That pesky dis­trib­u­tor issue has finally been resolved!!  File this one under you live and learn.  Here’s my story and I’m stick­ing to it.….. It turns out that for what­ever rea­son, the shaft con­nect­ing the oil pump to the dis­trib­u­tor shaft was not cor­rectly seated in the oil pump when I installed the dis­trib­u­tor, this caused the dis­trib­u­tor to bot­tom out on the shaft before it became fully seated and would not allow it to tighten down, this in turn is what caused it to con­tin­u­ally go out of time.  How we found it was kind of lucky, on our first three starts the oil pres­sure light went out imme­di­ately, the fourth time it remained on and I shut down imme­di­ately not want­ing to cause any dam­age.  I bor­rowed an oil pres­sure gauge from the engine shop hop­ing that we had a bad sen­sor, but when we hooked it up and re-started, we had zero oil pres­sure so now knew we had an oil pump prob­lem.  I pulled the dis­trib­u­tor again and then pulled the shaft from the top end and found the shaft chewed up on the oil pump side.  It turns out it was never seated prop­erly and the down­ward pres­sure from the dis­trib­u­tor was in fact caus­ing it to turn the oil pump just by fric­tion for a while before it gave up the ghost.  As you can imag­ine I was not a happy camper, and so through­out this week I spent time drop­ping the oil pan, remov­ing the oil pump, tak­ing it back to the engine shop where they dressed the shaft and insured every­thing fit cor­rectly and then finally installed it back into the car.  Of course, there was no pan gas­ket avail­able locally, so we had to wait for it to be deliv­ered by UPS.  It came in yes­ter­day and is all back together, the “Gray Lady” once again is purring like a kit­ten, with oil pres­sure at +30 and another prob­lem is finally resolved.

I am very pleased with the alter­na­tor con­ver­sion, but I do have an issue with the gen­er­a­tor light.  As pre­vi­ously described, it has been installed on the orig­i­nal gen­er­a­tor bracket (with some minor mod­i­fi­ca­tions) and con­nected it directly to the bat­tery with a #4 cable.  Fol­low­ing instruc­tions I found while surf­ing the net, I con­nected it to the wire lead­ing to the gen­er­a­tor light on the dash and in fact the sys­tem func­tions well, when started the gen­er­a­tor light goes out as it should as the sys­tem is charg­ing but when shut down with the key off, the light stays on.  Appar­ently the arma­ture is ener­gized with the key off because of the direct con­nec­tion to the bat­tery caus­ing the light to stay on.  I am going to have to re-think the wiring or install a diode to pre­vent the back­flow of power to the light with the key off.  I really want that light to func­tion, though the sys­tem oper­ates per­fectly with­out it, the bat­tery stays fully charged, the car has no start­ing issues and the whole sys­tem will alle­vi­ate many prob­lems and make for a much more pleas­ant  expe­ri­ence as we begin dri­ving her down the road in the future.

The garage has been cleaned up, parts put away and now I can leave with a clear head, know­ing Paul can go in once a week and start her up to keep every­thing lubed and charged.

I’ll talk again from Florida.…

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Hope Santa was good to you and the New Year smiles upon you.  I must have been a whole lot bet­ter than I thought last year, Santa (dis­guised as my wife Mary Lee) gave me a NOS Speedome­ter Clus­ter as a gift this year.  It includes the temp. and fuel unit, a brand new clock and the odome­ter shows just 2 miles.  I can’t imag­ine this part sit­ting around for 52 years some­where just col­lect­ing dust, beyond that I can’t imag­ine how she found it, it’s the first one I have ever seen.  I am absolutely thrilled (though I cringe when I think what it might have cost.).…..

With the New Year upon us, it’s time for a recap and review.… The past 7 months saw a flurry of activ­ity and frankly, I am much fur­ther along with this project than I had hoped to be at this point.  While I would have liked to do a frame off restora­tion, space and equip­ment lim­i­ta­tions would not allow it, instead, we jacked her up, put her on jack stands and got started.  The front and rear bumpers, grill and hood were removed, the gas tank pulled out and the outer and inner front fend­ers taken off.  Then we began with the mechan­i­cals, the radi­a­tor, dri­ve­shaft, engine and tranny were all removed, along with the rear axle, upper con­trol yoke and lower con­trol arms.  The front sus­pen­sion was com­pletely removed along with the exhaust sys­tem, brake and fuel lines and then we were left with a bare frame with the pas­sen­ger com­part­ment and rear fend­ers still intact.  Now we were ready to go.

We began by thor­oughly clean­ing and pres­sure wash­ing the under­side, scrap­ing and treat­ing any sur­face rust (there were no real cor­ro­sion issues under the car) and coat­ing the frame with Por-15.  We touched up the under­coat­ing in some areas, but it was more than 90% intact when we started.  Then I cleaned and painted the fire­wall, restored the blis­ters and we were ready to begin putting parts back on the car.  The fuel tank was put back in, a new stain­less steel fuel line installed, a com­plete new stain­less steel brake line set along with a rebuilt mas­ter cylin­der and trea­dle unit,  wheel cylin­ders, rub­ber brake lines, re-lined shoes and freshly turned drums were all put back on.  All of the sus­pen­sion parts were media blasted, painted and re-built with new bush­ings, ball joints, tie rod ends, bear­ings and seals before being put back up.

The engine was com­pletely rebuilt, sleev­ing 2 cylin­ders and over­bored 0.40, the tranny was cleaned, had a new rear seal put in and then painted before being put back.  The dri­ve­shaft had new uni­ver­sals installed and the rear end was cleaned and painted with new bear­ings and seals put in before instal­la­tion.  A new radi­a­tor was fab­ri­cated using the old upper and lower tanks along with a brand new over­size core and a com­plete new exhaust sys­tem was installed includ­ing new muf­flers and res­onators.  New hoses were made up for the tranny cool­ing and power steer­ing sys­tems. I removed the gen­er­a­tor and replaced it with a new alter­na­tor and so here I sit with a mechan­i­cally set-up rolling chas­sis that should be as good as if not bet­ter than the day she rolled out of the show­room back in 1958.

The rear bumper has been repaired, replated and is back await­ing instal­la­tion.  Rear tai­light bezels, hood and trunk vees, emblems, tail­fin chrome and the Cadil­lac let­ters are all out at the plater as we speak and will be installed once the body has been painted this Spring.

The next few days will see us remov­ing some more of the exter­nal trim and gen­er­ally get­ting her ready for paint.  If time allows I will pull the door pan­els and begin work on clean­ing and lub­ing the win­dow sys­tems.  Mary Lee and I are tak­ing a break, leav­ing the 10th for sunny and warm (hope­fully) South Florida where we will try to relax and spend some time at a few clas­sic shows and swap meets, pos­si­bly take in the Miami Inter­na­tional Boat Show in Feb­ru­ary, maybe do a lit­tle fish­ing and spend some qual­ity time with great friends we only see every win­ter sea­son.  We expect to return early March when the weather is bet­ter here (it is snow­ing as I write this) imme­di­ately get her off for paint­ing and con­tinue our race to the fin­ish line.….….…..

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