I had planned to simply get this station wagon going with a quick engine rebuild and a coat of paint, and that coat of paint was only necessary because of the removal of the woodgrain and just two or three minor areas of rust that needed to be treated. They were minor, because if the car was in need of major repair, we wouldn't have bought it.
I have been spending my time working on this car, but haven't written anything about it due to the fact that it wasn't intended to take up as much time as it has. Tdoay, I found out that one area on the lower portion of a front fender had to be cut out and a patch panel replaced. This has officially put this project into the snowball category. The engine is out, the entire front end is off of it, the doors and tailgate will come off and now I'm cutting holes in it. Since this project is now in the way and holding up progress on the '37 I figured I would go ahead and show the work here. Also, I feel this is pertinent to the building of the '37 story because of the fact that building the '37 is such a massive undertaking and requires so many resources, so much time and money that it became necessary to get April a car to drive while her '37 is being built. That car was this 1971 wagon. I have been keeping some updates of this story online at a website devoted to station wagons so what I'm going to do is condense what I've posted there and sum up all the posts to get the main gist of the story here. So, I'll start near where I left off with the last post on this car and continue until I'm up to date. So, here's The Clam.
April was 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 Gary Johnson's house to get a rebuild. Gary is the father of a good friend of mine and has been building Pontiac engines for many years.
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 triple A but they said since I was the cardholder that I would have to be present, so I drove down and met the tow truck driver.
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. 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 deadening 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 we had. 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 had blown over in the storm.
I am going to invest in some face hugging safety glasses rather than the cheap ones I have now so hopefully this metal meets eye thing won't happen again.
I got the engine torn apart this past Saturday. It seems that the motor was probably seized with rust at one point. One cylinder was definitely burning lots of oil. It doesn't appear to have been bored and everything was very, very original, except for one head gasket which seems to have been changed. I spent several hours today at a parts washer cleaning all kinds of brackets and engine parts and all the nuts and bolts to the engine. Hopefully one day at work I can go in early or stay late and use the sand blaster.
I called the machine shop and they said it would be at least two weeks before they could get to it so I may go ahead and rent a storage building for a month so I will have a place to sand the body down and get it ready to paint. I have the block strapped down to the my dad's small trailer. Hope to be able to get to it to the machine shop one day this week.
The long dreaded roof insulation was finally on the agenda today for the '37, but first I had to go take care of the business of the new compressor that, after one month, went bad on The Caprice. I essentially replaced all the air conditioning components to get the air working on The Caprice. Yesterday, the new compressor locked up. When this happens it's required that you replace the dryer, too. Since the dryer and compressor were bought at two different places I have the hassle of dealing with getting the two different places to warranty each piece. This doesn't seem to be entirely too uncommon with parts houses today for their new or remanufactured parts to be bad or quickly go bad. With as much money as I spent for these pieces and the labor it cost to have the dealership put them on it's pretty frustrating to deal with having the 134A removed from the system and now having to make time to take all the old parts off and install them back myself and then having the system recharged. If the world were right, the parts house I bought the compressor from should have to cover the cost of the parts and the labor to make it right.
When I finally got home I started on getting the old vinyl woodgrain off of the sides of the wagon. This. Is. Terrible. I borrowed a heat gun from work and tried some yesterday. Even just getting the trim off is pretty difficult because of the bolts and screws that hold on some of the parts.
I bought some plastic scrapers, but in order for them to do any good it requires getting the vinyl so hot that it melts them. In some places the vinyl took the paint with it.
April came out later on and started scraping on the roof insulation inside the '37.
This stuff is absolutely terrible. It's a toss up between what's worse, the vinyl or the insulation. It's made out of a thick, tar like substance.
After a few minutes April said her arms couldn't take it any more so we switched and she started on the vinyl.
She got all of the driver side door finished and started on the rear door.
Here's a few more pictures of the continued process.
I bought one of the eraser wheels that are used to remove vinyl stripes and graphics. I bought the one that looks like a tractor tire and had to go to the hardware store to make a piece for it to fit to my drill. It worked well. My woodgrain is in very, very poor shape so anything above the belt line was really bad. After getting as far as I could with The Caprice's compressor I started on the wagon with the eraser.
April got almost the entire passenger side done today
The tailgate is by far in the worst shape. April become really good at getting the emblems just hot enough with the heat gun to remove them without breaking them.
And here's the driver side
I got a call from the machine shop today. Somehow he measured wrong and the engine has been bored .30 already, so I had to call Summit today and order new pistons and rings. When those get here I'll be able to send the others back for a refund. I was expecting a call to say it's finished, so this is exceptionally frustrating.
I talked to Gary and we are scheduled to put the engine back together this Saturday. I took the tote full of parts I had up to where I used to work and sandblasted them today. Tomorrow I'll prep the parts, primer and paint them, then move on to disassembling the car.
I called Maaco today and they said they can do a single stage paint for a reasonable price provided I do a lot of the work myself. I essentially intend to handle this as though I were going to paint the car myself but then right before I would get the paint gun out I'll just take it to them. My wife's other car quit running, it isn't getting fire, so it will make things much easier if I can get this done quickly. I'm going to rent a storage facility for a month to have a place to take the car apart while parts of it are in bare metal. I'm going to borrow an electric D/A sander to get to the parts of the car that have some small surface rust and then prepare them in case they have any small pitting.
