided to replace it with a Pertronix distributor that looks stock, but comes with a transistorized ignition instead of points.

I started the fuel system rebuild by replacing the tank.  The gas that came out of the tank looked like a cloudy brown cider, and the tank had chunks of rust rattling around in it.  That was somewhat encouraging, in terms of feeling like I was on the right track.  I also bent up all new hard lines to run from the tank to the carburetor, and got a rebuilt fuel pump to replace the unit on the engine.

Of course, I also rebuilt the carburetor.  The carb is an interesting little one-barrel Rochester B.  I bought a rebuild kit, but then I found that a previous rebuilder had screwed up a couple parts that weren't included in the kit.  I got the kit from Carburetors Unlimited, and the other parts I needed from Mike's Carburetor Parts.

The fuel inlet to the carburetor looked like this:

All that brown stuff on the "floor" of the fuel inlet there is a pile of rust particles that made it through the filters and screen and settled out in the carburetor.  Not a good thing, and ugly to look at, but encouraging in terms of telling me that I've found the problem and I'm on the right track to fix it.

This picture shows the engine bay as it looked when I got the truck:

The carburetor is removed there, but you can see that there is a lot of rubber hose running around the engine for fuel lines, vacuum lines, PCV lines, etc.  As long as I was running hard lines for the fuel system, I decided to replace as many of those rubber hoses as possible with hard lines.

Here is a photo of the engine bay now:

You can see the difference in the two distributors there, and you can see that some of the wiring over towards the left side of the photo has been cleaned up a bit.  You can also see that I painted the "Chevrolet" script on the rocker cover.  I thought that would probably be important, uh ... in order to pass the Texas state inspection, let's say.

I had started out ordering parts from LMC, because a lot of people had told me that they were a good source for old truck parts.  My experience with them was not great, though.  I ordered one part from them that was backordered.  Eventually I called to ask when I might expect to see it.  The person on the phone said they didn't know.  I asked if they could find someone who did know, they said no, nobody knew.  I asked if they could find out and get back to me, they said no, but if a certain amount of time went by and they still hadn't received it, they would let me know and check if I wanted to cancel the order.  I asked what the "certain amount of time" was, they said they didn't know.  Awesome.  Another issue was that when I started re-wiring the truck, there were a lot of wiring harnesses that LMC didn't even offer, let alone stock.  I was going to try to rebuild the harnesses I had, but this was looking like a major undertaking, so I tried one more internet search for old C10 wiring harnesses, and I somehow stumbled on to Classic Parts of America.  They had every harness I needed, including ones that LMC had backordered, and ones that LMC didn't even offer.  What's more, Classic Parts had them all in stock, and the ones that were backordered at LMC were half the price at Classic Parts.  Classic Parts only does parts for Chevys and GMCs, so I think that's why they are able to stock more stuff than LMC does, but either way, I was sold.  Anything I needed, I ordered everything I could from Classic Parts for the rest of the project.  There was also one incident, while I was trying to piece together a working parking brake arrangement, where I had ordered the rear parking brake cables from LMC, and I really didn't like the design of the parts.  There was a groove in the part that was supposed to take a retainer clip, but the groove had a rounded cross section to it, so that as you pulled on the cable it would just pop the clip out of the groove and come apart.  I had ordered 1965-style cables originally, but eventually decided the 1966 cables might work better for my arrangement, so I ordered those from Classic Parts.  The retainer clip grooves on those had square cross sections, so the clips actually stayed in place and did their job.  If other people have had good luck with LMC, that's good for them, but I strongly recommend Classic Parts of America, based on my experience.

So anyway ...

That's a photo of a spider which had built a web from the rear axle housing to the tire on the truck.  Maybe an indication that the project was dragging on a bit.  This might have been taken around the time that I found the leak on the Impala rear end.  At this point I was pretty much out of things to do on the Impala, and started focusing just on Clementine, to get her running so I could take the rear end to get repaired.

I left the truck in front of the house while I did the fuel system and the wiring.  I also put a new wood bed in (the truck had some junk wood held in place with wood screws when I got it), and I put carpet in the cab, new rubber seals around the doors, installed rearview mirrors in the cab and on the driver's door, and a variety of other items.  I also went through the suspension and replaced all four springs.  That was partly because the truck had a bit of a "lean" to it, and partly because it had been lowered to the point where the left front tire would rub the wheel well when turning to the right.  So I put four new springs under it, which lifted it up a little bit, and then I ended up mixing and matching the rear springs I had to get rid of the lean.  Not sure if the frame is twisted, or what, but it sits level now, at least.

When I was done with all that, I finally put gas in the tank and started the truck up again.  It drove around the neighborhood pretty well, but once it was up to temperature, I remembered one other symptom it had shown on the original attempts to drive it home:  it sounded like the fuel was boiling in the carburetor.

Whenever the engine was shut off after being brought up to operating temperature, there would be a bubbling sound from around the base of the carburetor.  I couldn't think of anything else it might be, so I thought maybe the fuel was boiling in the carburetor.  The exhaust manifold has an integrated heat riser valve which is supposed to divert exhaust gas to the bottom of the intake manifold when the engine is cold, which will heat the carb and help vaporize the fuel until the engine warms up.  That valve was frozen in one position, and I thought it might be allowing the exhaust to heat the carburetor to the point of boiling the fuel.  The valve was absolutely locked up and I couldn't get it to move, so I decided to replace the exhaust manifold with a new one, with a working valve.

I moved the truck into the garage, now that it was drivable, and started removing the intake and exhaust manifolds.  I noticed, though, a small puddle of water on the garage floor, under the engine, and once the manifolds were off, I realized that one of the freeze plugs in the side of the head was leaking.  In the photo below, you can see a brown rust streak running down the side of the engine from that freeze plug (the freeze plug itself is already removed in the photo):

The gasket for the intake and exhaust manifolds covers up that freeze plug, which is why I couldn't see the leak prior to disassembly, but I believe now that the bubbling sound was actually the sound of coolant bubbling out of the pinhole leaks in that freeze plug.  So, I replaced all three plugs in the side of the head, the three plugs down the side of the block, and the exhaust manifold, and put everything back together.

Also while it was in the garage, a buddy helped me replace the windshield, which was cracked.  This was not easy, but it's very satisfying to have a nice, new, clear and crack-free windshield in the truck.

At this point, the truck was running and driving pretty good, and I took it to get an alignment.  But then I discovered that the brake pedal was not fully returning.  It would hang up just a little bit short of fully returned, and it would actually hold pressure on the brakes, so that they were dragging a little bit.  So, I started tearing into the brake system trying to figure out what the issue was.  I had read where one person said this could be due to mixing DOT 3 brake fluid with DOT 5.  I read in another place where someone said it could be due to mixing conventional brake fluid with synthetic.  I read in another place where someone said it could be due to a bad vacuum booster.  I read in another place where someone said it could be due to a missing/weak pedal return spring.  Or booster return spring.  Or master cylinder return spring.  Etc.  I didn't really find anything, though, that sounded like it made sense and the person knew what they were talking about.  All the return springs seemed to be present and functional.  I had no idea what kind of brake fluid was in the system, but I had topped it off with conventional DOT 3, so it was possible I'd mixed something.  Not sure that theory makes sense to me, though.

Anyway, I started to tear into the system, looking for possible causes.  I never found a smoking gun, but I found a couple places where linkages might be binding, so I clearanced those areas, and I bled the brakes enough to purge the system of whatever brake fluid was in there.  I ended up using synthetic DOT 3, because it seems to be a lot easier to find than conventional, for some reason.  Or at least it was at the stores I went to.  In the end, when it was all back together, the pedal hung up one more time, but I decided to just drive it a while and see what happened, and it hasn't bothered since.

The last major hurdle had to do with some "customization" that a previous owner had started.  Someone had put a fill panel in place of the rear bumper, with cutouts to mount late model Cadillac taillights sideways, and then they had also welded the tailgate shut.  I had cut out the fill panel and mounted a reproduction bumper while the truck was in front of the house, but I still needed to cut out the welded tailgate.

I pulled the truck back around in front of the house, so that I wouldn't fill the garage with bondo dust, and I cut the tailgate out with an angle grinder.  It only took a couple hours at a casual pace, which was a lot better than I was worried it might be.  I pulled the truck back into the garage then and mounted the new reproduction tailgate.  For some reason, I really thought I'd like the look of a black tailgate on a white truck, so when the reproduction tailgate showed up black, that was perfect.

The next problem was that it looked like the guy who did the customizing had cut off the bolts for the tailgate chains and welded/bondo'd over them.  I ended up just measuring out about where they should be (and you could kind of barely see their outlines a little bit, too) and then drilling and tapping right through the endcaps of the bed.  That worked out pretty well.

The "CHEVROLET" lettering is actually vinyl stickers.  The tailgate is stamped with those letters in it and the lettering is normally painted, but Classic Parts of America had those vinyl letters for seven dollars.  Seven dollars sounded like a bargain for avoiding the hassle of masking and painting the letters, and they look great, too.  Everyone is surprised when they find out that they're decals.

So, once all that was done, I took the truck to get it inspected, got it registered on a Friday, and loaded Matilda's rear end on Sunday night to take it to the differential shop on Monday morning.  Using the engine hoist to load the rear end into the truck is a lot of fun, it really makes you feel like you're doing some work.

In the photo below, you can see a bit of the new wood bed:

I took the rear end in to the shop on Monday morning, and they fixed the leak while I waited.  I think the main problem was that the seal that was in there was not installed to the right depth, it was hanging out a bit.  That problem was compounded by a few gouges in the bottom of the bore around the pinion, where the seal was supposed to seal.  The guy put some RTV in the bore to help seal those gouges.  The rear end is now back up under Matilda, full of oil, and does not appear to be leaking.  I should be very close to being ready to send the chassis back to the body shop.

Clementine is still running well so far, and has become my daily driver to work.

Paperwork

While I was working in China, I was very fortunate to work with a guy who was easily one of the top three (possibly top one?) smartest people I've ever met.  "Smart" might not be doing him justice, "clever" might say it better.  He was a man who could walk into any room in the world, encounter any sort of mechanical or technical problem, and diagnose and correct it efficiently, without assistance.  This was my experience with him, anyway.  I wish I could have picked up more technical knowledge from him in the time we worked together, but one thing I'll always remember was his talent for dealing with people.

Perhaps, however, I shouldn't remember it, as he actually seemed to rub a lot of people the wrong way.  I could never understand why that was, though, myself.  He is blunt, and does not shy away from confrontation.  If your idea is bullshit, he will say, "That's bullshit."  But, he will throw his arm around your shoulders, smile, and say, "That's bullshit," in a tone that implies, "Look, I know you're smarter than that, now let's get serious and figure this out together."  Still, I guess a lot of people just hear, "That's bullshit."

Watching him spar with the head of the Chinese engine engineering group was daily entertainment for me.  I liked each of them personally, though they drove each other nuts, and often on purpose, from the looks of it.  We had a brief meeting every morning to discuss the status of ongoing activities and determine priorities for the day.  At one of these meetings, the Chinese engineer brought up a recently discovered emergency with high priority.  My colleague said he was aware of it, and outlined the plan for addressing it.

The Chinese engineer started to emphasize how important it was that all the proper paperwork and documentation be completed to document all the necessary changes for the fix.  My colleague waved his hand dismissively and said, "Look ... when you take me to dinner and the food is very spicy ...."  He laid a hand on his stomach and grimaced, implying an intestinal issue.  The Chinese engineer looked confused.

"I get back to the hotel...," my colleague continued.  "...and the first thing I do is fix the problem...."  Here he performed one of the most professional pantomimed bowel movements to which I have ever been witness.  "...And then I do the paperwork," he finished, unrolling toilet paper from an invisible roll in the air next to him.  The Chinese engineer smiled and nodded his understanding.  Honestly, I think he still wasn't happy about the deferment of the paperwork, but simply had to concede the point in recognition of the performance.

A valuable lesson for us all.  And yet, sometimes the paperwork turns out to be essential to the fix itself.  The following is a story about one of those times.

Because I'm using a manual transmission, I needed to get a pilot bearing.  The pilot bearing is pressed into the end of the engine crankshaft, and it supports the front end of the input shaft to the transmission.  I mentioned in an earlier post my irrational and unnecessary penchant for rollers and roller bearings, so when it came time to select a pilot bearing, naturally I decided on a roller bearing.  And that's when the trouble started.

When you assemble the clutch onto the flywheel, there is a plastic alignment tool which is supposed to help you to center the friction disc in the clutch.  Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of play in that tool, and it is by no means foolproof.  You still have to be very careful to try to make sure the friction disc is centered.

The first time I put it all together, I thought I had it all centered up, and put the transmission in place.  The trans didn't want to slide all the way in, it was a tight fit.  I decided to use the mounting bolts to draw it up.  I was careful to draw them all down evenly, and slowly, and carefully.  I didn't think I was applying much torque.  Eventually there was a kind of a "pop," and from there I was able to draw it up relatively easily.  I thought the "pop" was the friction disc popping to center between the flywheel and the pressure plate.

I had to take the engine and trans off of the frame a couple times, and reassemble the clutch each time I put them back on.  Each time there was this pop, which I thought was the friction disc popping to center.  Finally, I thought I was putting it all together for the last time.  I put the alignment tool in place, torqued up the clutch assembly, and then removed the alignment tool.  Stuck to the end of the alignment tool with a little grease was a little piece of metal.  I recognized it as a broken piece of a needle roller.  Dammit.

I came to realize that what had been happening was that the front edge of the transmission input shaft had been hanging up on the edges of the needle rollers because it wasn't centered, and as I tried to draw the transmission up with the mounting bolts, it would eventually apply enough force to break the rollers out the backside of the bearing cage and body.

I discovered all this around the same time when I decided I'd better determine my optimal pushrod length, so at least I wasn't only waiting on the pilot bearing.  But the broken roller bearing would have to come out.  I wasn't looking forward to this, because I'd read the procedure for removing a pilot bearing, and I remembered thinking, "I hope I never have to do that, because it sounds like it wouldn't work."

The typical procedure is to pack the cavity behind the pilot bearing with grease, and then insert a bolt or other round object which fits the inner diameter of the pilot bearing very tightly and hit that object with a hammer.  The force will try to compress the grease, which won't compress, and which will therefore drive the pilot bearing out from the backside.  The main thing I was skeptical about was whether or not I'd ever find a round object that would fit the bearing's inner diameter tightly enough to not just push all the grease out between the bearing and the round object.

I started looking around on YouTube, to see how people were doing this.  I found that not everyone uses grease.  In fact, my favorite video was one that used bread.  I didn't have any bread in the house, though, so I fell back on my second favorite method, which was toilet paper.  You get the paper wet, pack it into the cavity in the crankshaft, and then drive it in with a hammer, just like you would the grease.  I ended up using the plastic alignment tool, because it was made to fit the bearing tightly.  I used a plastic deadblow hammer, so as not to destroy the alignment tool.  Once I had this method worked out, it was really kind of amazing how easily the bearing came out.

But wait ... as with every stupid, stumbling step of this project ... there's more.  I drove a new bearing in, using a hammer and socket.  I remounted the clutch and transmission (being very careful to align it just right this time, of course).  I got that all back together, and then I thought, "Hmm ... seems like I had read somewhere that you're supposed to put a little grease on that roller bearing.  I think I did that the first time.  I didn't do it this time.  I wonder if that's going to have to all come apart again."  I started looking on the internet to see if I could find whatever directions I'd found the first time.

Instead, all I could find were things saying not to do pretty much everything I'd done.  Don't use a roller bearing unless the original equipment used a roller bearing.  If you do use a roller bearing, don't drive it in with a socket and hammer.  If you do use a roller bearing, pack it with a lot of grease before you install it.  Dammit.

So, back to the toilet paper trick, and another roller bearing was removed.  I would now need to find a pilot bushing, instead.  The same guys who said all the things to not do with a roller bearing also all favored a specific bronze bushing.  They said it was NAPA part number BK 6151161.  This was supposed to be an all-bronze, "heavy duty" bushing.  However, NAPA doesn't seem to offer that part number anymore.  So, I tried searching the part number through O'Reilly's website.  It didn't come up, so I dropped the "BK" and just searched the number.  That returned O'Reilly's number PB656HD, which looked and sounded like the right thing.  I was placing an order to Summit anyway, and I found they had a part with the same UPC code, which was 724956022137, so I ordered that.  I think it will be fine.

Summit allows customers to post reviews of their products.  One reviewer of this bushing commented something like, "Just don't beat it in with a hammer like some shadetree hick, and it'll work great."  Unfortunately, I just don't know any other way to beat it in with a hammer, so I went ahead and did it anyway.  I think it will be fine.

One case where the paperwork had to be done before the fix was complete.

supplemental coverage

Even with the entry that I just posted today, I am probably still at least two or three entries behind on this blog.  It takes at least a couple hours to write an entry of any considerable length, and I often just don't feel like sitting down and doing it.

However, in the interest of providing more information about what's going on, and in a format that will be incredibly easy for me to update, I have just set up an Instagram account which will allow me to quickly post photos.  Most of these will probably be related to the Matilda project, and will probably serve as "sneak peaks" at stuff that will be covered in future blog entries.  Some of it may just be stuff that I think it looks cool.  Maybe that will end up being most of it, actually, I don't know.  We'll see.

The good news is, you don't actually need an Instagram account to see the photos (...I think...).  You should be able to see them just by going to this URL:  http://www.instagram.com/golikehellmachine

OK, then what?

Warning:  this entry is pretty dry, bordering on technical.  I tried not to go into too much fundamental explanation, figuring that anyone who doesn't already have a pretty good handle on engine operation will probably not be interested, anyway.

OK, so, the oil pan was eventually painted and mounted, and then ... what?

Well, I put the engine back on the frame, and I was getting ready to bolt the bellhousing and transmission up when I remembered that I'd never checked pushrod length.  But, to check pushrod length, I'd need to be able to turn the engine, and my transmission came with all kinds of warnings about what not to do before it's been spun by the engine in neutral with oil in it, to the point where I decided I didn't even want to turn it by hand at this time, if I didn't have to.  And if it was bolted to the engine, then the engine would be turning the input shaft as I rotated the engine.  So, for the time being, I supported the motor plate (which forms the front face of the bellhousing) with a jackstand until I could finish checking pushrod length.

Next, all I had to do was check pushrod length.  I thought I remembered how to do that, but decided first I'd read up and make sure that what I thought I remembered was correct.  Boy, was that ever a mistake.

Once I started looking around online, things only became less and less clear.  As with most things online, check three message forums, get 37,462,954 different answers.  The method I thought I remembered was to check the travel of the rocker tip across the valve stem tip, and to center that travel on the valve stem tip.  The idea is that you don't want the rocker pushing on the valve stem tip off center, because that will cause the valve to rock in the valve guide, which will prematurely wear out the valve guide.  The thought is that if you don't set pushrod length correctly, the valvetrain will wear out much faster.  And if you do set it correctly, you'll have an invincible engine that runs forever and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever.  And ever.  And--in some cases--ever.  And I want that.  So I decided I'd better be very careful about getting my pushrod length correct.

You can check the travel by coloring the valve stem tip with a marker, then turning the engine by hand through two crank revolutions (one cam revolution), and then checking where the marker ink has been wiped off the valve stem tip.

But, if you're using hydraulic lifters, like I am, then you need to do something to keep the lifters from collapsing while you turn the engine.  If the lifters are allowed to collapse, then th rocker will not move through its full range of motion and you won't get an accurate representation of where the rocker tip travel is positioned on the valve stem tip.  So, one method is to use solid lifters just for checking pushrod length, and then install the hydraulic lifters.  Another method is to use "checking springs" in place of your valve springs.  Checking springs are very lightweight springs which you can compress by hand, and which will not collapse the hydraulic lifters ... as much as the valve springs would.

Here's a photo showing the standard valve springs (cylinder 8, the two springs on the left) and the checking springs (cylinder 6, the two springs on the right):

Before this project, I had two different styles of valve spring compressor.  One style can only be used with the cylinder head off of the engine.  It's shaped like a big "C," and it reaches around the cylinder head to push up on the head of the valve while it pushes down on the valve spring retainer on the other side of the head.  That wasn't an option here, as the heads are already on the engine.  I had another style which is made to grab the sides of the valve spring and pull up while it simultaneously pushes down on the valve spring retainer.  I thought that would work, but then realized that since these heads have double valve springs on each valve, an inner and an outer, it wasn't going to work because it couldn't grab the inner spring.  So, I ended up ordering a third style of valve spring compressor.  This one threads down on to the rocker stud and has a fork that presses down on the valve spring retainer.  I pulled the spark plug from whichever cylinder I was working on and stuffed a length of windshield washer hose into the cylinder to keep the valve from dropping into the cylinder.  The really nice thing about this tool is that the lever for compressing the valve spring will lock into position at full travel, so you can have both hands free for fishing the keepers out.

Anyway, here's a view of the tops of the cylinder 6 valve stem tips, with black stripes drawn on them with a Sharpie:

And here's the results of turning the engine through one complete cycle (two crank revolutions, one cam revolution), with the standard length pushrods:

These look pretty good, but the mark on the exhaust valve (left) looks like it's shifted a little bit down, toward the outboard side of the engine, and the mark on the intake valve (right) looks like it's shifted a little bit up, toward the inboard side of the engine.  This would indicate that the pushrod on the exhaust valve is a little long, and the pushrod on the intake valve is a little short.

The critical piece of equipment for checking pushrod length is a couple adjustable pushrods.  You can't run the engine with these, but you can use them to try different pushrod lengths while checking.  There are different styles, but the ones I got have one piece threaded into the other, and they are a certain specified length when screwed all the way in.  Then each turn that you unscrew them adds 0.050" to that length.  So you change the length and check the result, change the length and check the result, and repeat until it looks good, and then you count the turns back to minimum length, do a little math, and that's the length you need.

Here's a picture of the marks with both pushrods at a pretty good length: 

But wait ... we're not even CLOSE to finished.

Next a million things happened to complicate everything.

First off, in spite of the fact that Comp Cams states in a (pretty disappointing) video on YouTube that their checking springs are weak enough that they won't compress hydraulic lifters, it turns out that that is not true.  I eventually discovered that I was not reaching full valve lift because the lifters were still collapsing, even with the checking springs installed.  That means that all the stuff I did above was inaccurate.

But, like I said, there are several theories on what's the correct way to determine "optimal" valvetrain geometry.  The reason I discovered that I wasn't reaching full lift was because I wanted to try one of the alternate methods, which was to set pushrod length so that the rocker arm is at a 90-degree angle to the valve stem at half lift (or, an alternate theory says two-thirds lift, to shift the optimal geometry towards full lift, where spring forces are at maximum).  I will also mention now that another theory says that you want to minimize the width of the rocker's travel across the valve stem tip, regardless of where this puts the rocker on the valve stem tip.  If you think about it (and I did think about it ... waaaay more than it was probably worth), this "minimum width" theory should give the same result as the 90-degree-at-half-lift theory.  They are just two different ways of measuring the same result.

Anyway, to check where your rocker is at half lift, you have to know when you're at half lift.  To check when I was at half lift, I used a dial indicator.  The dial indicator showed, however, that I wasn't getting anywhere near full lift, which was how I realized that the checking springs were still strong enough to collapse the lifters.

Here is a photo of the engine set up with the dial indicator riding on the valve spring retainer for the cylinder 1 exhaust valve:

And here, for the record, is where the rocker travel ends up if I tried to minimize its width, and/or put the rocker at a 90-degree angle to the valve stem at half lift:

You can see that the mark is way off center, shifted to the outboard side of the engine, indicating a short pushrod (according to the other theory).  In fact, the pushrod was so short that the rocker was rubbing on the lash adjusting nut when the lifter was on the base circle.  That's the kind of thing that tells you ... "something's not right here."  Now, it's possible that by choosing a different rocker, or changing some other variable, I might have been able to shift that mark toward the center of the valve stem tip while still retaining a minimal width of travel and holding my 90-degrees-at-half-lift target.  But all these parts are supposed to be correct for this engine, and I didn't feel that it was likely that I should have to do all that.  I decided that it was more likely that these methods were incorrect, and that they were being championed by people who were either misinformed, misguided, or possibly familiar with this method from working on some other type of engine.

As I was questioning these other methods, I went back and very carefully reviewed Comp Cams' instructions for optimizing pushrod length.  Their instructions described the rocker arm moving from the inboard side of the valve stem tip towards the outboard side of the valve stem tip at full lift, and then back towards the inboard side.  If the rocker were at a 90-degree angle to the valve stem tip, with a minimized width of travel across the valve stem tip, then it would have to reach its outboard-most point of travel at half lift, moving back to its inboard-most point at full lift, then back to its outboard-most point, and back to its inboard-most point when the lifter was back on the base circle.  This is not what they described, so I threw out the 90-degree/minimum-travel theories and returned to the centered-travel theory.

As an aside, one of the people I'm working with from the client on my current project at work used to be involved in Ford's NASCAR program.  I asked him one day if he knew how the Ford NASCAR guys defined optimum valvetrain geometry.  He said that rocker tip travel was supposed to be centered on the valve stem tip, which confirmed the theories that I was favoring by this point.  I asked him, "That's how the Ford guys do it?"  He said, "I think so, yeah."  I faked a look of concern, and then I asked him, "Well, did you ever happen to find out how the Chevy guys do it?  You know, if I wanted to do it the right way?"  He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands and said, "Well, I could call somebody, if you really want to know...!!"  I said, "No, no, no, I wouldn't want you to interrupt them, they're doing important work."

Anyway, now I'd finally decided what method I was going to use, it was just a question of crunching through it.  Working through the cylinders, I put checking springs on each one, put a dial indicator on each valve, and turned the engine to where it stopped lifting the valve.  That should be the full lift position for the camshaft, and then I could just push the valve spring retainer down by hand until the valve reached full lift.  You can actually feel the spot where the lifter plunger spring is no longer helping you to open the valve, representing full lift.  By this method I could check the position of the rocker tip on the valve stem at full lift.

I found some small variations from cylinder to cylinder, but averaged them all out and ended up with measurements for intake and exhaust pushrods slightly shorter than the ones recommended by Comp.  This makes sense, as I believe the engine block has been decked, which would shift the cylinder head down and require slightly shorter pushrods.  So I sent the measurements to Comp and they sent me the corresponding pushrods, which are now in the engine.

All in all, I still can't really be sure if I "got it right."  Did I use the right method?  Like so many debates on the internet, nobody has hard facts to substantiate their argument for why their method is "right."  Did I get the measurements right?  I did my best, but can't be sure.  But I took all the information available, tried some things, tried to decide what made sense, made a decision on how to proceed, and then considered the result, to try to decide if it made sense.  I think it does.

All this deliberation probably added at least a month, maybe two, to the project.  Was it worth it?  Well ... probably not, really.  The more I considered all these ideas, the more I slowly came to feel that it probably doesn't really particularly matter.  I suspect that the importance placed on valvetrain geometry is probably a carryover from the days of stamped steel rockers.  The tip of a stamped steel rocker had to be carefully contoured so that its contact point with the valve stem tip would always be oriented to press straight down on the valve stem tip, regardless what angle the rocker was at as it traveled through its full range of motion.  That contour on the rocker tip can only be wide enough to be effective for a certain window of rocker arm travel, i.e. a certain window of pushrod lengths.  Outside of that window, the rocker arm tip would be a flat surface pushing on the valve stem tip's flat surface at an angle, which could push sideways on the valve stem tip and apply a torque to the valve, wearing the valve guides.  Nowadays, though, roller rockers are so popular, they virtually render stamped steel rockers irrelevant.  Roller rockers have a small roller built into their tip, which ensures that the force transmitted from the rocker tip to the valve stem can only be directly in line with the valve stem.  I suspect this design feature makes valvetrain geometry much less critical.  Just like everyone else arguing these points on the internet, however, I have no hard evidence to support my claims, which is why I still went through a month or two of trying to determine the optimal pushrod length for my engine.

Anyway, at this point pushrods are done, I feel pretty good about what's in there, and I'm moving on.