Braking Bad

Today I had to cut apart the brake arm I had previously made and start over.  A large amount of the work that must be done in this small project is measuring and designing.  There are so many angles and measurements to take into account that have so little room for error and so much geometry in such a tight spot that it all must be put together and taken apart time and time again to make sure how to fit everything and that everything is working so far.

After I got the old arm cut apart I started with this thick piece of steel I picked up at the scrapyard.  I saw it and thought that it would some day come in handy because of how thick the steel was.  I turned out to be correct because this steel plate is the exact same thickness as the brake arm that came with the master cylinder kit.  Here I've drawn out some measurements to cut out a new piece.

And as with each step, I tack welded it in place so I could assemble it and make sure everything was square before doing the final welding and grinding.

And the final assembly.  I didn't smooth out the inside weld because I am not able to get to it with the grinding tools I have to make it look decent and it will be stronger as it is.  Also, it won't be seen.

After getting that piece on I went on to measure and cut it so I could weld on the third piece.  The fitment is so tight in these areas I had to measure several times to make sure it would fit correctly.  The third arm that I welded required two bends.  This is very thick steel and putting these bends in was no small challenge.  I eventually used about a 5 foot piece of square stock tubing I had picked up from the scrapyard as leverage and after heating it up as much as I could with my small torch (I don't have a real torch) I went to it and got the bends I needed.  Against the straight edge you can see the S-shape to the arm.

I could not weld the next tab onto the top of the new arm because there was no extra room for the added height it would have brought and I did not feel that simply welded it to the side of the arm would provide the necessary safety since this will be a part of the brake pedal assembly so I notched the arm and made the tab inset, giving it a perch to sit on.

And the finished product:

Although this doesn't look like a lot of progress, it took between 7 and 8 hours to get this far.  Here is the stopping point for today.

I still have the old arm that would have mounted to this tab but because I have added length to the arm it has thrown off the angle of the arc that is necessary to go through the hole in the firewall and not rub.  Because of this I am going to have to make some templates from cardboard until I come up with the right arc for the next piece of metal.  It will weld onto this tab and go through the floorboard into the cabin.  At that point I will need to make another piece that will allow the brake pedal mount to bolt to that arm, but I will wait until I have the gas pedal mounted to make that piece so I can make sure the brake pedal and gas pedal have a comfortable and safe distance from each other.  I don't want the gas pedal to be very low to the floor and the brake pedal to be very high from the floor or it will be difficult to quickly reach the brake pedal in emergency braking.

To find this arc everything must be lined up perfectly so I had to take the master cylinder mount off again and use the real bolt that will hold the arm on.  Once reinstalled I checked all the measurements again.  As you can see the arm will need to be bent about an 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch more to clear the header flange.

Once I have everything lined up and fitting well I will go back and add gussets and supports to strengthen the arm and its many bends.

Eye See What You Did There

April is helping a friend plan a wedding 40 miles away, so we traded Caprices so I could have the trailer hitch and haul The Clam's engine down to my friend's house to rebuild it.



I just got the air working on my Caprice (which we call The Caprice and we call her's the A-price, because her name is April) and it overheated on her as she neared the end of the 40 mile trip. I called AAA but they said since I was the cardholder that I would have to be present, so I drove down with my parents and met the tow truck driver.

Here is mother-dearest in front of The (ailing) Caprice.  She has always hated this car since the day I drug it out of the weeds behind my dad's dealership, so she didn't have anything nice to say about it breaking down.



Unfortunately, earlier that evening I got a metal shaving in my eye, so that was there while I had to go down and meet April and The Caprice. When I got home, I was home alone, so I tried to use the camera to observe my eye and find the shard of metal that was causing me so much pain. If you look below my pupil, around 5 o'clock, you'll see where I found the culprit. I tried to use a magnet to pull it out but had no luck. I I I had to go to the eye doctor today on the way down to deliver The Clam's motor. They didn't take our insurance so it cost $89 just to get it taken out. They remove these, by the way, by using deadening drops in the eye and then using a drill to get the metal and rust out.



I finally got the engine delivered and all earth metals removed from my eye. Very close to where I delivered the engine, the largest tree in the county had blown over the previous Thursday in a huge storm. I happened to be in the storm and have never experienced anything like it. There was strong wind, but the lightening was almost constant. It would strike around us in all directions. Very large, long lasting, bright bolts that struck the ground each time. I had to stop by and get a picture of the tree.



That's all for now. I am, however, going to invest in some face hugging safety glasses rather than the cheap ones I have now.

The Clam

April's Caprice has started leaking oil, transmission and radiator fluid.  We decided to get her another car in the meantime until the '37 is finished.  She has always loved station wagons and I've always though the idea of a 9 passenger wagon is pretty neat, and handy.  You can lay and entire piece of plywood down flat in the back when you fold the seats down.  That's more than my full size Blazer.  So, we found this car on Criagslist.com in Birmingham, Alabama.  My friend of many years and my old college roommates lives in Birmingham and we have intended to go down and visit them for a long time now so we decided to take a trip down with a trailer and spend the 4th of July there and if we happened to come home with a car, then that would be OK, too.

We came home with this: A 1971 Pontiac Grand Safari.  It was so hot while I was loading this car that I was having trouble hooking the straps down because the so much sweat was running into my eyes that they were burning and I couldn't see.

It's a stock 455, 4 barrel.  It was the top of the line wagon and has almost every option you could get.  It needs the 455 rebuilt so I've pulled the engine and my friend's father is going to help me rebuild it.  He knows Pontiac engines like frogs know jumping, so he's going to show me the ropes to make sure I do everything correct.

I now have to split my time between this car and the '37, but I hope to get this done as quickly as possible so I can get it on the road and April can have something to drive.  It has newer Micheline tires on it and the body is very solid.  The only issues are a couple of spots around the windows, which I've been told are pretty easy to take out, fix and put back.

I wrote the following writeup the day I removed the engine so I will include it here:

I got the engine out today. It rained for half the day and then the power went out so I thought today was going to be a bust but after lunch the power came back on the and skies turned blue. It was horribly hot and humid but according to the forecast this could be the last dry day we have for a while.

Since it was raining last night April helped me take the hood off today before she left to go into town. We've nicknamed the car The Clamshell, or The Clam.


The hood looked massive sitting in the garage.


The storm came shortly after the hood came off so this is how The Clam had to ride the storm out. The string had broken so I had to make due with what I had.


After getting the rest of the wires and bolts photographed and unbolted or unplugged it was time for the engine hoist. The A-arms sat so low I had to jack the car up to slide the engine lift under the car. I had kitty litter embedded in my head from scooting around under the car.




I didn't really have any major problems getting the engine out. It was difficult, but not more so than any other typical engine pull. The only problems I had wre one hidden bell housing bolt that I first thought had been left out by a previous mechanic. I couldn't get the engine and trans apart and after a lot of searching finally found the head to the hidden bolt. The only other problem was one exhaust flange bolt broke off; All the others were easy. If only 1 out of 4 exhaust bolts give trouble, I call that a success. April came out and lended some picture taking assistance. Typically, she would have been out helping but she's throwing a party for a bunch of ladies tomorrow so she was busy cleaning the house all day.







The massive 455 in all its glory. I knew it was heavy but I was still surprised at just how much the front of the car sat up after it was out.





Here's a picture underneath the car. I'm really surprised at how solid the underside of this car is.


And there she was. It was no small chore getting it back into the garage to await a good degreasing. Woodson gave me this engine lift. It has come in infinitely helpful. He used it once when restoring his '56 Chevy. He loaned it to a friend who bent the wheels, so it won't roll straight, but I don't care, if I didn't have this thing I would be dead in the water.  I've used it many, many times so far just in the short time I've had it. One good thing about laying in all that antifreeze was it really did cool a person down.



The guy that is going to help me rebuild the 455 said he should be ready by next weekend. I'm going to degrease the engine and hopefully if time and weather permit get started on detailing the engine compartment and maybe fixing a few things around on the car.

This Brakes My Heart

This is a frustrating post because I can look back now and see all the wasted effort and time, but that's all just part of building a custom car.  My master cylinder is mounted under the floorboard and the arm that attaches the brake pedal to the master cylinder needed to be modified.  I wanted it to go through the original hole in the floorboard and worked for several days trying to come up with a way to make it work, but the very simple fact is, it will not work.  There is absolutely no way to make this happen because the brake arm must have a certain amount of travel exactly below the pedal and unfortunately this means the pedal arm must go down from the hole in the floorboard a specific amount at a specific angle to allow a safe direction and feel for the brake pedal.  In every scenario, this means the arm will come in contact with the transmission, so I am going to have to relocate the arm and I am going to try to have it enter the floorboard through the old clutch pedal hole.  I really do not like when the brake pedal is on the left side of the steering column because that usually means to move your foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal you must lower your foot under the steering column and go back up to hit the brake pedal.  This is annoying and dangerous.  Because of this, I am going to change the angle of the steering column and raise it up, allowing it to be far and clear of any interference from feet.  But, here are some pictures of the last week or so of work I did attempting to make the pedal fit in the original brake pedal hole.

I removed the brakes and set them up in the vice to get measurements on the movement of the brake arm.  The arm would not move and could not be installed as it was in the car, so it had to  be removed.  Not all of it was a waste, because a lot of the cutting and shaping would have been necessary regardless of where I moved the pedal arm.

The arm will not fit through the floorboard with the end attached so I am going to have to make it a removable piece.
 

I had April use a marker and mark where the assembly would be when the pedal was fully depressed so I could get an idea of what dimensions I was dealing with.

Here are my amazing blueprints

I had to add some length to the top of the piece so I used this method to determine how much.

Here's the extra piece as I prepare to weld it on.

And here is the finished result.

I eventually ended up with this.  This was not going to be the final result.  I was going to smooth out the corners and add several gussets for strength.  Now I'm going to have to cut this up and relocate the arm to the other side with different measurements, which means I'm almost starting all over.

Shifting My Stance

The shifter ended up being a pretty huge pain.  The shifter plate that mounts to the transmission had to be modified and part of the floorboard had to be trimmed away to get the shifter to mount and work correctly.  I had to modify and create my own parts to make the shifter attachments mount at the correct angles.  This is a common issue with parts that are ordered from companies that say they are "made to fit."

As you can see, that's not going to fit.

Back to the old scrap angle iron

And before too long it looked like this

And here's a couple shots that April came out and took of the shifter linkage being measured. This was just one of the many, many times that was necessary to make it work properly.

Apparently, April believes that since I take all the pictures, I'm not in them enough, so she caught an action shot of one of the many situps completed in the movement between above and below the car.

The angle was close, but it was a bit too much for smooth operation.  I had to take about an 1/8 inch out of the inside spacer I'd made.  The difference can best be seen by looking at how far the end of the bolt sticks out past the nut before and after shortening the spacer.  You can also notice in the second picture that I rounded out the edges of the top of the mounting plate.

That gave the shifter a much smoother operation, with less binding between Park and Reverse.  You can see where I had to trim a small part of the floor.  Fortunately, it was small enough to still be covered by the same floorboard-plate mounting sheet metal, so I will not have to change the bolt hole locations for the plate that mounts in the floor.

Here it is in it's completed form.  Shifting between the gears finally has the right about of resistance and it doesn't bind up.  I had to go back and make some small changes to get it just right, but as for now all the bugs seem to be worked out of this part.