One Saturday, because of the weather, April and I went on a small road trip to west Tennessee. My computer is getting very old and besides becoming insufferably slow it has begun showing signs of hardware failure. I'm going to have to buy a new one. Fortunately my friend Nick loves building computers so he is going to help me order the parts I'll need to build my own. Realizing this I decided I would rather have a computer that I enjoyed looking at so I started searching the internet for antique radios for sale. After about a month or so I finally found this 1940 Zenith model. Typically these sell between $200-$600. The guy who had this for sale just didn't want it anymore and had it listed for $30. My intention is to carefully remove all the parts and store them. In the meantime I am going to install my computer inside this encasement. I have already designed a shaft with the help of my neighbor Craig and his mill that will allow me to mount the button on a spring loaded shaft to turn the new computer on and off and hopefully I will be able to illuminate the old radio dial when the computer is on with the orange glow of LED lights.
Back to The Clam. Finally we got two days of dry weather, and the temperature was very manageable as well. I removed the master cylinder and brake booster to replace them. This would have been very easy given that there are only 4 bolts through the firewall that they are mounted with, but access to the bottom, passenger side bolt was blocked by the steering column. Also, although the bolt itself was not rusted, the nuts and backing plate had a small amount of rust that had fused them together and made the initial movement of the bolts very difficult provided how little space there is under the dash to obtain anything that might resemble leverage. The angle of the picture doesn't truly depict how restrictive the placement of the column really was. The problem was that the bolt was too long for a regular sized socket and a deepwell socket was too long and interfered with the column. Also, a wrench could not get a good grip due to obstructions all around the bolt.
After fooling with this for a good part of the afternoon and running out of options, compounded by my failed efforts having slightly rounded off the bolt, I remembered that my friend Tate had bought me this set of special sockets as a wedding gift. They are designed to remove nuts and bolts that have been rounded off. Their slight extra length allowed me just enough room to push an extension in the end, though there wasn't enough room for it to click into place.
It's easily assumed when your start putting together contraptions like this that you're getting desperate. There are adapters there to change between different size drives.
After removing the brake parts I stripped the firewall for a little touch up, bagging and labeling all the parts and screws of course.
After some strong degreaser and wiping it down with brake parts cleaner I applied a coat of heat resistant primer and black paint to the firewall. I will eventually paint the frame rails but I'm not going to remove the age old grease from the cradle. Because this car will be a driver, all of that grease is a very useful and needed rust preventative.
When Saturday came April helped me install the remaining doors. She's not allowed to lift more than 25 pounds because of the pregnancy so I handled getting the doors in place while she did the other things like lifting the jack and holding the doors steady and I installed the bolts. This is certainly not a one person job and almost not a two person job. These doors are very, very heavy and cumbersome. This door gave us a particularly hard time.
Eventually, we got it mounted. I applied antiseeze to all the bolts, as I do with almost all of the course thread bolts I reinstall.
April really, really enjoys removing tape, so she offered to handle all of that, which was actually harder than it sounds. She also enjoys pretending to be very, very hardcore about it.
The driver door didn't give too much trouble. In fact, I almost installed this one myself after April held the door steady so I could get the bolts started. She went on to install the incredibly frustrating gas door. The shop manual said to remove the hinges from the door rather than the body because it is easier. I didn't understand why until we reinstalled the doors. The hinges on the body control the placement of the door on both the X and Y axis, relative to if you are looking at the side of the car. The hinges on the door only control the door leaning toward or away from the car at the top and bottom, which is much easier to realign.
They may need some more adjustment when it is time to install the fenders, but we hope they won't. Until then The Clam is a four door again. I sincerely, with all my being, hope I never have to pick these doors up again.
