MGD72Monte

Thanks for the explanation Rob. Looks like you have found a good niche market . Still wonder why the fiber glass hood they make for the Monte is not designed to look the same as the steel one you are making. Maybe they can't make those complex shapes out of fiber glass I guess. Your design looks so much more like something the factory would have done. IMO

Can someone tell me why there is apparently enough of a market for companies to make the fiberclass Monte hoods some of the members have but not make steel ones like this? I would think there would be more people buying this type, I must be missing something?

I got new GM plastic ones in 1988, they are cracked now, around some of the bolt holes. I'll keep them on unless they get too bad.

If your grandfather has successfully rebuilt plenty of engines and is willing to help you, I would not hesitate. That is a great opportunity, you'll learn skills that will last you your entire life and have the pride of having taken part in rebuilding your car and that's worth more than any warranty.

Sounds like you could start producing these hoods and selling them to FGMCC members, they do look good.

Not 100% sure exactly what you are asking. If there is rot, you need to cut it out, if it is surface rust you can clean it up then you can use some rust paint so rust does not come back. If you are just trying to buy time until you get to fix it, soak those panels in corrosion control spray such as Rustcheck or Crown, but don't use paint directly over rust. Good luck

Larry, Congrats on achieving some progress. I had a soft gen light after I damaged the flexible circuit board of my cluster, some of it melted after I got a short so the whole side of the cluster had issues. There is likely an issue with the gen light circuit such that it is grounded somewhere. Hard to troubleshoot at a distance but I would be looking at that circuit. Good luck

as well as the bump stop on the middle of read cross member. Look of a tell tale sign on the top of the differential housing. With those three bump stops, I'm thinking you should be OK.

Good work with the fabrication, I've made some small patch panels with no where near the amount of complex curves and surfaces you have there and know it can get tricky to get a good fit.

Thanks for the input guys, I'll try the re-indexing. If that doesn't work, I'll take the driveshaft to a shop. The U-joints are in good shape, the rear one has been changed relatively recently so I don't think it is an issue. The ride height was changed a few years ago when I installed stock height springs but not sure how that would cause a vibration and what the fix would be? Sam can add to what you mean?

My car has had a vibration in the rear at highway speeds eversince I can remember. I have refurbished or replaced everything in the rear, including the wheels and tires. I'm thinking it might be the driveshaft or the yoke. I did measure more runout than recommended, hard to tell if due to driveshaft or yoke. Anyone had any experience having driveshafts checked for balance and/or straightness? Any tips/theories? Thanks

Rodney, as I always recommend if you have the tools, the time and the will, do it yourself. Especially if the hood is off, this is a piece of cake as Jared said. The engine work you describe is relatively straight forward as well. Based on previous posts from you, you are good at paying attention to detail so should have no problem. When you do it yourself you gain a better understanding of the car, the money saved is just gravy and can be spent on more tools . Good luck whatever you decide

Marc, just curious, how does that movement work for control arms with oval bushings?

Great pics, thanks for sharing, wish I could have been there.

That's interesting, I find mine is somewhat twitchy but more importantly unlike rack and pinion, the steering wheel does not have a default tendancy to stay perfectly centered when it comes to those last 10 degrees or so either side of centre so on the highway if steering straight does not have your full attention and you happen to move it a few degrees say while changing a radio channel it is easy to drift into another lane with no feedback from the wheel. Not sure if that is normal and I'd be surprised if it would be corrected by reducing pressure but maybe I'm wrong. I've been debating changing to a dephi close ratio box also, but not sure about that either.

I did some research before deciding, final decision was polygraphite in the front, stock rubber in the back. There were varying opinions out there but found enough that said it did not squeak and new poly is designed to prevent squeaking. Also ordered an extra tube of the special grease and used it liberally. Put them in about 3 years ago, so far no squeaks but I haven't driven all that much. Maybe the new polygraphite is better than the old at not squeaking, not sure, only time will tell. You can't go wrong with stock rubber though. Good luck

Only supposed to go on the top. The bottom is meant to be spring on metal.

Congrats, glad it is working out for you even though it has been a bit of a frustratingly long process. I would be asking them how is it possible that the wrong gear got in there. I thought the recommend dist was used.

Interesting, I have been thinking about one of those mini starters when mine packs it in mostly to get some distance from the headers to the starter. Mine takes in a lot of heat when the engine is hot I can sure feel it struggling.

Ian, I agree with all that he says, but from that answer, it seems he does not understand the issue. This is not about extra features or fancy views, this is about a simple fault (IMO) with the functionality of the existing perpage feature. Sounds like you understand it but here is a different way of explaining the problem to try to make it clearer to him. These things are often a challenge without a face to face so here goes: After you click on "sort photos" in an album you are taken to the PhotoPost Album Photo Sorting Interface and the default shows you 12 pics per page. To make it simple, lets assume you have a 72 pic album. If you scroll to the bottom of the screen below the pics, just under the "submit" button you will see that you are on page 1 of 6 total pages in the album (at 12 pics per page that is correct). You can click on any of the pages and go directly to that page in the album. Works great with the default 12 pics per page. Now if you select another number than 12 from the drop down menu such as 24, it displays the first 24 pics from the album and on the bottom it now shows that you are on page 1 of 3 (at 24 pics per page) so far so good. The error is: if you click on page 3 for example to go directly to the last 24 pics of the album, you will instead end up on page 3 of 6 in the middle of the album and be back at 12 pics per page. It is a simple (IMO) programming error. Effectively this means unless you use 12, the drop down menu in the sort view does not work beyond one page, it shows you the correct number of total pages adjusted for the number of pics per page you selected but if you click on any of these pages you don't end up there and the default goes back to 12. If the Oracle still doesn't get it at this point or says that's the way he wants it to be, don't worry about it, the major errors from the original post are gone and the basic functionality is there. Too bad they can't make changes like I mentioned earlier (i.e. have the option to select "show entire album" on one page). Then this would not matter because you never need to go to the next page. Thanks for your efforts Ian.

I cleared my cache twice and no dice. Ian, are you sure you are in the "sort photos" view of the album vice just viewing the album. If I'm just viewing the album I can select up to 90 pics per page and that works fine, the problem is only in the "sort photos" view, that's the view you can type in the position you want each photo to be in, you can also make any photo your album cover it has a drop down only for 12, 16, 20 or 24 pics per page. Maybe it's just me and my POS computer.

Glad you have been released Bob, get back to your old self soon.

It does thanks and I hope to do exactly that, I've finally been able to clean up the garage and put all my "project in work" stuff away and I don't want to see it anytime soon... until I get the bug again . For the brake light issue, I had enough of it, my cheap "fix" is to pull the plug from the proportioning valve, insert a fitted piece of heat shrink tubing on the pin and reinstall the plug - light is now out. It's going on my list of defered defects and I'm going to look at it again when I change the brake fluid next time, probably in two years time.

No change at all from the above problem, still only works on 12 pics per page.

Great update thanks, looks like you got your plate full but your handling it well. Keep getting better.