The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

It looks like you moved your car! that's good.

Chevys are a piece of cake, although the lower ball joints may be fun. They're pressed in

A 5#, wood handled press works just fine to get them in.... although, I left the lower a-arms in the truck so I could use the weight of the truck to aid in the "press" process. ;D

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

it looks to me that all you have to do is un bolt inner half of box it comes apart on center line of evaporator

Haha! I think you are right! I didn't notice that, I kept putting the job off because I didn't want to pull the whole thing so I never looked at it closely. I would have taken care of that last winter even with the engine in had I noticed. The hole wasn't that big initially, after I pulled the engine the last time I intentionally broke a number of the cracked pieces off, as they seemed to be just hanging there.

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

It's an air duct...can you say "duct tape"?

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

It's an air duct...can you say "duct tape"?

That's what was on it all last winter to keep the cold air out ;) Time for a permanent fix that doesn't melt around the exhaust manifolds.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I got the Control arms apart and cleaned up and painted today. I had a local shop remove and press in the lower ball joints for me, I wasn't brave enough to attempt it myself. I dug out the boxes of bushings I've been hanging onto for the last three years only to find one of the upper bushings good and the other the upper bushings either missing or damaged, doh! So I ordered some new ones, should be here tomorrow. The lowers were there and good. Due to loosing daylight and letting the paint dry I didn't get around to installing the lower control arm bushings or upper ball joints though. Feels like I didn't accomplish much today :-\ Tomorrow I'll assemble the Control Arms, and start cleaning up the engine bay and prepping the engine frame mounts.

Oh yeah, Seth, on behalf my neighbors and myself I'd like to thank you for telling me about using a braided wire wheel on an angle grinder for quick cleaning :P

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I guess that works if you don't have a sandblaster (or bead blast cabinet) and a bigass compressor

[fahrenschnell]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

No problem.....I warned you it was loud ;D

My ears were ringing for a couple days..... ;)

Seth

Works like a champ doesn't it......

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

No problem.....I warned you it was loud ;D

My ears were ringing for a couple days..... ;)

Seth

Works like a champ doesn't it......

Actually the noise hasn't been too bad yet, I'm working in an open area so it kind of goes away ;D And yes it works fantastastically.

Weather say's it's 22*F (up from 14*F) feels like 10*F, maybe in 40 minutes I'll head out there......

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

So today I got the Control Arms back together and set them off to the side to go work on cleaning up the engine bay. Today I honestly was waiting for either my neighbor or the police to show up from all the racket I was making. Between using the makita to remove the grease and dirt I was using it to remove some welding blobs from a previous short cut.

Shiny, no shortage of my hand prints on them with the anti-sieze.


Removed the big grime. See the shiny spots around the pads for the motor mounts?


Which finally reveals the deep dark hack secret of the motor frame mounts and the problems with your project car being 500 miles away. When I moved to Ely and the Skylark was in the process of getting a 455 I went down to CA fairly often to work on it, but in the mean time my Old Man would do some work on it. One of the things I asked for was for him to install the cast iron pads the motor mounts bolt to, I showed him where they belong, lined up the holes in the frame, etc. I come back to CA after the engine is in and he had friggin welded the pads in :o Now I can't weld (and neither can he really) but I know welding cast iron to steel doesn't work too well. But the engine was in and I figured if they can get the car to Ely I'll fix them properly (as in what I'm doing now) so I didn't complain too much. Sure enough when I pulled the engine in June the left frame pad came up with the engine, the welds had completely failed, hence one of the major reasons I never harshly down shifted it at speed or put better tires on it (the other is the 7.5" diff). Now I cleaned out the threads on the pads and bought some grade 8 bolts for them, where they are lined up on the cross member there are already holes (so no drilling!) and the engine should come out centered. Just as if GM put it there ;)

Tomorrow I'm going to scrub it up with some Simple Green and let it dry for a few hours then give it some paint. Unfortunately now I go back to work on Friday :'( and the sun is about down by the time I get home :'(

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I just got the Febuary '09 issue of Car Craft yesterday and sat down now to read it and on page 4 they printed a post I made when I first fired the Skylark up with the first 455 about a year ago, haha.

[Jim Rockford]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

www.photobucket.com for your pic hosting...

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

didja get the rearend Randal?

[mike343sharpstick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Looks great, I just finished my suspension bits a few weeks back, sure is a joy to work with new clean parts.
Next I need to work on the steering system with is totally grunky :P; I've been putting it off for a while.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

didja get the rearend Randal?

I did, it's sitting in the back of the Jeep, still haven't opened it up to see the gear ratio, figured I'll wait until I get home. There are probably several here that have done it, but pulling a rear axle alone in the mud isn't much fun, nor loading it up into the Jeep.

[DanStokes]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Randal -
Do you want my tip for checking the ratio w/o taking the axle apart? Not hard to do. I think I've posted it before.

Dan