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.

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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…

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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.

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As we get ready to take our lit­tle break, I thought it would be cool to try and item­ize the items we have accom­plished in the last four months, so here goes.  These are all of the items we man­aged to com­plete and install to this point.

Brake Sys­tem

1. Four new wheel cylinders
2. All new Stain­less Steel brake lines
3. All four drums turned & painted
4. New shoes, springs & hard­ware on all wheels
5. Rebuilt mas­ter cylin­der & booster (Bendix)

Body

1. Frame cleaned and painted with POR-15
2. Under­coat­ing touched-up & re-done
3. Rear bumper ends repaired & re-plated
4. Rear bumper bar re-plated
5. Com­plete inte­rior cleaning
6. Fire­wall evap­o­ra­tors repaired & painted
7. Wire har­ness, cleaned, checked & secured

Exhaust

1. New heat con­trol diverter
2. All new pipes
3. New muf­flers
4. New res­onators

Fuel Sys­tem

1. Gas tank boiled out, tested, repainted & installed
2. New stain­less steel fuel line
3. New fuel pump
4. New fuel filter

Mechan­i­cals

1. Com­plete engine rebuild
2. New radi­a­tor
3. Rear Seal (Transmission)
4. Trans­mis­sion fil­ter cleaned & re-installed
5. New engine mounts
6. New Trans­mis­sion mount
7. New water pump
8. New uni­ver­sal joints (Driveshaft)
9. Rear axle cleaned & painted
10. New dif­fer­en­tial gasket
11. New axle seals
12. Heater core boiled out, tested & painted
13. Heater fan cleaned, tested & painted

Sus­pen­sion (Front)

1. New wheel bear­ings & seals
2. New upper con­trol arm shafts, bush­ings & seals
3. New lower con­trol arm shafts, bush­ings & seals
4. New shocks
5. New spring insulators
6. New idler arm
7. Drag link (cen­ter) com­pletely rebuilt w/new parts
8. New sway bar links
9. New rub­ber stops
10. New upper & lower ball joints
11. New tie rod ends

Sus­pen­sion (Rear)

1. New bear­ings & seals
2. New lower con­trol arm bush­ings (front & rear)
3. New upper yoke bushings
4. New rear ball joint
5. New spring insulators
6. New shocks

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Well folks.…The engine is finally fin­ished!!  All I can say is if it runs half as good as it looks, we are going to be in great shape!  Unfor­tu­nately, we got backed into a cor­ner with my sched­ule and will not be able to get it installed before I leave on Thurs­day.  The guys at Spring­field Auto Machine LLC are going to put it on a pal­let, shrink wrap it and store it until I get back.

The sus­pen­sion bush­ings ordered from Cooper’s Vin­tage Auto Parts finally arrived yes­ter­day, but were incom­plete, miss­ing one bush­ing for the rear upper con­trol yoke.  It has now been re-ordered and will  not arrive until after I am gone, so we were not able to get the rear axle and sus­pen­sion installed as I had hoped.  The new seat belts have arrived and will be installed when I return, before we put the axle back in.

Paul and I spent a cou­ple hours today fin­ish­ing the instal­la­tion of the stain­less steel brake line set and fuel line.  Try­ing to thread those pre-bent lines up through the frame was a real bear, but they are all in now and look great and should func­tion per­fectly.  The brake sys­tem is now com­plete, with a rebuilt mas­ter and booster, new brake cylin­ders on all wheels, all new lines, drums turned and new shoes all around.  Looks, like we will have no trou­ble stop­ping the “Gray Lady” when we finally do get her rolling!!

Finally, we have a com­plete new exhaust sys­tem on the way ordered from Cadil­lac Inter­na­tional, all new pipes, muf­flers and res­onators will be installed when I return.  Tomor­row I just need to orga­nize and clean the shop a lit­tle, clean up a few last minute details and we will be off until Octo­ber 24th.

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Spent a few hours today paint­ing all of the rear sus­pen­sion parts, includ­ing the rear axle. Got under the car and touched up some areas of the frame and under­coat­ing. We are ready to install the rear sus­pen­sion, but can­not move for­ward until the ball joint and bush­ings arrive from Cooper’s Vin­tage Auto Parts in Cal­i­for­nia. Hope­fully we will be able to get to it on Tues­day, so that it will be put back together before Mary Lee and I leave for our trip on Thursday.

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I picked up the cleaned sus­pen­sion parts today, while there, was pleased to see that the eighth pis­ton was installed, oil pump was rebuilt and the lower end was com­plete with the oil pan installed.

All of the bear­ings, con­nect­ing rods have now been installed, the oil/vacuum pump has been rebuilt and the lower end is now complete.

In fact, they also began to paint the motor for me too.

Dickie was kind enough to take some pic­tures for me as he pro­gressed and are posted here.

I dropped off the rocker arm shafts that had finally arrived and they will prob­a­bly begin work on the top end on Monday.

I ordered a new fuel pump today, and we real­ized that we are going to need a fuel pump pushrod too. I had for­got­ten that the old pushrod was rusted into the block and was dam­aged when we removed it.

I spent some time run­ning around pick­ing up parts.

I retrieved the rear drums that I had turned and the axle shafts with the new bear­ings pressed on from NAPA.

Also got the dif­fer­en­tial cover gas­ket from Advanced Auto Parts and took every­thing back to the shop.

After work, Paul and I assem­bled the rear axle, installing the dif­fer­en­tial cover and axle shafts, all with new gas­kets and then pres­sure washed the whole assem­bly in prepa­ra­tion for paint­ing before we put it back in the car. At this point, we have invested approx­i­mately 210 labor hours to get where we are.

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