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The Next Generation

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#221 ·
Verle said:
A lot of people here are interested, keep up the good work and keep us up to date.
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Definitely! Even those of us who don't post a lot have been following. Great work! Very inspiring, too.
 
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#222 ·
That is an odd place to see cracking....Is there anything that could be binding up the ends, front and back, of that piece of molding when the door is opened...even if one end is barely catching, say on the A-pillar area, over years of opening the door could cause a fatigue crack to form in that area.....
 
Discussion starter · #223 · (Edited by Moderator)
Time for an update. While I haven't been posting much recently, work has not slowed down. We've mostly been chasing electrons which doesn't show much visually.

One of the problems the car has had since we got it driving was that the gas gauge didn't work. It reads full all the time. We had checked for voltage at the sending unit, came up with 12.5 volts, but grounding it didn't change anything. We had left it alone from then until recently, when another discovery was made.

Another thing that wasn't working was the turn signals. I happened to try the turn signals one time while just sitting idling, and noticed that the fuel gauge dropped from full to empty. Weird.

Mason pulled out his wiring diagram recently and figured out what color wires should be at the fuel gauge recently only to find that we had somehow switched them between turn signals and fuel gauge.

Ok, now we only have 6 volts at the sender, but when he grounds it, the gauge goes to empty. Need a sending unit.

Turn signals work in the rear now, and the right turn signal works in the dash, but not the left. Fronts are not wired in because they had been cut previously. So we start tracing back the wire from the left turn signal back to the column connector, ok, then back to another connector on the column, still no power coming from it, so he pulls the steering wheel to access the turn signal switch.



In the end, we found that since his car has a tilt column, there are no actual wires running up to the turn signal switch, but a cable to a switch at the base of the column. After getting the steering wheel back on and the column switch off, we disassembled it and cleaned all the contacts inside.



Got that all back together and the indicators work, on to the front lights. We patched the wiring back together and the bulbs still wouldn't light. Took apart the left side, typical, bulb was stuck in the housing. Removed the housing, got the bulb out, cleaned the contacts as well as possible. Put back together on car and still not fully functioning. May end up having to buy a kit to rebuild the contacts. The right side has a functioning park light, but the blinker is still not working. More time to spend cleaning contacts.

We need to get all this functioning as soon as possible, he will soon have his permit and wants to be driving his car.

Devin
 
Discussion starter · #225 · (Edited by Moderator)
Time to tell a story. About a month ago we were shuffling cars around, due to lack of space as usual. I had been doing some yardwork and had filled the back of the truck with greenwaste, and didn't get it all cleaned out when I was done so it started to grow grass in the bed. Didn't want it to rust out so I started to hose it out, but couldn't get the nose up high enough to get it to run out. Mason was helping me, and suggested moving his car out of the driveway so I could put the truck in it nose up and let the water and debris run out. I backed across the street, and he started his car, and started backing it up, without closing the driver's door completely. He got just a few feet back before it caught on the family Suburban and literally ripped the door off.



The door was pulled so far around that it put a crease in it about 2-3" deep and the hinges broke off at the pins. There was enough hinge left that I was able to hook it back together and latch the door in place.



Needless to say, he was upset. Fortunately, nobody got hurt and no real damage to the Suburban, just a small tear in the plastic fender trim.

Had a friend and neighbor look over his car who knows bodywork, he's been a car guy forever and an appraiser for 35 years, he said the door pillar did not appear to be damaged so we were ok, just in need of a door and hinges.

I had saved a pair of doors off a car I had parted out many years ago, but sold the hinges at some point when somebody needed them. There was a guy local who was parting out a couple 64-65s, and we chased down that lead first, but the doors were already gone along with the hinges. So the hunt was on for some hinges at a reasonable price. Found some on Ebay for around $90, found new ones for about $120, but we were looking for something less than that. Finally, through Craigslist, found a guy about 6 hours away that had a set. While more than I wanted to pay, we got them for less than anywhere else including shipping.

Today we started putting everything together, but it was more disassembly than I had expected. I was hoping we could sneak in there and bolt the hinges on the car with the fender in place, but no such luck. Gotta pull the fender off. To pull the fender off, the bumper has to come off as well as the hood.







Spent far too long tweaking and adjusting things to get everything lined up right so it latched ok and nothing rubbed.





Turns out this door wasn't all I remembered it to be. I knew it was from a non-A/C car, as it doesn't have tinted glass. I have been saving them for years since my door glass was sandblasted along the bottoms by a previous owner. Both Mason's and my cars were originally A/C, with tinted glass, but if I change it all out on mine nobody will notice. So we knew the glass would have to be changed out. Aside from that we found that the rear window run was laying in the bottom of the door. The mount at the door is broken off, but the window run is ok. I'll have to weld that up eventually. In addition to that there is obviously quite a bit of filler in this door by the sound of it. So all told, it's not great but it's back together. There is supposed to be more rain coming in tomorrow, so the goal was to get it all back together in one day.



It still needs paint, but now it can be driven again:hurray:
 
Discussion starter · #227 ·
Our neighbor says it can be saved with a skin. They are the same between Chevelle and El Camino. They run about $140 from what I've seen. Plus we're not body men so I'd have to get some help doing it or paying somebody else. Right now he's doing all he can to save his money so that he can pay for his insurance.

Devin
 
#228 ·
64SS427 said:
Our neighbor says it can be saved with a skin. They are the same between Chevelle and El Camino. They run about $140 from what I've seen. Plus we're not body men so I'd have to get some help doing it or paying somebody else. Right now he's doing all he can to save his money so that he can pay for his insurance.

Devin
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I know its not a priority right now. I meant down the road at some point. No better way to learn than to jump in and try it. I've never done a skin myself but they don't seem that difficult and not something I would be intimidated to try.
 
#229 ·
64SS427 said:
Thank you. Sometimes hard to believe anybody wants to read this drivel besides me:beers:



Been putting miles on it mostly recently.

We were able to get a lot accomplished this summer as I was off work because I was hurt and he was off for summer break. I sat and instructed, he did the work.

We did a little this weekend. His car had an interesting couple of cracks in the driver's door. I can't imagine how they got there, never seen another like it.





I had them ground down at this point, but no welds on yet. Ran into some problems, blew a hole in the more forward crack near the wing vent, and my die grinder died. Put on hold for now.

I've been encouraging him recently to go ahead and sign up for the site so he can post himself, but so far he has declined, not wanting to do the writing.

Devin
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Not that it as concern now that the door was assaulted (or attempted to assault a Suburban), but I had these same cracks in my Ranchero doors.

I too was trying to figure out how they got there (both doors), and came to the conclusion that it was a combination of tight vent windows and also trying to roll the side glass up farther than it is supposed to go.

When rolling up the glass beyond where it seats (trying to get it to seal better probably) the glass opening expands quite a bit in my lil Falcon truck.
Virtually every Falcon I see in a junkyard has the same type of cracks---not always verticle---sometimes horizontal at the bend down into the door where it is welded to the outer skin.

That and rusty vent glass pivots can exert a lot of pressure right there by the vent edge when trying to open or close.

Again--a moot point now----but others might like to know
 
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Discussion starter · #231 ·
Verle said:
Next time you need parts like hinges and such, make a post here. I'll bet someone has things they would turn lose of pretty cheap.
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I did go through the classifieds looking for a set. And while somebody may have had a set inexpensively, he was embarrassed and mad at himself for doing it. He was not ok with telling anybody until it was on the mend and I did my best to respect that.

To you and all who continue reading, thanks for your interest

Devin
 
#232 ·
64SS427 said:
I did go through the classifieds looking for a set. And while somebody may have had a set inexpensively, he was embarrassed and mad at himself for doing it. He was not ok with telling anybody until it was on the mend and I did my best to respect that.

To you and all who continue reading, thanks for your interest

Devin
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You wouldn't have had to tell anyone why you needed some, just that you needed them. Glad he got it back together. These things happen and I'll bet he is more aware from now on.
 
#237 ·
This reminds me of a similar story that I'll never forget... when I turned 16 I had purchased a Chevy Silverado as a project truck for my first car. I was actually grounded for 6 months when I turned 16 so I wasn't allowed to get my license until I was 16 1/2 (my parents were strict needless to say). That's a whole other story... anyway, I was a good kid and I took driving seriously because I wasn't like other kids. I purchased the truck with my own money and I was proud of it. The truck was done, painted, etc and I was having a blast with my new found freedom. So I'm coming home one night around 7PM and I'm backing along a curb in front of my dad's car. For anyone who's driven a big pickup, you know how it's deceiving when you're backing up. It looks like you can be on top of a car even though you have 2-3'. I also had to contend with having my front end behind a driveway so that no one would clip it if they backed out. So as I'm inching backwards towards my dad's car and I'm trying to gauge how far back I needed to be past the driveway, I hear some plastic crunching. And I look to my right and my dad is standing in the window. WTF? So I get out and here my bumper has just slide over the top of his bumper and scratched the paint slightly. It pushed a piece of trim in slightly which was easily just readjusted. So nothing huge except a couple of paint scratches and my pride. My dad was actually almost laughing and I was upset more with myself. He shrugged it off and knew I taught myself my own lesson.
 
Discussion starter · #238 · (Edited by Moderator)
Christmas was good to Mason. He scored a set of wrenches, a 4 speed hump, a fuel level sender, and brackets for the rear brake line tee and the connectors fo hook up his parking brake cables.





On another note, we were ready to go out for a cruise the other day while it was raining only to find his wiper motor has quit. We jumped power straight to it and it still didn't move. We need to pull it off and see if we can find something obvious to fix, but we may be in the market for a 2 speed wiper. I can find 1 speeds everywhere, but not 2 speed units which are completely different.

Devin
 
#240 ·
Wiper grounds VERY important

Wiper switch needs a good ground (no power thru the switch)
Wiper motor needs a good ground.

If you have the factory 2 speed motor----you can open it up and clean the points.
I've also had to just knock the motor with a screwdriver to get the one
to work in my 59 (pretty much the same motor)

The points get a bit of corrosion on them and do not make good contact when they close, makes everything stop working.
 
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64SS427
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