Projects '52 Catalina Super DeLuxe Custom Build

Hey vtwhead, yeah Phil's 51 thread is insane. That dude did some meticulous restoration and conversions I was intimidated by honestly. I read the whole thing, thanks.

Ahh so that's what that tube was. Good to know. I think I'll take you up on the wiring suggestion. I may just do a complete new harness. Will give me some piece of mind. The Catalina comes with 15"x6" wheels with 3-5/8" backspacing. Currently there are Goodyear P205/75R15 rubbers on them.

 

Back in garage briefly yesterday just to remove the front upper grill part that holds the radiator and latches the hood. This should give me plenty of clearance to pull then engine out.




I should probably remove the headlight wiring too. Would hate to get hung up on that. I just need to go buy a chain and secure it to the engine before I call on some friends to help me lift this ol 6 out. Anybody in the market for a 239 cu in (3.9 L) straight-6? Turns over.

 

I have found over the years that the best way is to put the nuts & bolts back into the original locations that they came out of. That way if you don't get back to it right away you will still have a reference.

 

You know what, you're right. I can't remember if there was like one set I couldn't put back because I had to take both pieces out or something weird but I could put a few others back into the front of the car for safe keeping.

 

If it were mine (which it isn't) I'd try to get the original 6 running and the car driving before you take it all apart. It may be easier than you think. There are lots of first-start videos on YouTube to use for help. Most of the guys who do that find that if the motor will turn over they can get it running with minimum work/parts. The transmission is a whole other story, some of 'em work and some don't.

As a beginner in the car world keeping the stock power train and running gear, cleaning up the rest to make it presentable might be your best option. Learn as you go. I've seen too many nice cars turned into junk because a new enthusiast started too big of a job and never got it done.

 

Knew mine would pop up on here somewhere along the line!
Don't be intimidated. It's really quite a simple machine, you just gotta get your head around the concepts that were in place at the time it was built. A lot of what has given me headaches you are pulling out and replacing with something new so you should be fine.
However, if you decide to keep the engine and gearbox (which, truly there's nothing wrong with, they're smooth but not fast) then you could probably get it on the road sooner rather than later and make your mind up about it then. It's a strong old six and the gearboxes are pretty stout. Mine was complete junk inside but still propelled the car down the street just fine.
I would strongly recommend replacing the wires that run in the engine bay- if you twist them and they crumble to dust and powder, they are no more good. The wiring is a rat's nest from the factory but not overly complicated.

All I can say is- you have a digital camera, evidently. PHOTOGRAPH EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU TOUCH IT. Then photograph it again once you've pulled whatever off and put the nuts/bolts back in the holes. Digital pictures are cheap and so very, very handy to go back to and refer to, especially when the manual comes up dry in terms of pictures and description and you forget how it all goes back together 12-18 months down the line.

Don't be afraid to ask questions but also don't be upset to get replies you didn't want to hear. There's a lot of knowledge and years of experience combined together here- as said, you could end up with a really nice car to cruise around in, or you could end up with a driveway ornament. But, at the end of the day, have fun with it.

--Phil

 

I respect that. I bet a lot of people start a project and eventually it gets left behind. I really do like watching "coldwarmotors -will it run" series where he starts up all those old sitting cars. As for me, I didn't want to spend time and money restoring something when I could put the time and money into the mild custom I want. I'm determined to get this on the road by summer in MN so I dove right into disassemble and source parts in hopes to get it all back together sooner than later.

Hopefully I can pass the 6 onto someone who appreciates that I have a complete engine available for them to use

 

Appreciate the advice Phil. Your build thread is a bookmarked on my comp and an inspiration to get this beast rolling down the road. I will take your advice on the pics on pics. I will also plan on replacing the wiring, seems to be a common warning around here.

 

Oh, and go down to Harbor Freight, pull $40 out of your pocket and swap it for a load-leveler.

Then, once you've pulled the engine and transmission, come back here and thank me for suggesting it.

 

Oh yah? Just had to look up what that is online. And saw a pic of your Catalina in the background in the pics on the reviews HA! Thanks for the tip.

 

Their ones come with chains and plates in the box. I just used the head bolts to hold the plates on. Rearmost bolts, and then the ones nearest where the end of the leveler sits towards the middle of the engine. Balance point on yours will be towards the back 3/4 of the engine, at a guess.
I juggled the length of the chains so the leveler assembly didn't foul the heater takeoff pipe. Also, lubricate the threads, bearing points and handle with heavy oil or grease- with the weight of the engine applied it becomes very difficult to turn otherwise.

Remove the fan, too. It all will fit out through the radiator aperture with the manifold and generator etc attached but it's a tight squeeze against the manifold downpipe. Propshaft unbolts from the diff, prop pulls off the gearbox yoke, I had to undo the rear gearbox cradle from the frame to get enough tilt to clear the oil pan up over the steering. Expect transmission fluid everywhere, buy a bag of kitty litter to mop it up with. Don't forget to unscrew the speedometer drive cable!

--Phil


Edit: Also, there's a ground strap at the back of the engine attached to the firewall that I see is still attached.

 

Removed the fan blades and took out the battery tray for some more space for engine removal. Getting really excited to get this thing pulled, hopefully this weekend.


Started opening up the '67 Camaro 10 Bolt pumpkin because I need to remove the C-clips to pull the axle shafts to get the drum backing plates off.


While 9/10 bolts spun out like nothing...1 gave me the royal FU. I think I soaked these things in PB Blaster 3 or 4 times over a couple days. Guess it's time get the easy out since it is too far in to notch and spin out.


Was also defeated by these fused bolts and nuts. They were soft and hard to get to. Probably not going to reuse them so I'm likely going to grind them off.


I have been really fortunate to have taken every nut and bolt off my Catalina with a 6" crescent wrench for the most part. Zero issues. Hope to keep that trend going.

 

If you have a torch available you might try to heat those difficult bolts etc. Helps to loosen them up. A left hand drill on that broken bolt might get it to turn after the heat process.

 

Nice. Pontiac did still have decent metal in stock by '52; the only fasteners I've had shear off so far have been the bolts holding the two manifolds together, and those didn't surprise me to be totally rusted solid, honestly.

Phil

 

Held up by some hoist logistics, I finally got the 2 ton hoist in place and started to remove the engine but the transmission was getting hung up on the frame crossmember. I tried to jack the tranny pan up for clearance but it started to raise the car instead. I PB Blasted the 4 bolts holding in the crossmember and called it a night. I'll have to remove the crossmember for the new tranny anyway but I just thought I could get away with pulling the engine while still attached.

Take away. 1 ton hoist from HF was not long enough nor powerful enough to pull the engine at its furthest reach. It was dangerously close to the front bumper which I really don't want to take off and started to raise the hoist wheels off the ground. Sold it, got the 2 ton and it has plenty of clearance and power to remove the 6 without removing the front end. -11F overnight in MN, I'll wait until tomorrow or this weekend for it to warm up a bit and get back in the garage...so far this project has been done without a heated space. Dreaming of all those beautiful shops people have. Would love a separate car garage in the future.

 

Know your pain for sure....been without a working garage now for over a year but that is coming to an end shortly
as we are inside now putting up the OSB! -11 makes the tools hard to hang on to. Spring is around the corner. Keep at it.

 

Raise up the back of the car, you will thank me.

 

Ehem.

--Phil

 

Yeah...Thought I could get away with not doing that because of the tilt i could get a on 6 But that didn’t matter at all, it didn’t want to move anywhere with that in place. Need to take it out to install anything anyway.


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So, I had the rear end raised on jack stands and I removed them to try and pull the engine after it wouldnt clear the gearbox cradle the first time. I wasn’t sure if that was safe or smart to have it up so I just dropped it. Does it really help to have the rear axle up in the air to pull an engine? I’m going to remove that crossmember and try again Monday.


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I did buy the kitty litter tho


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If you're doing it only with chains yes. The load leveler negates that to a significant extent. I found that the tail of the gearbox was still off the floor but the oil pan was hitting the steering and the cylinder head was hitting the firewall with the gearbox crossmember in place.

Oh, and you may also want to remove the heater pipe that goes from the windshield defroster down to the underfloor heater, if you haven't already.

Phil

 

Buy a box of sandwhich bags and a sharpie-mark bag/s and place all adjoining nuts/bolts for individual items (grille, hood, fenders, horns, everything-even broken off ones, so you don't have to question/search your memory banks for why there isn't enough bolts ).
Forget you have the 6" crescent wrench, use/buy a quality set of combination wrenches.
Incorporate the good advise you've already received from everyone.
Nice car, especially for the price you paid.
Good luck.

 

Alright, hard at work on engine bay this last week. Flat 6 is out and sold yesterday to a T-Bucket guy. Happy to have it out of my garage and on its way to its new life.


Big ups to PhilA for the advice on the load leveler, what an awesome tool. Funny enough, zero tranny oil came out but the rest of the coolant dumped on the floor that was in the block.

 

So here's the 350 mocked up for front to back clearance. Take a look at that manifold clearance on the steering box. Fantastic. I was pretty nervous about that because I hear clearance and routing can be a major setback in motor swaps.
Don't worry, the motor is getting a full dress up later.

 

Next was removing the motor after measuring the motor mounts at 20.5" back from the radiator and 20.5" up from the ground to the center of the motor mount bolt hole. This just seemed to give us a good place to attach the motor mount and have proper manifold clearance. The original idea was to bolt the plates to the frame so it was removable but where the frame and support came together it would have been nearly impossible to access behind the plate. We had already committed to the idea and bought the metal. So we crossed our fingers and welded in the mount to the frame.

Details on the mount: Because we were going to bolt it originally we got angle iron to hang on the frame. My metal shop only had 1/4" overkill on the 3" x 4" size angle iron we needed. Otherwise, we would have used 3/16" plates to mount the tube if we knew we were going to be welding it in. I bought this $75 Speedway SBC Small Block Chevy V8 Engine Crossmember Motor Mount Kit from Speedway. I can't remember exactly how much we cut off each end but it was atleast 5 or 6" so it was plenty long. The challenge was getting it to sit properly in between the steering rod and the lower A-arms. It seemed to clear and fit perfectly there. Other triangle frame mounted brackets may have worked better, I don't know. I was going off of the only advice I got to use this mount in the install. We got a 3.9 degree angle on the mount.

 

The Transmission mount went in nicely with a 26" long 3" x 1" x 11ga rectangular tube and 5" long 3/16" flatbar steel plates resting on the X-frame lip. The transmission seemed to be lined up for perfect driveshaft clearance through this bizarre X-frame hole. This one we did bolt in. This ended up working out so we could pull the engine and transmission without removing the tranny crossmember. I did shave off a bit of the mount to route the exhaust through the same frame hole.

 

Looks like you'll have a nice amount of room in there to work with. Look forward to seeing it going.

--Phil

 

Received the 4" drop springs from St. Louis Spring Company. From order to delivery was one week. Cost $386.54 shipped.

 

Got to work on the '67 Camaro Axle last night. Loosened the bolt, slid the axles in and remove the C-clips. Axles slid right out. Will replace the bearings this weekend. It was more work to remove the drum backing plates. The 4 bolts on each side were melted on pretty good. I had to heat, loosen and grind then tap them out but it got done. I'll be mocking up the new discs this weekend!