Rear quarter window regulators: degreased, stripped, pulled rollers to get them freed up again then re-staked in place, painted, new 'gaskets', white lithium grease on the pivots & spring. Reinstalled in car.
Stopped by the upholstery shop.... again.Fully expecting to see the cat where its been sitting for the last week but was pleasantly surprised to find it being worked on. They were fitting the new boot cover and making a template for the floor mats. May get it back this afternoon
That's AWESOME! Mine need that... of course I'm always afraid of breaking something old so avoid pulling the dash apart unless absolutely necessary... -MIG
Dropped my gas tank only to find the wrong build sheet .... Bummer, Not a big deal but would have been nice to have found the correct one for my car. if you have vin number 0H290359 I have your build sheet. Build sheet looks like a 1970 350 car
Ryan' I've found some rolled up in the left A-Pillar post. Went absolutely crazy looking for one in a Yellow 1970 GSX. Car had been painted years earlier & was covered in layers of primer & paint. Almost missed it when installing the left pillar trim. Tom T.
Well, since I'm stuck at home for a few more days (quarantine), I had time to mess with the Buick today. I clearance the disc brake baking plates with my Dremel and a couple large screw drivers. The metallic clunk noise when first turning the steering wheel in any direction seems to have gone now. I'll have to wait until I can drive it for a few miles to make sure. Put the wheels back on, let it down, torqued the lug nuts, started it up, and let it fun for a little bit. It's probably been a over a month since I last started it up. It took about 5 sessions of cranking for 3 seconds, then pumping the throttle 3 times (no choke). With it running, the steering seems much smother and a whole lot quieter, now that I changed out the upper control arm shafts (back to the stock ones) and replace the upper control arm bushing that was rubbing against the upper control arm mount. That bushing was damaged much worse that I had originally thought. Next up will be changing out the oil pump spring to the 40 psi one that TA sent with the timing cover/oil pump assembly. Hopefully, by not draining the oil out of the oil filter (or removing it), I won't have to pull the distributor and prime the pump again. May be posting about that tomorrow...
For the 5th time I dropped the gas tank out of the Wildcat. I got this down to a science. Having a lift and a upright trans jack really helps too. Stupid sending unit will not consistently work. Always having to guess how much fuel is in it. I had it working as well as i felt it could be before the trip up to the Nationals. Put about 1/2 tank of fuel in her when I got to BG. All was well until the last day when we ran the race program. First "hard" launch and a blazing 16 sec run the gage again pegged over full. Screw it! I'll figure that out later. So yesterday I pulled a old sending unit out of a parts car. It was not in good enough shape to use but upon comparing it to what I had in the tank I could easy see the problem. The float rod was all jacked up. Way out of alignment. Made it look as close to the parts car unit, checked the Ohms readings and reinstalled it. Now working but that joker floats all over the place when stopping and starting, even the incline in and out of the gas station wade it move from full to empty quickly. I can live with it! I do know dead empty", Ya better find a station now", is just above E. So 1/4 tank and Im finding some 90 non eth fuel asap.
Well that was pretty easy to do. I swapped out the yellow spring in my adjustable oil pressure regulator for the orange one that came with the TA timing cover assembly. I didn't even have to jack the car up. Just turned the adjuster in afterwards until I felt some resistance and locked it in place. Due to the rain and my quarantine, I can't take it for a drive yet, but letting the car get up to 180 degrees from dead cold, the oil pressure stayed around 50 psi. It was 55 psi at cold start. I let it idle there for about 5 minutes and gave it a couple of very mild free revs. not much change. I'll wait to make any further adjustments until I can drive around for a while and see how it works.
I took the driver's seat back out of the Electra and "fixed" it. Imagine my surprise when I pulled back the upholstery only to find a lot of chickens--t welding on 3 of the 4 corners of the backrest frame. From what I can gather, it looks like a heavy-weight broke this thing back when the car hit the ditch. Apparently the original owner got drunk and decided to drive home and hit the ditch with the car. He got an impaired and the poor Buick got some body work done on the passenger's rear quarter. But judging from the type of damage, he must have gone forward first, and then backwards, snapping the backrest in 3 corners. Whatever bodyshop welded it up just enough for the car to drive away and that was it. I'm a heavyweight and I broke the top left weld on the left post; - the seat sagged. There was enough "meat" left for me to drill holes and bolt it together. Now the seat sits well again. I also manged to realign the window on the passenger's side door. the door card was slapped in, presumably by the same idiots at that same bodyshop. It didn't fit right and they left it. Now it fits properly again. Electra door cards are a nightmare to play with. Next weekend I'll tackle the power motor in the top. Right now it makes the right noises but doesn't move fluid anymore. I'll replace the motor with a spare I have, then drain and refill the system. To you convertible guys out there, which is the better solution to use, brake fluid or ATF?
So I got tired of playing on the computer earlier and went out and started the valve cover repaint and new gaskets. Honestly, I could have probably just retorqued them to fix the leak, but I wanted to repaint and put new 400-4 decals on them. I picked up some FelPro cork gaskets for this and the decals, a couple years ago. Got the valve covers off and degreased, then realized I forgot to get rubber gloves to use with the chemical stripper. Hopefully I have some in the Suburban that will work.
Went out to the garage yesterday with intention to make substantial progress on the 66. Went to grab my oil pump priming tool and couldn't find it. Tore the whole freaking garage apart looking for it and as a result cleaned the garage. Never did find it and didn't even touch the Buick. The stupid part is the priming tool is just an old distributor with the top of the shaft cut off and no gear so a drill can spin it. I have another old distributor that I could have used. I just couldn't accept that the first one was lost.
