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What did you do to your Monte Carlo today?


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Here's a few photos from the first time I painted the engine in 1997. The body still was original paint at that time. I have less hair on the top of my head now, LOL

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Not to much to report, the rain has been keeping me from running break in miles. I'm going to stop complaining about the heat, I don't have a thermometer in the garage like Tom, i'll just quote Robin Williams in GMV, "its HOT DAMN Hot" lol. Still tweaking and tuning, but the small freon charge to the a/c worked and its still blowing nice cold air . I polished my bumpers the other day after a run just to give a close look after Joe's issues, one small blemish on the front but i'm ok with that. I ordered new Strange axels yesterday for the new gear upgrade, thanks to Tom and Joe for their input on that project. I hope I get a breather on projects after that for awhile lol. 

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I made some progress on my Super Sucker cooling system today. These are 14" Perma-Cool fans that flow 2,950 CFM each. The rings I mounted around them makes them more efficient and quieter. I special ordered an Ebay shroud without fan holes. I still have to fab up some blocks to mount the fan brackets to the shroud.

I'm setting up a relay that bypasses the EFI triggers to kick the fans to high speed when the AC compressor kicks in.

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Got prepped for the planed axel and gear change tomorrow. Learned you can estimate the rear gear size by marking the driveshaft and spinning the wheel. Its always a good day when you can learn something new lol. And with this project I have picked up a lot, still so much to learn. 

My buddy had a set of 15x9 (don't know the BS) light drag wheels in stock, they wouldn't work so he'll bringing a set of 15X8's next to check. 

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Well i'm still at it and the Monte is still on jack stands lol. Figured there were going to be a few speed bumps along the way but got thrown a curve ball yesterday. Pulled the posi out and its a series 2 unit, my buddy that gave me the 3.55 ring and pinion are from a series 3 unit. So we had to go back and check his "in stock" supply and luckily he had a series 3 in stock, so i'll be cleaning that up today. The weird stuff just amazes me, like the p/s brake drum fought to come off the axel, but the d/s popped right off. I noticed on the d/s inside had that (i call it junk yard chalk) writing inside the drum. Find out the p/s drum will accept the 1/2 inch wheel studs but i'm going to have to drill out the d/s. Never a dull moment. 

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On 7/12/2020 at 4:59 PM, tttm2 said:

So I had to order a new driveshaft, custom built this time so while I’m waiting decided to tackle the gas gauge issue. New send unit with AN8 fittings this time around. A work of art 😊

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So an update: everything is back in, the vibration is gone, gas gauge is working again, I’m a happy boy. Now if it would stop raining I could go for a drive. 

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Yes Dennis, they are HF stands, not the recalled ones tho lol. Theres a 6 ton on each side, and a 1 1/2 behind each. The bumper is only 37 inches off the ground lol.

Cleaned up the series 3 unit and test fit, had a bad bearing on one end which we pulled and will replace today. Painted (probably not the correct term) the ring gear and that looks good and I think we have the shims correct . Hope to get it done today, fingers crossed, weather (hurricane) is possible in our future this weekend. 

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Finished the project early yesterday eve, I was so spent didn't even take it for a test run lol.

Since we changed the bearing we went ahead and repainted the ring gear, and rechecked the backlash and redid the shim calculations. I had to do a little grinding to the drums as they wouldn't go over the Strange centers.

Got lucky this am still had some sunny skys so I was able to make a few test runs, my buddy thats been helping me also stopped by to have a test drive with the upgrades lol.

The new rear gear was a great improvement on performance, now back under the hood to do some more tweaking and fine tuning. 

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Engine is painted and started reassembly. Note these are spare valve covers I use to clean and paint the engine. I’m repainting the proper valve covers separately. It was nice to put on a nice clean rebuilt carb. Also cleaned and painted other parts along the way.

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Just curious Aaron. Is it still as fun the second time around or do you get the feeling of de jah voo ( not correct spelling but you get the point) man it feels like I just did this 

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A little bit of deja-vu for sure. I get quicker at tearing it apart each time. On this car I did a repaint like this but with the exhaust manifolds on In 1997. I did do a touch up on the front of the engine and intake in roughly 2002 when I changed a water pump. In 2009 after I purchased a 72 Monte I painted the engine in a similar manner. That engine was very dirty/gunky but made it look great with some time and not a lot of money.

Here’s what the 1972 engine looked like when I sold it in 2013. This thing was so gross when I got it that if you touched anything your hands were covered in black gunk. It took a lot of scraping with a putty knife and lots of brushing to get it clean.

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