All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

It has been exceptionally busy for the last long while, and with winter now upon us and the days being very short and very cold, combined with the fact I now have to work every other Saturday, I practically have no time to devote to fixing things on The Clam.

The blower motor fan continued to melt the in-line fuse.  After doing some research and talking to a couple guys that used to work in the dealerships when these were new I found that this was a known problem for some of these cars, but not all of them.  There were even some service bulletins from General Motors about the issue.  Several solutions were offered.  So far, my first alternative seems to be working, but I'm not yet convinced it will be a permanent fix.  I installed a blade style fuse.  According to some opinions, the spring loaded, glass style fuse holders did not give enough contact area to deliver the full 12 volts of the battery which caused resistance, which caused heat, which caused melting.  A blade style fuse is supposed to give an adequate connection.  So far, there don't seem to be any problems.  If this does not work the other option recommended and what some of the guys said they used to do back in the day is to put a breaker in the system.  If my first solution fails that is the direction I will go next.

Here is the style fuse I soldered into place.  This style is called an ATC fuse, or blade fuse.  The glass style fuse that was originally in place is called an AGC fuse.

Before next summer, I am going to need to install an electric fan in front of the condenser.  The car never overheats except for very hot and humid days while it is sitting still in traffic with the air conditioner on.  This could very likely be caused by having a 455 bored .60 over.  Wiring the fan to the fan clutch so that it turns on whenever the clutch is engaged should remedy the problem.

It took a very long time to get The Caprice into the body shop.  It also took a very long time and a lot of effort to find a passenger side taillight and trim.  I finally found one online in a junkyard, but I couldn't tell you where.  I looked at so many and called so many junkyards to find one that was in useable condition my head was swimming with taillights. 

Also, since the car was going to be painted anyway, I sanded down a little toy Caprice a friend had given me and had the painter shoot it to match.

The engine also had a vibration at a certain RPM.  I found that it was the harmonic balancer.  General Motors still makes the part number so dad helped me replace it.  These balancers are a cone shaped fit, which means they do not require a puller to remove or install and I was able to leave the radiator in the car to remove this.  Once the pulleys and belts were out of the way it came off with a few gentle taps from the hammer.  It actually took longer to get the belts and accessories loosened than to replace the part.

Several years ago I met a man named Jerry on an internet forum about stovebolt GM 6 cylinder engines.  He has a vast amount of knowledge about these old machines and also used to teach a shop class at a high school in Nashville.  He now lives about 5 miles from Alabama.  Several years ago I replaced the original transmission in my '57 with an original 1957 overdrive.  Shortly after I installed it, the overdrive transmission began slipping out of 3rd gear.  In this particular type of transmission, 3rd gear and the 3rd gear synchros are made together and are not reproduced which means I would need to find an original in good shape. 

Borg Warner made overdrive transmissions for all major automobile companies in the 50s and 60s.  Essentially they would take a stock transmission and mount a planetary overdrive system in place of the tailshaft.  The non-overdrive transmission for the '57 was a Muncie SM-318.  They used this same transmission from about 1955 to 1968, give or take a few years.  The only difference between the  overdrive and non-overdrive transmission is one hold drilled in the case for the reverse lockout for the overdrive.  Jerry happened to have a non-overdrive SM-318 attached to an old 283 he had that had sitting for a long time so he sold it to me and we took the internals out of it and used them to fix mine, along with the small parts kit I was able to purchase on the internet.  His transmission also had the beefier input shaft, so we used that since it was already apart and in good condition.  

Dad and I took a Saturday and drove down to Jerry's house where we spent all day working on the transmission in Jerry's very crowded shop.

We recently went to eat at a restaurant about an hour away for Mom and Jacob's birthdays.  There were 9 people total and we were going to have to take two vehicles, except that The Clam holds exactly 9 people, so we all loaded up and went together.  People on the interstate were actually taking pictures of us.

It's Getting Hot In Here

It's been a while since I wrote about my progress, but I have been very busy.  I was in a mad rush to try to get the car finished in time to make it to the huge car show in Pigeon Forge and between the car and other projects and things which broke and needed fixing I was staying up until around 11 o'clock every night working after I got home from work.

When I went to mount the receiver I found that the top, passenger side condenser mount was interfering.

I ended up having to remove the condenser, cut the mount and reshape it to give the receiver room to mount where it is supposed to.  It was a time consuming process to get the measurements correct.

In the end there was just enough clearance for everything to fit just right.

When I went to install the brackets for the last time the rubber insulators finally fell apart.  I searched and searched everywhere to find something rubber that could replace the original mounts.  After a long search I found the small, rubber discs that mount toilets to the floor as a suitable replacement.  I had to buy three packages of them and five of them on top of one another to get the proper distance and firmness.

Then it was time to make all the hoses fit.  The new system was a hodgepodge of old, standard size fittings and newer, -AN style fittings.  I numbered each hose and labeled each end of that hose and drew up a detailed description, with pictures, so that the hose shop would have no issues when making the new hoses.  It took over an hour just to write the diagram and in the end he ended up looking at it and, without even reading it, telling me it would be better if I just made sure I was there when he made them.  That caused me to have to take a few days of my lunch break at the hose-making place.  There were, of course, complications with parts not being ordered and problems of the sort which made my deadline for making Pigeon Forge very difficult.  I ended up working until late at night and going in to the hose-making store early before work.

Along with the new POA valve which I had rebuilt and recalibrated for 134a, I mounted the new compressor so I could get all the measurements and mock up I needed.  Because I eliminated the muffler from the original compressor I had to get adapters for the rear of this compressor and make sure the new hoses matched those fittings.  After I had all the hoses made I realized that the original muffler had the high-side service port for the air conditioner system and when I removed it I had also removed the service port.  I had no where to attach the high-side hose to charge the air system.  After almost an entire night of research I found where I needed to install the service port and happened to remember that the hose-shop had one laying on the shelf.  It worked out perfectly and happened to be exactly what I needed.

Despite my best efforts, we weren't able to make it to Pigeon Forge in The Clam.  We were supposed to leave on Thursday after I got off work and I had scheduled the car to have the air system charged at work.  While attempting to charge the system we discovered that the air conditioner was causing The Clam to overheat.  I couldn't risk overheating and breaking down on the side of the road in 100 degree heat with humidity with April and a baby who isn't used to those type temperatures.  After spending a lot of time experimenting with varying amounts of refrigerant I finally threw in the towel and we drove my parents' very non-exciting Chevrolet HHR to Pigeon Forge.  Good for gas mileage, bad for memorable vacations, however I must say that having a working air conditioner was worth it because that weekend was very, very hot and humid.  Even though we didn't have The Clam, dad did haul the cycles up in his trailer and we managed to get in a good ride.

Along in all of this fun my mower quit cutting so I had to learn how to diagnose a faulty PTO

Since I literally left for Pigeon Forge immediately after finding out there was an overheating issue I had to wait until after the vacation to find the problem.  The first thing I found was that the fan clutch was not working at full capacity so I replaced it with a new one.  This helped, but at idle the car would still overheat and the air temperatures out of the vents was very warm.  I have determined it will be necessary to install an electric, pusher style fan in front of the condenser to cool it at idle.  This is only necessary on the hottest, most humid days when idling, but I still can't have the car overheating and leaving April and Rose stranded.  My plan is to research what type of electric fans work best and have the best quality and go from there.  I'll have to wire it up to come on whenever the compressor is on, which will work fine for this application because the compressor doesn't cycle.

April test drove the wagon on a trip to a nearby town to test out the air conditioning and the notorious blower motor quit working again.  When she called and told me I knew what to expect, another melted in-line fuse.  Sure enough, that's what the problem was.  I knew it wasn't the fan motor this time because I had just replaced it so I removed the wire that powers the blower motor entirely from the harness.  It's a 10 gauge wire that runs directly from the alternator back to a couple relays.  Each blower setting has a separate resistor coil it runs through except for the highest setting, which has it's own relay and proves full voltage to the motor.

In the wiring I found this abomination.  Among several other splices there was this one that someone had simply twisted back together and put black tape over.

I used a voltmeter to check the voltage and ohms of the entire blower motor system.  I'm fairly certain that this section of the harness was the main problem.  If not, it certainly needed addressing.  I made a new section of harness with new 10 gauge wire.  I had to special order the in-line fuse with 10 gauge wire.  The biggest I could buy locally had 12 gauge wire.  Because this wire will carry the full 12 volts of the battery I soldered all the connections together rather than crimping them and used heat shrink tubing to protect everything.

I removed the original fitting from the harness clip and soldered it onto the end of the new wire so it fits back into the clip as it originally did.  If this fixes the problem I can move on to the next projects.  The carburetor has a pretty bad hesitation and stumble which I need to get addressed so that I can show the transmission shop how the torque converter is shudder when it shifts out of overdrive.  Then I need to find why I still have a driveline vibration.  The engine also seems to have a vibration that I want to have an expect look at.  Right now I suspect either a bad harmonic balancer or a bad engine/transmission mount.  Then I can move on to the small exhaust leak on the driver's side exhaust manifold.  I changed the gasket but it didn't fix the problem so I'm probably going to have to remove the manifold and have it milled flat.  Then, after all that, I can return to trying to get the rear window to seal properly.  For now we have two buckets in the rear that catch all of the water that makes its way in, which at this point has been limited to a small amount.

The Condensed Story

As I mentioned before, I am trying to make this air conditioning reach peak efficiency due to the large interior volume we have to cool and the many windows that allow the heat inside.  Also, since we only have vents in the front we'll need everything we can get to keep any rear passengers cool.  This means I'll have to take my AC system a little bit further than some of the typical conversions from R12 to 134a.  Part of that is changing the condenser from a tube and fin design, which was used with R12, to a parallel flow design.

The condenser takes a superheated gas from the compressor and uses the cool, outside air that comes through the grill to cool that gas into a high pressure liquid.  A parallel flow condenser is approximately 1/3 more efficient than the older tube and fin style.  I ordered the largest universal condenser I could find and then the project before me was to remove the old one and mount the new one.

The condenser most easily comes out from the front, plus I didn't want to have to remove, again, the front components from the engine so I could remove the radiator, which would mean draining the expensive coolant, just to take the condenser out from the rear.  First, the front bumper and grill had to come out.  Then I had to remove this center brace and the square shaped piece of metal at the top which covers the hood latch.  I noticed that one of the ground wires for the 4-note horns I had installed had broken off.  This ground wire is redundant due to the fact that the horn also grounds through the body by mounting to the frame, but I still like to have them in place.

The new condenser, on top, is somewhat smaller than the original and almost half as thin.  This was the largest unit I could find and was advertised as being for heavy duty purposes and for setups that have two AC systems, which would be for vehicles that have an air conditioner for the front and rear, so I believe it will be sufficient for our purposes.

Fortunately there is a large scrap pile behind where I work and I was able to scavenge two old damaged brackets that had been thrown away.  They were strong, 1/8" steel and shaped perfectly to save me a lot of work.

April was washing my parent's vehicle because we had borrowed it while the AC was out on our 4 door Caprice and Jacob happened to stop by so he watched Rose while we were busy working.

Fortunately I was able to use the existing shapes of the old brackets to cut out the shapes I needed and then drill the holes in the appropriate places.  It still took a lot of time to make each one, but the existing shapes of the old brackets saved me from a lot of welding that I would have otherwise had to do. 

I had to make room for the lower fitting and room for a wrench to connect the fitting.  I finished this bracket on Friday after work.  Even though they won't be seen I still like to round off all the edges and make them look presentable.  Even if they are hidden at least I'll know they're in there and were done right.

It took me all day Saturday, after going in to work half a day, to finish the remaining three brackets.  I started with the lower driver's side, which also required no welding.  Here are the bottom two brackets after being finished.  I used small screws to temporarily hold them in place.  I'll need to weld nuts to the back of each bracket after I have the location of the condenser completely finished.  There is very little extra room for the condenser and it must sit exactly in place within a variance of about half an inch and it also must lean back at an angle to match the lean of the radiator.  This is made a little more difficult because the brackets must mount to the core support, which is not leaned back and is perpendicular to the ground.

The upper mounts were much more difficult because they had more complex bends, were much harder to see and access, required welding and their position had to mount the condenser in the exact right position in reference to its up/down, left/right and forward/aft position.

In order to get the exact fit I had to cut each piece to fit together and then bolt them separately in place and tack weld them together. 

It was a tight fit here on the passenger side but there was even less room when I did the driver's side

This allowed me to get the exact angle I needed

I completed the welding and finished grinding for the final fitment

Because there was so little room on the driver's side I had to put a relief cut in the bracket and bend it to make it fit inside the limited space.  I welded up the gap after I had the correct bend.  I also used the same process of tack welding the bracket and then finishing it once removed.  This one was particularly difficult to fit the ground cable and welding gun inside the very narrow space I had to work in while everything was bolted into the car.

The end result

All together I would say it took about ten hours to make all four brackets.  I still need to weld nuts on the back of the part of each bracket that mounts to the tabs on the condenser and then I can paint and install them for good.

 And I have a lot of spare bracket parts left over for future projects

Air Today, Gone Tomorrow

The air stopped blowing cold on April's 4 door Caprice.  I suppose it has a small leak.  We don't have the time or money to fix it right now on top of the fact that the choke has, for some reason, decided that it will not allow itself to set correctly.  The car began slowly becoming harder and harder to start, grinding the starter longer and longer until finally we had to use starter fluid to start it.  Once it had been started for the day it was fine the rest of the day.  I think I finally have that fixed, though I don't know how.  I simply reset the choke again, essentially to right back where it was before I played with it.  The car is still running R12 refrigerant so I found a couple cans to put back in.

The previous driveshaft I had made was too short, causing a driveline vibration.  I had this new one made and it has taken care of much of the problem, but the car still has a slight vibration when deceleration and a somewhat bad vibration when coasting in neutral at speed.

The yoke is finally inside the tailshaft the proper amount, 1" of stickout.

Rose supervised while I put the new driveshaft in.

While the carburetor was away being rebuilt I took the time to get the engine touched up.  Except for the leaking carburetor I honestly have no idea how it got this bad.  The car hasn't even been driven very much considering the last year we've been driving it.

I finally got everything painted and reinstalled.

I reinstalled all the brackets but I couldn't get the power steering pump pulled tight and tighten the bolts on it at the same time.  Everyone was gone and this was the last thing I needed to have the car running again.  I called my sister, who lives in the same neighborhood, and she came over and while I pried on the pump she tightened the bolt enough for it to stay in place.  April pulled up right when we got done so we staged an exact photo reenactment.

It's beyond time to get the air conditioning working on The Clam.  It currently has the original R12 refrigerant system, which is non-functional, but at least it is complete.  I plan to convert the car to 134a refrigerant due to the fact that R12 has become so expensive because of government regulations mandating that it be phased out.  Many people will simply change the fittings on an air conditioning system to accept the adapters for 134a and then remove the R12 and refill with 134, but I have discovered after a ridiculous amount of research that this is not the most efficient way to convert a system from R12 to 134.

I'm not sure if I'll cover all parts of the system, and I know I won't be able to scientifically explain every detail of how the system works, but I have found a group of air conditioning experts on the internet that can explain what to change and why, for the most part.  There is still a lot of research to be done due to the fact there have been so many different types of systems and configurations over the years.

First, the compressor.  The original compressor, the one in the picture below, is called an A6.  It took a lot of energy to turn this compressor but its performance still to this day cannot be beat.  Unfortunately, as with most things, quality in the products available has dropped so significantly that purchasing an A6 today is a gamble at best, most of the time resulting in a compressor that has a lifespan of the typical goldfish.  Also, the front seals, having been rebuilt time and time again with cores, are very prone to leaking and slinging grease all over the engine.  For these reasons I have decided to not replace my compressor with an A6, despite it's performance advantages.

There are companies that make new, aftermarket compressors, such as Sanden and a few others.  Many people use these with great success.  They can tend to have less capacity than is necessary in many cases and this leads to the crux of my problem.  Because we have a station wagon, which has an enormous amount of cubic feet to cool, as well as a large area of window space which allows passive solar energy to cause a huge amount of heat to build up inside the cabin with the windows up, it is very important that I get the greatest amount of cooling capability from this system as possible.  The newer style compressors are not only smaller, capacity wise, but they also require expensive mounts to allow them to fit to older engines.  The other option would be to fabricate custom mounts which would take hours and hours to achieve professional, acceptable results.  My solution was a compressor made to fit in the original mounts but has newer internals with 10 cylinders.  It is said to be much lighter, quieter and more efficient to run.  I found when attempting to order one that there were two types of cut-off systems used and this determined which compressor I needed to order.  One was a superheat system and one was a high pressure system.  Basically, because these older type systems do not cycle the compressor on and off like a new system, these were features that allowed the compressor clutch to disengage if the freon was too low and the compressor could be damaged. 

The next area to address is the POA valve.  I won't go into the very detailed and scientific specifics, partly because I can barely understand them when I read them, much less explain them to someone else, but secondly it would be quite lengthy and not needed here.  In short, the POA prevents the system from freezing over and manages the psi within the system, among other things.  The important part to note is that I found that a POA valve for an R12 system is set around 32psi.  In order for the 134 freon to cool properly the POA must be recalibrated to 28psi.  This will cause a 10 to even 15 degree difference in dash vent temperatures.  Adjustment can be done at home with custom attachments made to fit an air compressor by using a set of gauges and turning a nut inside the inlet of the POA until 28psi is obtained, but if the valve does not work it must be cut apart, fixed and rewelded.  I elected to send my original POA to a company in Florida to ensure it is properly tested, cleaned, recalibrated and fixed if necessary.  The company is only able to repair original Frigidaire valves.

These original POA valves are becoming very difficult to find and are very expensive if you can find them.  Replacement valves are available which convert the system to a new, cycling style system where the compressor will cut the clutch in and out to maintain the proper pressures within the system.  The topic of cycling versus non-cycling systems is still somewhat debated but many of the more knowledgeable air conditioning experts stand behind a non-cycling system being as being a better performer.  I intend to keep the original POA, recalibrated to 134a, which will keep my system as it originally was designed, a non-cycling system.

 

The condenser sits in front of the radiator and essentially uses the outside air to cool a superheated gas into a high pressure liquid.  R12 systems originally came with what is known as a tube and fin style condenser.  These are less efficient than modern, parallel flow condensers.  This was not an issue with R12 because of the chemical makeup of the molecules, however 134 is different and requires the 1/3 more efficient style parallel flow condenser.  In order to get access to the condenser I will have to remove the front bumper and grill.  Also, anytime an air conditioning system is opened to the elements the receiver/dryer must be replaced, which on this car is a massive pain in the hind-side, but with the front end already removed it will greatly facilitate this step.

Once again, the bumper and grill had to come off.  After getting the measurements of the condenser I will have to find a universal part and custom install it.  My original condenser is 28.25x1.75x16 inches, which is a hefty sized condenser by today's standards.  It was frustrating to think of how long this car sat with the condenser exposed with such easy access, but I didn't know then what I know now.

I ordered a new evaporator core, which mounts in a compartment inside the firewall.  This part has been discontinued for these Pontiacs but I found one in Texas and it was very pricey.  Unfortunately, beggars can't be choosers.  I had an older mechanic that works on older vehicles replace the core.  He was also going to install a new receiver/dryer but it turned out the company sent me the wrong one so I'll have to do that later.  It turned out that the older mechanic strongly disagreed with me changing the air conditioning system and though I didn't push the issue at all, I couldn't get him to understand what needed changing.  I ended up going and picking the car back up after the evaporator core was installed to finish the rest of the work myself, which means I've had to put a large amount of time into learning about air conditioning systems because I knew absolutely nothing about them before and I think I will know only just enough to hopefully get this task finished.  I can understand the mechanic not wanting me to change the system because the original system, as designed, was a better system than anything available today.  However, the world has changed and R12 is becoming difficult to find, cannot be bought without a license and I believe will soon or eventually become illegal.  Also, with the poor quality control of today's remanufactured and rebuilt compressors it just, to my dismay, is not the same as restoring an air conditioning system in the 1980s or before.  We plan to keep this car a long time and I have to prepare myself for what tomorrow will bring.