Dad and I went over to Woodson's house and finished his '56. The points were very far off from correct, so I regapped them, reinstalled the distributor, bought a new rotor button since I lost the last one and it is nowhere to be found, bought a new distributor shaft gasket and installed it, reinstalled everything else and put the plug wires back. I noticed that the rotor button wasn't pointing to the #1 cylinder. Since we weren't sure if the car was correct when I removed the distributor I found top dead center on the compression stroke and reset the timing from scratch. The original shop manual calls for 8 degrees of timing, but testimonials from many people on the Trifive online forums state that their cars run better on today's gas with more advance. I ended up setting the advance to 10 degrees and after tightening the distributor it moved to 11.5, which I left because many others have said they run far more timing than even this. After finishing all this the car started and seemed to run great as far as timing and ignition is concerned. The choke on Woodson's carburetor was non functional and the carburetor had a pretty bad dead spot in it even after fully warm. I would like to go remove the carburetor and rebuild it and get the choke working. If it were my car I definitely would, however since it's not my car I am afraid I may get it torn apart and not be able to get it back together and end up in worse shape than when I started.
Dad got his '71 Catalina out because my nephew, Jacob, wanted to use it for the homecoming parade since he is in High School now. When they were letting the top down there was a loud pop and its top jammed. Dad and I had both had some issues the last couple of times we had let the top up and down. One of the cross-bow supports was the culprit. What happened was one of the cross-bow supports used to be sewn into the fabric of the top and this kept that support pulled toward the back of the car as the top let up and down. When the fabric tore, being very old and brittle, it allowed the bar to shift forward and wedge in the workings of the top. This top does not fold down like most convertible tops. From 1971-1976, GM B-bodies had what was known as a scissor top. This meant that the left and right lateral support arms folded across one another when let down. The bar had wedged between the arms and the leverage of the moving parts caused the cross-bow to break one of the welds in the frame of the top and bend a bracket out of shape.
Dad and I removed one of the arms of the top, took vise-grips and, after a lot of effort, bent the piece back to where it was supposed to be. Had the top gone back up before bending this piece back into shape it likely would have poked a hole in the top. After getting the top to where it could one again close, dad brought the car over to my house so I could re-weld the piece. We took much care in protected the original interior.
Here is a picture of the afflicted area after the repair. The weld closest to the bolt hole had broken and the upside-down-L-shape bracket had bent all the way to the left, causing the sharp edge to point straight up into the fabric. After welding it back I cleaned the area, primered and repainted it.
There were some areas on the floor of my brother-in-law's trailer, the red one I've used to haul engines and lawn mowers, that needed to be welded back together. While I had the welder out in the driveway I went and got the trailer and welded the back of the mesh floor back down.
I drove The Catalina in a friend's wedding a couple years ago and right before they got in, the windows quit working. When I got home, they started working again and have been fine since, though admittedly received very little use. When dad and Jacob got the car out the windows were again no longer functional. I followed the shop manual and diagnosed a bad window relay.
I took the relay apart, hoping to be able to repair it. One, for the sake of repairing the original, and another, because a correct replacement costs 50-80 dollars, depending on the source and availability at the time it's needed. I found the electromagnetic coil to be the problem. From all the research I've done online all sources indicate a coil is not repairable and a new relay must be sourced. I cannot determine why there is no continuity from one end of the coil to the other because there are no visible breaks. I can only determine that somewhere within the windings something has broken.
At long last, I finally was able to test out the '57 overdrive transmission floor jack mount. The first test was seeing if it would mount to the floor jack. It did, however it would not mount to dad's new floor jack when we tried later.
The transmission fit perfectly in the mount, sat level and was very secure. Not only does it keep level while being raised, it also makes moving the transmission around the driveway much, much easier. Also, when working on the bench it allows the transmission to be in the upright position, rather than on its back, while being worked on. Rose gave her official approval.
Dad came over early this morning and helped me swap transmissions. Getting the car fully raised on four jackstands is always a task I truly hate doing. When a car is raised as high as this one, I find it necessary to raise the jackstands in stages and there's always the fear of it falling while being raised.
I was curious as to how useful, if at all, the new mount would prove to be. It took about three days to build. I very quickly determined that if it had taken five weeks to build it would have been worth it. The old transmission came out with very, very little physical effort of lifting or straining. Dad raised, lowered and maneuvered the transmission jack while I was under the car working with the transmission. We were able to slide the transmission back, lower it down and pull it out the front. Then we laid the old transmission to the side, put the new one on the mount and slid it into place, raised it up and slid it into the bell housing. We were able to spin the mount 180 degrees when the transmission was on the ground to make moving it where we needed easier. Physically speaking, this mount made the job so much easier there is no comparison or account of its usefulness.
I recently purchased some GL-1, yellow-metal safe gear oil for use in older vehicles such as this car and the '31. Essentially, anything that contains brass components. A while back I purchased this pump and I have to say there is no other way to put gear oil into a car. This tool is very inexpensive and is essentially priceless for the few times this job needs to be done. There is practically no mess or spill and it screws right onto the top of any standard sized jug.
On an overdrive transmission it is vitally important to remember to fill both the overdrive unit and the main case. They are connected via an internal relief hole, however both must be filled.
After filling the transmission and buttoning up a few other things I took it for a test drive. It functioned as it is supposed to. The only difference I noted between this and the previous overdrive, before it was ruined by being rebuilt, is that before you could disengage the overdrive by simply pushing the gas to the floor. Now it requires a quick stab of the gas to the floor to disengage. A slow push to the floor will not result in disengagement, which is used for things like passing or going up a grade. At first I believe the disengage relay was not functioning, but after I realized it's new operation I found it to be preferable to the old way.
