| 02-14-2012 |
I worked all of today on the '37. I didn't get as much done as I had wanted to. I suppose she was in a feisty mood today because she fought me every step of the way.
I put the gear shifter back on the transmission that we pulled out last weekend. The shifter has a stiff spring inside of it and it is near impossible to push the plate down, line it up and get a bolt started all at the same time. Finally I was able to get one started and worked my way around from there.
I took the rear bumper off. Unfortunately these 4 bolts didn't have any of that grease caked on them and were really hard to get off. One of them broke off, which at least made it easier to get out.
The U bolts for the rear springs were not rusted up thanks to a bunch of 80 year old grease and gunk. There was so much gunk, however, that finding out what size the bolt was to fit the correct socket and then getting it on was pretty difficult. It didn't help either that my 3/8 ratchet seems to be dying.
Even the shackles had tons of crud on them. Believe it or not there's a bolt hidden right there in the middle, underneath all that crud
After getting all the hydraulic brake lines, parking break rods, shock mounts, springs and everything else disconnected it was time for the rear end to come out. Unfortunately my jack wouldn't go high enough to clear the rear end with tires on it, even with several blocks of wood and the rear end was too cumbersome to drag around on the floor without the tires on it.
With some careful finagling and a whole lot of grunting, pushing, pulling and lifting and some creative use of the floor jack and some wood blocks I was able to snake the rear end out. It was a pretty tough job by myself, but I finally managed to get it out. It didn't help matters that sometime yesterday I had pulled a muscle in my chest and it constantly hurt and seemed to keep me short of breath, too.
Almost there....
And just had to move a few more things around until it found its new home over in the corner. I managed to balance the driveshaft straight up and down for a picture. I think the hardest part was moving this thing without letting the driveshaft fall on the car or the plastic manifold on the new engine.
After taking the engine out and getting the rear end out there was a ton of 80 year old grease giblets all over the carpet. I'm pretty sure at least this much also wound up in my eyes. I couldn't lay on these or they would grind deep into my clothes and carpet so I had to bust out my trusty old garage vacuum.
And here she finally is with no rear end
See this piece of steering linkage here with the straps undone? I worked on this thing forever. There is a cotter pin to pull and then you have to turn the slotted area like a big screw. This one wouldn't turn very much and eventually broke a screwdriver.
Luckily my dad had bought a whole bucket of chisels at an estate auction. I used the chisel and a wrench that fit it to unscrew the required screw. I finally gave up on this steering joint and moved to another one further back on the car. It came off very easy. I realize there is a cotter pin in there. I just took this picture after I had taken it all apart to show how it had been done and had already put the cotter pin back in for safe keeping.
The front suspension had 4 bolts holding the U-bolts in. It was very, very tight access getting to these bolts and took quite a while to get them out, not to mention they were a little bit rusted and took some convincing to budge from where they had been for the last 80 years.
After taking the front suspension off I had to relocate the jacks. Here's April's car doing it's first wheelie.
Turns out April does a really good ballast impersonation
She's acting like she is using her huge muscles, but in reality it was balanced so that it barely took any effort to push the front of the car down. You gotta love those pajama pants, too.
Notice the pile-o-parts is growing and growing
And here's where the car is now. I wanted to at least be able to get the front springs out but I ran out of time and the pulled muscle was really starting to hurt so I'll save that for tomorrow.
