Finished the fuel lines yesterday. Glad to be off that creeper! I needed to finish the brake/clutch arms. I notched the bottom of the arms and welded in a nut, then cut out some 3 inch pads, welded a bolt to the back and attached them to the arms. Threw a little paint on them this morning so I will be able to install them tomorrow. Put my caravan seat in and the column along with the dash. Came to the conclusion that I need to find some seat sliders so I can adjust the seat rather than having a fixed seat. That surely will entail a visit to the yard, but that will wait for a warmer day. Installed the instrument panel and the glove box. Might start to run the primary wiring today. That in itself is pretty straight forward so it should go smoothly.
Ran up to my buddies and retrieved my pedals after drying in the booth overnight. Reinstalled those and removed the steering again to gain a little more room to work on the wiring. Mounted the fuse panel in the glove box and began the task of installing the primary wiring. Looks kinda of unorganized but it will all fall together as we proceed. Still have to run the generator wires and then the first part will be completed. I picked up this Mallory shunt a long time ago and thought it would be neat to have it installed and operational albeit that I doubt I will ever be on the strip with this ride. Of course, that wouldn't preclude me from using it on the street I suppose Got ahead of myself and forgot to install a fusible link in the main feed so I may look into a circuit breaker that is resettable. Might make more sense as a open fusible link can only be replaced. Not something one can do easily if parked along the road. Won't be in the shop now for a bit as New Years is staring us in the face. Time to hang up the tools and celebrate a bit. See you folks next year..............Happy New Year to all.
I just found this thread today and read through it all. Nice job!! I certainly feel your pain in the paint department. I'm facing that challenge as soon as the weather warms up some. Love the Olds and the top chop. Happy New Year - just think, you'll be driving it in 2022!
INTERMISSION TIME The dam furnace blew up again! It has aggravated me for the last time. Picked up a good replacement gun but of course it is not a direct replacement, so I am tearing it apart to shorten the snout and add a new flange. Much like chopping a top but significantly easier. However, I need to procure parts and some fab time so we will be without heat for a few days and away from the project. Stay tuned.....
Well, remember that good replacement gun I picked up? It ran for about twenty minutes and gave up the ghost. Back to square one, again. Tore the unit apart and found a plugged nozzle. Replaced that with one I know was working in another unit and then replaced the input feed with a new copper line, replaced the filter again, reset the tip and the electrodes, rewired the controller, tested the tranformer and then put it all back together. Finally, it is working. And a good thing as we are headed to single digits this week with wind. Gotta love the NE weather! Meanwhile, met up with a FB seller Saturday and picked up a seat from an 87 Toyota. Don't need the seat but I did want the adjusters which I removed. Typical NE cruddy piece Certainly need to tear these apart and clean them up. Drilled out the rivets and separated the two pieces. Removed the carriers and the rollers which were gummed up pretty bad. Cleaned everything up and ran the assembly through the blast cabinet, greased up the channels and reassembled the pieces. Works much smoother now. Now I have to figure out how to attach these to that caravan seat and to the floor but that is another day. During some idle time, I attached my directional switch to the column. I had made a small column drop out of aluminum to support the column, so I drilled a small hole in the top piece just large enough to accommodate the 7 wires and covered the exposed wires with a piece of shrink tube. Need to pick up a 550 flasher today so I can complete this phase of the wiring. We are gaining on this project each day but still lots to do, at least I am warmer now.
BRRRR! 2 degrees with a 7mph breeze. Good day to work on other things in the warm house! Yesterday I rounded up some parts to finish the directionals. Found an electronic 3 wire 550 so that will work with the led taillights and light the indicator on the switch as well. Put the caravan seat in the car and found that the seat back release sticks out like a sore thumb and will interfere with the side panels. Looked easy enough to shorten it up so I removed the mechanism and chopped off 5/8 of an inch from the arm which puts that ugly handle close to the seat The handle is tightly affixed to the arm so a little heat helped to soften it up to the point that it could be convinced to come off After removal it was pretty easy to cut off a section that then allows the handle to set a lot closer to the seat. Forgot to take an after shot. Will fix that on my return to the shop.
Work continues on the seat. I bet I have had this thing in and out of the car a zillion times. Finally reached a conclusion on how high it needs to be and where it should set. I added spacers to the base of the adjusters to beef up the clamping area. View attachment 5291781 Then there was the angle of the seat process which required the front to be about 4 inches higher than the back. Made some 3/16 plates that bolt to the seat frame with a small spacer in the rear and a much longer piece of square pipe in the front to reach the height required. Tacked everything together and sat the seat in the car. Put the steering wheel on and slid in behind it. Fit is not too bad, but my knee seems to hit the steering wheel which is 18 inches in diameter. Tried a 17, that helps a bit. Jury is still out on the final approach to all of this. I am going into the "thinking mode" for a bit on this subject. Meanwhile, I have pretty much finished up on the wiring. Still need to get a horn from a donor in the yard . That can wait until it gets a bit warmer. I temporarily hooked up the headlights and the tails as I am waiting for supplies to come in with weatherproof connectors. Put a battery in and ran system checks. Have no dash lights. My new headlight switch rheostat for adjusting the brightness of the panel lights is totally corroded and not passing voltage to the dash lights. Have no directional indicators in the dash cluster, would help if I had remembered to install those 2 wires when I did the directionals and the directional indicator lamp at the end of the directional arm is lit all the time. Pulled the P wire off of the flasher and that fixed that. Now to figure out why?? Had ignition power but lost that when my used ignition resistor crapped out. I have another in the shop, somewhere. Other than those items everything else appears to be working as it should. Measured for the radiator. Need a new one that is a bit shorter to avoid the uphill look of the hood. Now to find one that will work. Prices run from 200 to 1100, way too many choices. My friend uses Superior, happy with them but they have had some bad press lately, so I am looking further. Champion pieces look decent, prices aren't too bad. They appear fully welded and have 1 inch tubes so I may contact them. Forgot to take pics so I will edit this post later today to add the pics.
Back on the seat this morning. I added an additional spacer in the rear for a little more lift. Tested the fitment and it looks good. Modified the release handle and added a new bracket to move the release wire below the cup holder. Then added the cup holder to see if everything is going to clear. Made a template of the bolt pattern and drilled all the holes. Sat the seat in place and bolted it in. Now I can slide the seat all the way to the rear when exiting the car making a world of difference getting around that steering wheel. Happy that I was able to reuse that cup holder. That will be handy in the future.
Temps have dipped into the negative area for the last few days. High on Saturday managed to get up to 10. Hate it. The marine splice kit arrived. I have never used these before but it looks like it will work out. I will use these for connections out in the weather. I used them yesterday. A little learning curve, mostly with the amount of heat required to solder the wire without destroying the jacket. Overall, I am pleased with them. Done correctly, they solder the wires and shrink to provide a watertight connection. Located my military seat belts and have them in the car. Still must locate some beefy retainer plates for the floor hardware and then I will remove the seat as I need to clean up the mounts and paint them. Spent the afternoon working on the wiring. I ordered weathertight connectors for the rear taillights and installed those with the afore mentioned connectors. Then installed a terminal that will hide behind the grill shell where I can terminate the front lighting. Found a new GM style head lite switch in my stock and rewired the harness for that unit. That solved the issue with the panel light dimmer and provided a solid ground for the courtesy lights. Much nicer piece than that universal switch. Put the battery on line to run checks. Everything now works as it should, but I am still not able to see the illumination in the dash. All of the bulbs are lit, but the light is not illuminating the gauge. Something weird going on inside the cluster. I suspect the small domes inside that diffuse the light are messed up which will require some investigation. Today I will pull the cluster out and rip it apart to see what is going on. Just another small delay. The last test of the day was checking the directionals. That didn't go well either. Turns out the new electronic flasher is defective. Works only when you move the wiring pins. Easy fix though, no delays here. Back at you later with more updates.
wiring.... errrr.... i like to add a 14 ga. wire from near the panel out to the valve cover alt. area... and the same to the rear panel.... these are spares or emergency pos 12v... handy, just in case ....... it could get you home...
Replaced the defective flasher, now all is well and the indicator on the end of the directional arm actually flashes as it was designed. Easy fix. Replaced the ignition resistor as well with a wire wound piece. Cleaned up the wiring a little and ran the wire for the courtesy lights. Those are ordered and will be in soon. That is the last thing on the wiring list for a while. I still have to order a battery but that can wait until the need is greater. After much research, I ordered a Champion radiator yesterday which will solve that alignment issue with the hood appearing way too high in the front. So now I have a new Walker that I will sell to some lucky fella. Once that shows up, I can shorten the grill shell and get that painted which is holding up the wiring process up front. Pulled the seat out again. I need to fab up some brackets to attach those military belts to. The belts have a quick release end so they were not designed to be bolted firming in place. I cut up some small plates and made some tabs that will be welded to the plates connected by a 3/8 bolt that the belt can be attached to. I may get to finish these today. -5 out there at the moment so I am not anxious to get started this morning. Removed the gas tank for the last time. Have some clean up to do and then I need to start installing some sort of sound deading material. I have a roll of Koolmat left over from another build. Designed for NASA and used by Nascar, it really holds back the heat, can be glued in place and sealed with a silicone sealer. May put that up on the firewall. More later.
We are having a heat wave, 22 degrees now and just returned from the shop. Headed up to the paint booth to put some color on this morning's pieces. And with a belt attached they will look like this: Now I will put some Rustoleum black on them and mount then to the floor later. ......
Dug out my roll of Kool Mat and started cutting pieces to cover the floor and firewall. Got most of the floor done as well as the tranny cover. Then worked on the small pieces leading up to the firewall. Slow process...took all day to get this done. Tomorrow I will focus on the firewall. I have used this before on my '64 Biscayne. It made a world of difference. It does not allow transfer of heat and acts as a sound deadner. I will do the whole floor and firewall with this and switch to Kill Mat for the trunk and sides of the body which is far less in cost compared to Kool Mat. They recommend using a glue that is made and sourced from England but the company is not shipping to the states at the present time so I will use my go to product, a 3M super adhesive for interiors. It worked well on the Biscayne, don't know why it won't work well here.
As it turned out, Advanced Auto carries the 3M adhesive so I bought a large spray can and began the process of glueing the Cool Mat down. Best if you let both surfaces really tack up almost hand slick and then be careful as once it touches it is attached. I finished the firewall and have glued all of that in place with one small section near the brake pedal. That is holding for the speedo cable which has since arrived. Used a 57 Olds piece from that auction site and it fits perfectly. Courtesy lights arrived so I made a couple of small brackets for the lights and attached them to the corners of the dash up under just out of sight. They really illuminate the compartment well. I wired them in to the GM light switch and ran a ground out to the doors where I will install grounding switches after I get the doors installed. I have had an ongoing battle with that 50 Ford instrument cluster. Relamped the cluster but could not get any illumination. The lamp jewels seemed to be really thick and were not providing the fused light for illuminating the gauges. So, I ordered replacement bulbs that had a very high output. That didn't even phase the things and the new bulbs are LED's of a sort and cannot be dimmed so I sent those back. In the end, I removed the cluster and pulled the front off, removed the old jewels, installed the old incandescent bulbs and painted them green. Put it all back together, works fine. End of the story! It is amazing how the little stuff just ties you up. Been on the hunt for a small battery that will fit in the trunk but save a little space for other things. Took a tip from @51box and ordered a small battery from Stinger. 51 uses the Odyessy but the Stinger has more CCA's. More is better, right? Stinger comes out of Miami and it arrived in 4 days. Impressive and it came with it's own steel box and the post studs. This guy puts out 230 CCA's and rolls the Olds over very nicely. I took the steel box and added some base brackets to attach it to the trunk floor. Then i picked up a hinge from the local hardware store and attached it to the box with a little alteration. This will lock the battery in place keeping it secure. And in place: I removed the Walker radiator and ordered a Champion. It arrived in 5 days from CA. Looks good, seems to be a quality piece. Unfortunately, I really screwed up in measuring the existing Walker and found that the new unit really was not short enough to fix the uphill hood issue. I was so pissed at myself I took a few days off to regroup. In the end, I decided that I will just bite the bullet and modify the cross member. hate to screw with a painted frame but the alternatives weren't all that exciting. I removed a small portion of the top where the radiator mounts. This lowered the surface by about 9/16 of an inch solving the issue. No, I did not take pics. Don't want a record of this screw up! So here we are now with the new radiator. Ran down to the parts store with my bent up brake line and found a few suspects that might bail me out on hoses. Got lucky and grabbed two that just needed a bit of shortening. Added some ethyl and distilled water and moved on to mounting the 32 grill. while waiting for parts to arrive, I chopped and installed the few wood pieces I had for the rear windows. This afternoon my KillMat order arrived so tomorrow I will start installing that in the trunk and quarters. That should take some time. More to come later.
battery box ! walt has made all his brackets and braces look good... go walt go... when you shorten the '32 grill leave extra in the corner nearest the insert so you can hammer that little swoop in the stock corners...
Wow, 48 degrees today! Spring is coming and I am getting psyched to drive this thing! Still lots to do though. Today I picked up some 3/8 steel rod and made the radiator supports. I will paint those along with some other small pieces that we did not get to back when we were painting the car. Following this I pulled the steering apart and inspect the seals in the box. Looks like it needs a sector shaft seal which no one has so I ordered one from Rock Auto. That is coming next week. Other than that the box looks good. yesterday the brown truck brought my box of Kill Mat so I started installing that. Had to use a heat gun to warm the panels. it makes it stick much better. Got just about half of t he interior done. Might get it finished this weekend. That's it for today.
Finished up the Killmat install yesterday. Have enough left over to do the doors. This stuff can be easy to work with but likes to leave some witness marks! The seal arrived for the steering box so that will be next on the list. Simple fix. Then I may pull the wood kit out of stock and try to get that installed.
Started bleeding the brakes today. Working alone so I used my Mighty Vac to pull the brake fluid thru the system. Got a lot of air out on the first run, fixed a few leaks, mostly just connections that needed a little more tightening. Got a half pedal so far. Will work on that again tomorrow. In the meantime, I broke out the wood kit and started trying to remember how it all went together. After a little review I managed to get one side installed and the other roughed in. Should be able to finish this tomorrow.
I love build threads like this, that have tons of detail. Well done. I like your dash and Olds engine.
Thanks Rand Man...my affection for the Olds goes way back to 1959-60 when they were readily available in junk yards. My first was free from a 50 convertible that we stuck in a '53 88 for cheap transportation. I was the only "kid" with a car in my group of friends. Later on, that 303 went into a '47 coupe which was the first hot rod in town. We were kinda wild back then, certainly would be in jail today from some of our antics!
Just had my 76th last week....starting to slow down now. I try to get something done each day, however minimal. It is all the small details that take so long to finish. My goal is to see this move under it's own power as soon as the snow is gone, albeit in the driveway which has had several inches of ice covering it until yesterday.
Thanks Smitty but I had all of what I needed and a few spares. I continued working on the wood kit today. The drivers side was the most difficult side for whatever reason. I had the wood pieces in and out too many times. Trying to get all of the predrilled holes to line up can be a bit aggravating but in the end with a bit of massaging it worked out ok. Now I am chasing two leaks in the brake system, both dealing with the front '58 Buick brake parts. Haven't narrowed it down yet. Thought the new wheel cylinders were leaking but that does not appear to be the case. That leaves the brake line coming into the cylinder. It is a small leak and I am wondering if the flexible line coming into the cylinder may need a copper crush washer as there are none now. Limited experience with these brakes and there is nothing in any of my manuals regarding the washer that I can find. I may just pick up some washers tomorrow and see if that fixes the issue.
The Jalopy Journal
