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jft69z

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On ‎10‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 8:26 PM, imr said:

How did you strip the frame

The slow painful way right now, with wire wheels & coarse abrasive sanding pads on an angle grinder. It's actually going pretty quick since the frame isn't really rusted. Going to follow up with sandblasting in the hard to reach spots.

On ‎10‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 8:28 PM, Rob Peters said:

Were you trying to cut the springs?   You succeeded in warping them.  The spring compressor is truly a life saver on removing those front springs.  Even with a spring compressor it scares me a little.  Keep up the good work, I can almost see it in black paint already.  Keep the pictures coming.

rob

 

No Rob, I didn't do that to the springs (I've done some stupid things before, but not that stupid, lol). Some prior owner did it to lower the car. The back had BMR 2" lowering springs. Apparently it was much easier to heat the springs to lower it than doing it right & replacing the fronts with matching BMR ones.

Probably won't be black for at least a couple of weeks due to the work schedule. In the mean time I'll sandblast all the control arms and pop new bushings & ball joints in the front & rear arms. Need to bring the old 12 bolt with the 4.11 gears up from the basement and clean that up too. Probably pop the axle seals out and replace them too since it's been sitting a long time. Good chance to inspect the axles for wear as well.

 

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Ordered the AC from Classic Auto Air today. Got the Stage 3 upgrade kit with the newer Sanden type compressor. Also has the parallel flow evaporator & condenser. Car was an original AC car, but the prior owners removed that too, so I pretty much needed everything.

Started out just to clean up a bit but ended up playing with the front control arms for a few minutes. Looks like the original upper ball joints were still in there by looking at the rivets & in surprisingly good shape. Still, going this far, they had to go... Air chisel makes it a 30 second job

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Sandblasted the rest of the control arms last night after work (dayshift) & spent this morning blasting the frame before starting a string of nightshifts tonight. Probably won't get to paint it until next week. Still need to put the bushings in all the arms & clean up the 12 bolt before paint anyways. Need to cut those brackets they welded on the frame (crooked) for the exhaust too.

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Looking good. Going with epoxy or POR15?  A friend of mine did Krylone semi gloss so if he had chips he could just re spray. mine is epoxy DP90 And DP40 (black) and herculiner on the body and inside floorboard.post-259-0-61935100-1474727657_thumb.jpg

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Thanks James. I'm going to spray it with the same stuff I did the floors and the core support, etc from earlier posts. It's  'Hot Rod Black' from Distinctive Image (DI-HRB). Mixes 4:1 with activator & it's a urethane. First I'll spray it with Variprime self-etching primer, and then the HRB can go directly over the self-etch. My paint supplier had it on the shelf and said all of his customers like it a lot.  Real happy with it so far in regards to the semi-gloss sheen & durability.

 

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Had a couple of hours to play after I woke up today from work last night. Got the old Monte's 12 bolt blasted today (has the 4.10 gearset). I'll pop off the backing plates and do them in the blast cabinet when I change the seals. Looks like the GMPP transmission & other parts are supposed to be delivered tomorrow at some point too.

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So I popped the axles out of the old rear end and 1 of them is not good at the bearing surface. Figured, OK, I'll pull the axles out of the 12 bolt that came in the car. Not too pleased with how they look either (very minor but the start of things to come if I use them).

So, any suggestions on where to find either 1 good GM axle to match the 1 good one, or a pair of replacement axles that will just bolt in and work. Not going to race the car. Don't need more splines, C-clip eliminator, etc.

Also bearing choices? Timken?

Did a quick search but just got overloaded. Some say the replacements were a bit long and caused issues, etc. according to comments (Moser axles-Summit). Figured you guys have dealt with this a lot so can steer me in a direction real quick. Yukon axles any good? Strange Engineering?

 

Thanks guys.

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6 minutes ago, MC1of80 said:

I have Strange c-clip 30 spline stock replacement axles in my 70 SS with timken bearings. 

Awesome, I just looked them up and saw no complaints anywhere. Thanks Tom

Remember where you got them?

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Looks like they're available most of the usual places. I'll order a pair tomorrow. Thanks!

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Lots of parts today, including the Strange Axles (good idea Tom, Thanks). They only sent one bearing though, lol. Other one will be here tomorrow, but I'll be painting the frame & suspension parts hopefully. Shot a little heavy primer on the axle tubes tonight after the self etch primer to cover up some pitting. I'll sand it down real quick first thing then get to the rest of the stuff. Gonna be a busy 2 weeks on vacation....

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Got the frame & suspension parts painted today. Tomorrow should be the rear diff. and a few more parts.

Also found out my radiators (old Monte & current one) are bad. The radiator shop tried to make 1 good one, but that didn't work out so well either. More parts, lol. Any suggestions on a good replacement? Not too particular on whether it's aluminum or not. Just want it to have a trans cooler. Searched here and it seems some had good results with an alum.one from Summit, another couple from Ausley's, and one from the glass place I got my windows from (auto city glass). NAPA has one listed but it looks like it has plastic side tanks, more like a newer style radiator. Not really interested in that one.

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Put the bearings/seals/Strange Axles in the rear diff & painted more parts today. Near the end I realized this is about it for the bulk of the dirty, crappy, cleaning part of the job. Still need to paint the interior parts, but it's certainly much lighter and easier to work with.

Ordered the paint today from a place in NJ called Kolor Korrect. Maybe I'm picky, but trying to find a good match for '72 Dark Saddle hasn't been easy. The mix the PPG dealer made up just didn't cut it. DuPont (Axalta)didn't have anything & would have been a 'mad scientist' mix. SEM has too generic colors. Tried a can from the Parts Place that they "had made especially for them" -M42...it was so far off, Ray Charles could have felt that it was bad. Called Legendary Interiors to see what they use. They sent me to the above, apparently they work pretty close with them. KK sent a couple of sprayouts, still was a little off. Then they called Legendary again and found out the dye lot for my fabric was a new batch, so they mixed some up to match what Legendary now has for their upholstery. That was just about perfect to the seats now & a good match to the existing hard parts, so it should be here next week. Really impressed with the customer service and degree of effort they put in to get me a perfect match, almost unheard of these days.

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Looking Good! I'm thinking of just staying with my 10 bolt with the new big block. Just use some good Moser axles and rebuild with good parts, or go all in and use  Ford9" ready to install (would be about $1000 more). 3.42GM vs3.50Ford "9, see my demise? Think you could measure the thickness of your front sway bar? should about 1"post-259-0-61935100-1474727657_thumb.jpg

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Thanks James! My bar will be the bigger one because it's a '72 Custom. Averaged around 1.120" thick.

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Great job so far.  I wished i could have done this with my car but time ran out on me.  Can't wait to see the end result.  Later RJD

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We have a gal at our Axalta distributor that can tint it to match just about any color. She is amazing and always keep track of what is added so if you need more they can still get a perfect match.

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8 minutes ago, Leghome said:

We have a gal at our Axalta distributor that can tint it to match just about any color. She is amazing and always keep track of what is added so if you need more they can still get a perfect match.

My Axalta jobber plays mad scientist, lol. The chance of duplicating the mix if I needed more in the future would be nil. He's real good at most tints, but I'm usually pretty picky with color matches.

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Yeah, he doesn't usually do that Larry. His store is the only Axalta shop in the area and he's always pretty busy with all the other collision shops. He's always been pretty good to me though, so no complaints. Whenever I need something, he gets it on the first truck out to me. We talked about the K-K paint the other day & he even thought it was a good idea given that they have a formula to work with right from the start.

DuPont (and PPG) used to have interior formulas, but with the demise of lacquer paint, they never updated them to the newer paints. My PPG dealer could have almost done it with the original formula, but a critical yellow tint was long since gone from the inventory. He tried to replicate it as mentioned above, but it looked like baby crap green to start with.

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After spending the week cleaning & painting more parts, the pendulum is finally starting to swing the other way and time to put things together. Still need to clean/paint a few more things, but at least things are moving in the other direction finally. Need to go thru the HVAC unit to replace all the foam seals, strip the dash down to paint that, plus all the interior bits, etc. Plenty more to do, but back to work again Wednesday night for another long stretch so it'll be slow going for a bit.

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