The re-built Ben­dix Trea­dle arrived from Kan­ter Auto Parts on Sat­ur­day, so I spent some time today installing it.  With the front end now assem­bled, we spent some time putting in the new front wheel cylin­ders, brake hoses, re-lined shoes, new inner and outer bear­ings, and front seals.  All went together smoothly and fit well.  Looks like she will be rolling smooth and stop­ping well!!  Next week we plan to pull the rear axle, check and re-build it and it will be the final piece in the dri­ve­train puz­zle.  When it is back in place, we will re-do the rear brakes too.…

After much dis­cus­sion and con­sul­ta­tion, we have finally decided to just do as lit­tle as pos­si­ble to the trans­mis­sion until it is back in the car and we have had a chance to run it.  It is just to expen­sive to mess around with some­thing that may be in good con­di­tion to begin with.  We will this week pull the tranny tail­piece, replace the rear seal, drop the pan and clean the unit as best we can, then just put it back in the car and wait to see how it runs before doing any­thing else, if we do any­thing to it at all.

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Had a helper today, so Paul and I decided to install the sus­pen­sion on the pas­sen­ger side.  Know­ing what I know now, we put a jack stand under the oppo­site rear cor­ner of the car, installed the lower con­trol arm, inserted the spring, jacked it up with a floor jack and in 25 min­utes we were done!!!  A far cry from the other day.  That done we installed the steer­ing gear box along with the cen­ter link, tie rods and idler arm, all rebuilt or new.

The front end is now complete.…nice and tight, with all new con­trol arm shafts and bush­ings, new ball joints, new tie rod ends, new idler arm and a com­pletely rebuilt cen­ter link with all new sock­ets and springs for the tie rod arms, idler arm and pit­man arm, along with new sway bar links and bush­ings.  Can’t wait to take the “Gray Lady” for a turn around the block, but for that we will need a motor for that (which is still sit­ting in the oven wait­ing to be baked), so we wait.  For now, I took apart the heater blower and am send­ing the motor out to be tested and ser­viced if needed before I put it back in.

Look­ing for­ward, next step will be to install the new brake shoes, wheel cylin­ders, seals and bear­ings and get the tires back on the front end.  A rebuilt Ben­dix trea­dle is on its way and when it gets here we will install all new brake lines too!

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Sent the pas­sen­ger side sus­pen­sion parts out for clean­ing and have them back already.  So I spent some time today fin­ish­ing the paint­ing of the frame on the pas­sen­ger side and paint­ing the cleaned parts with POR-15.  All of it looks great and is ready for instal­la­tion later this week.  The con­trol arms on this side had a lot more rust on them than the other side and as such required much more prep before I could paint them, but they sure do look nice now.  Gas ser­vice is still shut down over at Spring­field Machine, so all of the engine parts are still in the oven wait­ing to be baked and until that is done we can­not move for­ward with that part of the project.  It has not become a real prob­lem yet, but if it con­tin­ues much longer it will defi­nately mess up my schedule.

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Today we installed the sus­pen­sion com­po­nents on the driver’s side.  Turns out it was a much tougher task than we imag­ined in the begin­ning, that spring is a pretty potent piece of steel.  We began by installing the lower con­trol arm to the frame, insert­ing the spring between it and the frame and using a floor jack to try and com­press it.  The spring was so pow­er­ful we were lift­ing the car off the jack­stands and we still had about 9″ to go before we were going to be able to con­nect the upper and lower con­trol arms through the upper and lower ball joints to the spin­dle.  With the engine and tranny out of the car it weighs a whole lot less.  Long story short, we finally accom­plished the task after much sweat­ing, swear­ing and inge­nu­ity.  We ulti­mately used a com­bi­na­tion of floor jacks, lum­ber, bumper jacks and chains only to find we inserted the spin­dle bolts back­wards, had to take it apart and do it all over again the right way.  It’s done now, and we learned a lot and should have a much eas­ier time when we install the pas­sen­ger side later in the week.  When fin­ished with this part, we tore down the other side so the parts could be sent out for cleaning.

Hours later when speak­ing with an old time mechanic and relat­ing my dif­fi­cul­ties with this part of the project, he did say it would have been much eas­ier with the engine and tranny in the car BUT he asked why I did not just put another jack­stand under the oppo­site rear cor­ner and use the weight of the whole body instead of just the front end.  In my best Homer Simp­son imi­ta­tion all I could respond was DOH.…. Any­way, it is done, I learned a hard les­son and it sure will be eas­ier on the next side.

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Well it really should have been a two man job, but I was by myself so I worked at installing new rub­ber on the flaps inside the heater core box that con­trol the heat, defroster, vent and de-icer.  Once they were glued in and set I installed the heater core and began the tedious process of adjust­ing the con­trol cables, so that every­thing works prop­erly in rela­tion to the indi­ca­tors on the dash.  Just about every­thing was taken apart, cleaned, lubed and re-assembled.  every­thing works smoothly as it should with lit­tle effort.  When I am sure every­thing is as it should be I will install the cover and bolt it down.  I must have had that thing in and out of the car five times today and the more I think about it, we may have to do a sixth, I had planned to install the defroster ducts later, but now I think it may be eas­ier with the fender off work­ing through the hole where the heater core mounts.  Not sure about it, but still have plenty of time to fig­ure it out, so for now I will leave the cover off.

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Run around day today.… picked up new shocks for the front end, foam rub­ber to repair the flaps in the heater core box and I even found some mas­ti­cated rub­ber to re-make the rub­ber pieces that line the inner fend­ers, I will use the old pieces as a pat­tern and cut all new mate­r­ial for its even­tual re-installation.  Spent an hour over in the ware­house of Fln-Mar in Holyoke, and found replace­ments for the defroster duct hoses and the con­nec­tion between the blower motor and the driver’s side blis­ter.  Those guys have ever­thing!!  Need any­thing rub­ber or spe­cialty hose, you will find it here for sure and every­one who works there is very help­ful and friendly.

Even found a lit­tle time to work on some of the inner fender pieces, I painted the inte­rior side with POR-15 and re-undercoated the exter­nal sides, they are all look­ing great…The steer­ing col­umn boot and brake push rod boot arrived today and will be installed soon.

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I don’t have the lux­ury of a lift, so we are work­ing on the under­car­riage in sec­tions, I’m not real com­fort­able with the car up on jack stands at all four cor­ners, so we do a lit­tle at a time.  Today we touched up some spots on the frame and under­coated the rest of the under­side.  So now she is done from the front bumper mounts back to the end of the trans­mis­sion tun­nel.  Ear­lier, we had done from the rear bumper mounts for­ward to the rear axle, so that all that is left is the cen­ter of the car from the rear of the trans­mis­sion to the rear axle.

I stopped in to see Richie at Fulvi Radi­a­tor and he installed the lower shaft in prepa­ra­tion to install sus­pen­sion parts.  I would have done it, but did not have wrenches big enough and they needed to be torqued down to 175 lbs.  While there I checked on the sta­tus of the engine and found that we are on hold for the moment.  There is a huge road con­struc­tion project in that part of town and the gas line has been shut off, all of my parts have been cleaned and are sit­ting in the oven wait­ing to be baked so we just have to wait for the gas to be turned back on.

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