Chevelle Restoration - Part 6
Well we're back with a new instalment of your favourite car restoration project, and while it's been a a few months since the last update, rumours of my demise have been wildly exaggerated!
I ended up spending ludicrous amounts of money on what was supposed to be only a set of imperial wrenches by inadvertently visiting Addendorff Machinery Mart in person, instead of shopping online from the safety and sensibility of my own home. Needless to say, I was pretty eager to put the tools to good use, starting with this beast of a car jack:
The wheels are coming off to send them to get new tyres fitted and to get access to infernal drum brakes yet again. Note the shiny new imperial sockets, ahem!
While I shudder at the mere thought of having to work on the drum brakes, me and them are now on speaking terms after our long and sordid history of disassembly, reassembly and the rinse and repeating thereof. I guess once you've worked on something multiple times you start to develop a Stockholm Syndrome-esque affection for the blasted things. Behold, the epitome of my love/hate (pictured so I know how to put them back together again!)
While it doesn't look like much, please know that any attempt to work on these apocalyptically tedious springs results in a quantum event occurring as a spring jettisons itself though a wormhole never to be found again.
Aside for the casual dabbling in Everettian Quantum Mechanics, the reason for opening all four (!!!) brake drums was to remove the slave cylinders from their respective brake assemblies to be sent, along with the master cylinder, to actual brake professionals for refurbishment. As I'm constantly reminded, going fast with a roaring V8 is hella fun, especially when you can stop again. Hence, these brake parts are off to the specialists to be made new again:
With the wheels off to the tyre guys, and the master and slave cylinders off to the brake guys, the Chevelle looks very much like a work in progress - and there is progress!
Disappointingly, my long-awaited order from the US for new engine mounts did not include the mounting bolts for the chassis, which I should have known. So these hefty pieces of metal are going to have to go back into their boxes until I can place another order with Ivan, our friendly local V8 parts importer.
Not to bother, as there are still plenty pending jobs on this car, notably the leaking oil pan that needs to be dropped and resealed. Let's get that old oil out!
Oil draining #picturesque
However, as we began trying to prise the oil pan from the bottom of the engine block, it became apparent that we couldn't do it without destroying the oil pan gasket. So another part to be ordered, unless we can get creative with applying gasket maker externally to the leaking area - after all, the oil pressure is pretty low in the pan. Yet another job to be added to the backlog!
One of the jobs we could finally get to was connecting the flex plate to the torque converter, effectively joining the engine and transmission with these three tough little bolts:
Invariably, this required removing the bell housing, cleaning the torque converter and the centre button on the flex plate, lots of heavy lifting in awkward and painful positions while trying to not drop large hunks of metal on the floor through ones toes, and finally, applying the bolts and making the engine and gearbox a unified drive train. Beautiful:
Thank goodness I had all these shiny new tools for a job that only required two of them!
Lastly, and probably the job that I was most looking forward to involved the planned destruction of offending concrete piers preventing the long-distance movement of the Chevelle. Aside for these targets of destruction being located in a swiftly coursing Crocodile River, I think I brought the right tool for the job:
I was expecting the remaining bridge supports to crumble easily under the mighty sledgehammer, but alas these were concrete piers enforced with none other than Pelindaba rock:
Even with some good support, we didn't make much of a dent - we'll be back with a bigger team, and of course more tools.
Lastly, while projects like these are really fun to work on, they're more fun to work on with someone else. Happy Father's Day!
