Hello all,
After a much-too-long absence, I am back to working on the truck in full force, and back on the 'Bolt
I'm still at college in McPherson KS studying auto restoration, but this year I was able to buy a trailer and haul the '63 out here with me, were I can work on the truck under the watchful eye of my professors, and have access to a lot of high-dollar tools that I wouldn't normally. The trip out went fairly smoothly, except for one incident about four hours from home, somewhere in the Shenandoah mountains, when the tow vehicle (a 1997 Chevy C2500 that I bought about a year ago as a daily) started overheating... badly. By the time I got to a place where I could pull over safely, the temperature gauge (which tops out at 230) was pegged, even though the A/C was off and the heater was going full blast. A large pool of coolant quickly appeared in front of the driver's side tire and there was some steam rolling out from somewhere near where the upper radiator hose attached to the radiator. Thankfully, my family was travelling with me in a second vehicle, which we used to scout around, and we managed to find a shop less than a mile away who was able to look at the truck right then. I topped off the coolant bottle and limped the truck to the shop, hoping that it was just a blown radiator hose. Nope... the radiator was cracked. The good news was, while it was expensive, they had us back on the road 4 hours later, and we were still able to make it to our intended destination that night. I think the problem may have been that the radiator cap was have been installed incorrectly, and wasn't allowing coolant to expand into the overflow bottle (unfortunately that idea didn't occur to me until after I had already removed the cap once to check the coolant level, so I have no way of knowing for sure). It was doing fine until we made a short restroom stop, where I shut the truck down for about 10 minutes (with hindsight, I probably should have left it running so coolant would circulate, but who knows). It was an uphill start out of the rest stop, merging into 75 mph traffic, followed by several straight miles of uphill pulling, and I think the combined effect of these extra stresses on the engine was enough to heat the coolant to the point were, possibly not being able to escape to the overflow bottle, it burst the radiator. With the new radiator, I was able to pull the load up hills in high gear with the A/C on without the needle budging off of normal operating temperature. So, now my daily has a new radiator and thermostat, and fresh coolant... not an altogether bad thing. I'm just glad I didn't blow a head gasket, or worse.
Anyway, now for what I've accomplished on the
old truck. Last spring, I took a class in sheetmetal forming and welding, which I attempted to put into practice back home over the summer on one of the bedsides. I figured this would be an easy place to start, since it's flat, and, if I screwed it up too bad, replacements aren't that hard to come by. The welding went well. It didn't warp the metal beyond what would have been pretty easy to fix, except that I had a temporary lapse of memory, and thought that welds expanded when they cooled rather than shrunk. Acting on this, I tried to fix what little warp there was by heat-shrinking around the perimeter of the patch
. Of course, this only made it worse, and I spent many hours over the course of the rest of the summer trying to get it back to were it was before I made my mistake. Now that I am out here, the body work has been put temporarily on the back burner. I still think I can salvage the bedside, although it will take a lot of work (some might say more work than it's worth, and they might very well be right), but I' learning by doing it, so I'll keep plugging along. I've set up shop in the "sheds," a storage unit rental establishment next door to the college, were with most of the auto students here have some kind of project they're working on. It's not much, but it has a roof, a concrete floor and a power outlet.
The reason I have made the bodywork a secondary priority is that two of the classes I am taking this semester are engine rebuilding and and drivetrain restoration, so I'm thinking it will work out well to go through these areas of the truck concurrently with these classes. As a matter of fact, the drivetrain professor is letting me rebuild my transmission as one of my in-class projects. Originally, I had decided to just put the engine and transmission back in the truck pretty much as they were, but I have since decided against that for several reasons. First, it doesn't seem right to do that considering the amount of work I'm doing to the rest of the truck. I also didn't/don't really know for sure exactly what kind of shape the mechanical components are in, and it will be a good learning experience to put everything I'm learning into practice on an actual vehicle.
I'll start with the transmission. I've actually been out here for about 5 weeks now, and have gotten a fair amount of work done. I had good intentions of resuscitating this project journal closer to the beginning of the semester, but I was just plain too busy. Anyhow, we tore the transmission down completely (the class has been divided into four groups of three which work on their class projects as a team), and found that, while it is in decent shape, it has its fair share of issues. For starters, one of the teeth on first gear was chipped, which did a little bit of damage to the cluster gear and reverse idler gear. First gear will definitely have to be replaced, but we think the other two will be alright. I have the original non-overdrive transmission out here with me, so I thought about robbing the gears out of that one, but wouldn't you know it has the exact same problem! The overdrive unit is in good shape, thankfully, although the governor is inoperative at the moment. Apparently, it is supposed to close the electrical contacts at approximately 500 RPM, so we put it in a lathe and ran it above and below that speed to test its operation. We weren't ever able to get continuity between the case and the electrical contact, despite cleaning both thoroughly with a wire wheel and cleaning up the internal points lightly with emery cloth. There is quite a bit of rust and crud inside the governor, so I'm thinking the weights are just seized. As of the last class on Wednesday, I am working on disassembling the governor so I can clean up the insides. The only other issue with the overdrive part of the transmission is that the metal worm gear which the speedometer gear and the governor run on has been absolutely shredded. It looks like the governor was locked up at one point and chewed up the threads, so I'll be looking for a new one of those, as well as a new governor drive gear. The speedometer gear in the overdrive transmission has 24 teeth, while the one that is original to the truck has 22, so I'm wondering if I'll be able to get a worm gear that is compatible with my original speedometer gear so that the gauge reads accurately. There are some other differences between the two transmissions besides the speedometer gear and the bottom mounting holes not being threaded. The shifter shafts are different lengths and have the shift arms clocked at different positions, so I figured I'd just use the side cover off the original transmission. Unfortunately, the detents which hold the transmission in gear are pretty worn on that side cover. The ones on the passenger car transmissions's side cover are in better shape, so I'm planning on putting the original shifter shafts into the new side cover. Interestingly, the shifter shaft seals on my original transmission are o-rings that fit into a groove around the shaft, while the ones on the OD trans are rubber seals pressed into the cover, so I guess I'll have a double seal on my shifter shafts, which won't hurt.
I'm also working on the engine, although not as a class project, as they don't want me holding up the class (it's divided into groups just like my drivetrain class) if it has to be sent to a machine shop or something, which I can understand. The engines we are rebuilding in that class (mostly Chevy small-block V8s) get rebuilt every year, and so it's a more controlled experience. The professor is very willing, however, to give me advice and assistance with my personal projects, and I can bring the engine, or pieces of it, into the shop for a day or two if I need to. I got the engine pretty well stripped down (removed the alternator, distributor, manifolds, wiring, etc.) and then did a leak-down test on it with a tester the school let me borrow. It was actually surprisingly decent- none of the cylinders registered outside the green band on the gauge (I think the worst was 43%). The rings were leaking on all but one of the cylinders, as were 3 of the valves. Money is a little tight, so I'm hoping I can get away with rebuilding just the head and re-sealing the whole thing. When I did the leak-down test, I pulled the valve cover off for the first time in the four years I've owned the truck. Yuck! There was enough black sludge built up under there that you had to dig to find the tops of the head bolts. Other than this though, and one extremely loose rocker arm, nothing seemed amiss. After I got done with the test, I pulled the head off, same story there. The bores are all clean and there is no scoring or pitting in any of them, although there is a noticeable amount of ring ridge. The pistons also appear to be in good shape.
My goal is to have a driveable chassis by the end of the semester. To do this, I've got to get the engine and transmission re-installed, replace the engine bay wiring and radiator, fabricate an exhaust, and track down a driveshaft and core support. It probably also wouldn't hurt to at least pull the cover off the differential and inspect it. My original one-piece driveshaft got mangled while a U-joint was being pressed in. I'm thinking of going with a two-piece unit, since the frame I'm using was set up that way when I got it, and it eliminates the chance of it bottoming out on the frame crossmember that it passes through. My original radiator core support was badly rusted, so even though I could probably salvage it if I had to, I've decided I need to pick my battles, and just get a replacement. I don't think they're too hard to find. My radiator is shot (Hmm, that seems to be a recurring theme with my vehicles
). The solder joints on the steel braces along the edges have all broken, leaving the braces just sort of "floating" between the tanks, and 90% of the fins have become separated from the tubes. I thought about getting it re-cored, since it is the original Harrison unit, but it seems that, if I could even find someone to do it, it would be considerably more expensive than buying a new unit. I did some research on them between classes this morning, and both Classic Parts and LMC have authentic-looking replacements available for about $350. I'd be curious to know some of your opinions on these, if any of you have used either of them and were pleased with them, and if there's any difference between the two companies. I want to keep things looking at least somewhat factory under the hood, and the engine is staying completely stock, so I really don't want to do an aluminum radiator. I had heard somewhere that somebody made an aluminum radiator that looked like the stock one when painted, as it had all the ridges and whatnot stamped into it, and I'd be fine with that if they're not too expensive, but I haven't been able to find these online anywhere. All this being said, when rubber hits the road the biggest concern is the cost. I want to do this truck right, but I can't throw money around too lightly.
Anyway, it's great to be back. I should be able to post fairly frequently from now on, although some of them may be on the shorter side depending on how busy I am with schoolwork and how much I get done on the truck.
I have plenty of pictures, so rather than post them here, I'll (hopefully) create a link to a Google Photos album. Here goes:
[url/]
https://photos.app.goo.gl/p8jB2mY9QT4p78p48[url/:]
