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).

Share on Facebook

Tweet