We began from the man­i­fold on the driver’s side (now that the man­i­fold issue has been cor­rected) to the muf­fler, then through the x part of the frame.  All the while rebuild­ing the hang­ers as we went, all is well to a point.  Now with the last large piece that goes up and over the rear axle (allow­ing the axle to float) on its way to the res­onator we again have a prob­lem.  I can only assume that the piece is bent incor­rectly, the large U-shape bend is closed to much allow­ing the pipe to rub the rear wheel and poten­tially also hit the lower mount for the shock.  The parts are not inter-changeable so I am con­fi­dent we have every­thing in the right place and when we loose fit the sys­tem we did not see the prob­lem.  We are in the cor­rect place above the axle, but in the wrong place below it.

With it being Sun­day there is not much else we can do.  I don’t have a pipe ben­der and I’m pretty sure if I try to open up that bend with­out one I will kink the pipe and restrict it.  I will try to cor­rect it next week and if I am not able to open it up, I will have to talk to them over at Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional about a replace­ment.  We are 16 man hours into the exhaust and still not completed.

We installed the radi­a­tor sup­port frame, the new radi­a­tor, hoses and heater core lines along with a new ther­mo­stat.  I wanted to be able to start-up with­out the fend­ers on so that we would have more room to work on any adjust­ments and be able to send the car out for an align­ment before we close every­thing in.  How­ever, that sup­port frame is attached with only one bolt at the base and kind of floats there, it is actu­ally the fend­ers and splash pan­els that sta­bi­lize it and now I am wor­ried about try­ing to start-up with it not secured, there is not a lot of clear­ance between the radi­a­tor and cool­ing fan.  I decided to fab­ri­cate two tem­po­rary sup­ports that run from the sup­port frame to the front of the frame where the bumper brack­ets mount.…. Prob­lem solved and we are good to go now.

Now another prob­lem, with the radi­a­tor up, we can see that the tranny cool­ing lines are in the wrong place.  They will have to be pulled out  re-routed and re-installed cor­rectly so that they will meet up with the front set that goes through the radi­a­tor sup­port frame.  Once that is done, we will install 2 new hoses to con­nect the two orig­i­nal metal tubes, and will fab­ri­cate them in the shop to close that part of the sys­tem.  The only things keep­ing us from start-up now are the com­ple­tion of the exhaust sys­tem and instal­la­tion of the dis­trib­u­tor and coil (we are wait­ing on parts for those).

We began assem­bly and instal­la­tion down the pas­sen­ger side of the vehi­cle now that we have the flanges.  We took a con­sid­er­able amount of time mak­ing sure every­thing was just per­fect.  As we got to every hanger, we pulled it down cleaned the metal parts and installed new rub­ber that we cus­tom made in the shop using the old ones as pat­terns.  The only dif­fer­ence between the orig­i­nals and ours is they were riv­eted together and instead are now bolted.  The sys­tem ordered from Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional appears to be of very high qual­ity and every junc­tion lines up at a hanger just as it is sup­posed to.  The pas­sen­ger side is now com­plete and rock solid.  Amaz­ing factoid.…it took 9 muf­fler clamps to assem­ble just that one side, from the man­i­fold to the muf­fler, to the res­onator and then out to the tailpipe.

Now for the driver’s side, the real fun begins.….. Here we have not only the exhaust flange but the heat con­trol diverter valve, plus 2 gas­kets.  Well it seems the new flanges are much thicker than the orig­i­nals and now the man­i­fold studs are not long enough to get the nuts to grab.  No way around it, the studs have to come out and be replaced.  The first one came out easy as  pie and we then spent an hour try­ing to remove the sec­ond one (Murphy’s Law strikes again!).  We finally decided the only way to get it out was going to be to remove the man­i­fold (and ruin the new gas­kets),  I was sure we were going to break it off and have to send the man­i­fold out to be drilled and tapped.  Once on the bench in a vise and with a pipe wrench it finally gave way and came out.  New studs are in and the man­i­fold is re-installed and finally we are ready to go.  Time to call it a day.

Well when time per­mit­ted over the last 2 weeks, when not fight­ing our com­puter virus, we have been busy assem­bling the exter­nal engine parts.  We now have installed the power steer­ing pump, water pump, oil fil­ter can­is­ter, fuel pump, oil switch and coolant tem­per­a­ture sen­sor.  All are now wired and plumbed cor­rectly.  The gen­er­a­tor and starter are in and con­nected along with the fan belts.  We also installed the car­bu­re­tor, which is back from a com­plete re-build and put in the fuel line from the fuel pump to the carb.  We are almost ready to go.

We also spent much time installing the exhaust man­i­folds.  When we opened the exhaust sys­tem boxes we real­ized that no flanges were included to attach to the man­i­folds, we had to get a pair of those.  It took bet­ter than an hour to route the tranny cool­ing lines up through to where the radi­a­tor will be.

   Spent most of the day Sun­day and today tweak­ing the engine and tranny, set­ting the mounts and mak­ing sure every­thing was aligned.  It took quite some time, but finally I was happy with it, every­thing looks and seems square, we installed the exhaust man­i­folds, water pump and fan and then spent hours try­ing to loose fit the new exhaust sys­tem.  What a jig saw puz­zle that is, a box full of pre-bent pipe, two muf­flers and two res­onators.  I think we finally have the cor­rect lay­out and we have it tacked in with the muf­fler clamps and will secure it once and for all when I am con­fi­dent that it is per­fect.  Now comes the detail work, I’ll spend the rest of the week mount­ing the oil fil­ter, power steer­ing pump, fuel fil­ter, fuel pump, gen­er­a­tor and starter.  We are get­ting close to the day that we can finally roll her over and hear her purr…

   After much debate, we finally sent the Rochester 4 bar­rel carb out to a local guy who likes to work on this kind of stuff.  I’m sure it needs a very good clean­ing and after every­thing else we have done a full re-build won’t hurt, when it is ready later in the week, we’ll get that installed too.……

Axle is back in, and man was that chunk of iron heavy!  When we took it out, we had pulled the dif­fer­en­tial and the axle shafts out and only had to haul out the tube.  This time, we assem­bled it all on the bench, dif­fer­en­tial was back in, axle shafts with new bear­ings and seals were all installed.  Man that sucker must of weighed in at 200 – 300 lbs.  I swear you could use that thing in a dump truck.….  Any­way, with 2 of us it was eas­ier than try­ing to assem­ble it under the car.  Once we had it aligned with the lower con­trol arms it was easy, inserted the springs in their seats and used a floor jack under the dif­fer­en­tial to com­press them until we could mate the ball joint mounted on the upper yoke with the flange on the axle.  All in all, the whole process took less than an hour.

The rain stopped, so I bor­rowed my brother’s pickup and we were off to pickup the motor at the shop.  There it was, strapped to a pal­let and shrink wrapped just wait­ing for me.…  Cou­ple min­utes with the fork­lift and we were on our way back to the shop.  Orig­i­nal plans were to just drop it off, but with some time left and nowhere to go we decided to just mate it to the trans­mis­sion and drop it in the car.  It really was a long time ago that we took it apart, and our first attempt, we for­got to put the spac­ers between the thrust plate and the fly­wheel, so we ended up hav­ing to take it apart again and put it back together the right way.  Once that was done, 20 min­utes later and both the engine and tranny were back in the car.  Enough for one day, we’ll be back at it on Sunday.

The rear upper con­trol yoke is back from the shop after hav­ing new bush­ings pressed in.  Got it installed on the car today and we are ready to put the axle back in tomor­row when I will have a helper.  Things are mov­ing a lit­tle slow, try­ing to get orga­nized again, being away for 2 1/2 weeks, I ind of for­got where I was going and where I was when I left.  Spend­ing a lot of time just try­ing to orga­nize my thoughts and the shop too!  As soon as I can arrange to bor­row a pickup truck, next project will be to pickup the motor from the shop and get started putting that beast back in…

Well, we made it back, dock­ing in Boston on Fri­day.  We had a won­der­ful trip, very nice weather and saw some great sights, even a lit­tle snow.  After a cou­ple days of clean­ing up the mess in the office and reduc­ing the pile of paper­work on my desk, we are ready to move for­ward.  A few more meet­ings with the accoun­tants and lawyers and we will have much more free time to devote to our favorite project.

We now have the seat belts installed, the trans­mis­sion painted and ready to install and today began to install the rear axle back in the car.  Hon­estly, it was not a very pro­duc­tive day, it began with a one hour search for the lower con­trol arms.  It seems that in the chaos prior to my leav­ing, I had taken them to NAPA to have the new bush­ings pressed in and some­how for­got to pick them up, while away two of my employee’s cleaned up the garage, doing me a favor, and now I had no clue where they were or where to look.  Luck­ily after an hour I took a shot with NAPA and was very relieved to find them there.  The two miss­ing bush­ings for the upper con­trol yoke arrived while I was gone and now I am wait­ing for those to be pressed in.

We man­aged to get the axle under the car, con­nected the lower con­trol arms and will fin­ish when the upper yoke is ready prob­a­bly tomor­row.  The hard work is done, once the yoke is here, we will install the new rear ball joint, com­press the springs and bolt it all down tight.  Weather here has not been great, but I hope to pick the motor up from the shop this week and we may get it back in the car this weekend.