When my father died, I inherited three of his older cars. One was a 1975 4 speed Corvette he had owned for 45 years. I used to drive it some when I was younger. When I was younger still, I can remember sitting between my mother and father, before seat belt laws, and shifting as he would instruct me which gear to go to next. It has not been driven for 15 years, and has been sitting dormant in a barn with concrete floors. It is finally time to wake it up. The years are flying by and my children have never ridden in the car. It's time for them to shift the gears.
Those floors did not do Old Blue any favors and a selected number of nuts and bolts under the car have taken on the per-marxist American matrimonial social milieu; They will not separate no matter the circumstances.
I am limited on the time I can spend working on the car, and all of my tools are completely disorganized from a recent move, so just getting to work on the car has been difficult and frustrating. I miss knowing where all my things are located. I began by dragging the car out, loading it on a trailer and hauling it to my mechanic where he replaced the master cylinder, calipers and rotors. I then got new tires and drove it for a couple days before the half shaft U-joints started to communicate that they were considering changing occupations and gave far less than a two week notice. I swept the floor and drove the car back into the barn, put it on jack stands and began to remove the half shafts.
I don't have pictures of the half shaft removal as I forgot to take my camera several times when going to the barn. Removing the nuts from the U-joint straps was a nightmare. I did finally get them to loosen, however they remained very difficult to turn the entire way out, requiring that I hook two box end and crescent wrenches together for leverage. After working on them for several hours over the course of a few days I had the nuts off, but it did no good. The straps were practically welded to the U-Joints. I had gone to the barn numerous days in a row to soak the bolts and nuts with penetrating oil in preparation. I tried heat, and prying, and hammering and nothing made any progress. I finally had to cut the straps off. Fortunately, the bolts on the wheel-side flanges were not as difficult. Though I had removed the spare tire and carrier to remove the driver side nuts on the yoke, I had left the top spare tire plate in place. At this point I realized we were at war so I went ahead and fully removed all of the spare tire accoutrements. I used a paint marker on the half shafts to mark everything so I can reinstall it back from wench it came and at long last, sat the half shafts aside, knowing that soon fate will have us meeting again as I try to remove those U-joints from the half shafts. That will be a problem to figure out in the future. I've not yet decided if I'm going to attempt to make my own brace for the flanges or buy one. The brace keeps the flanges from bending when the U-joints are pressed out. As one might imagine, the U-bolt studs left in the yokes on the differential after I cut the straps will not come out of the yokes. I will have to remove the yokes from the differential, which means I will now have to pull the differential. The fun and enjoyment are spiraling out of control.
The next step was to remove the transverse leaf spring pack. Although I have driven this car for many years, and many years ago, I have never turned one wrench on this car, so this was all new to me. The car was always very reliable and never broke down or needed anything outside regular maintenance. I used a pair of vice grips (real, legitimate vice grips, because the stamping on the side says as much) clamped to the spring to allow the jack to take the pressure off of the leaf spring bolt without slipping and causing me to have to learn how to type with one hand.
Once the pressure was off of the bolt I tried to turn the bolt and to no ones surprise, nothing happened. I tried the limited edition breaker bar extended cut, but it was actually bending my breaker bar, so it didn't take me long to decided to cut the bolt, and that's what I did. Both of them.
Next would be the center spring pack mounting bolts, but first I loosed the exhaust hanger in the rear and in the middle of the car. I couldn't understand why my spring pack looked different than all of the other ones I saw pictures of online. After closer examination I realized that my spring pack had a plate, of sorts, clipped underneath it. I used a screwdriver to remove the rear and a single bolt was holding it in the front. After removal, it looked much more familiar to what I'd seen on the internet.
Unfortunately, before I even began turning a bolt I noticed a big crack in one of the mounting flanges. As I feared, it was completely broken off. I suppose I'll also have to purchase a new differential cover. Fortunately, I was able to get the bolt out of the broken tab because after the broken tab turned a bit, it wedged nicely against the springs and allowed the bolt to come out. All of the other bolts came out with no fanfare. I removed the springs, using the jack to prevent them from falling on the now-unsupported exhaust and sat them to the side.
All of preceding took place over several days. At this point a giant storm hit with tornadic winds and flash flooding. There is a creek next to the barn and it quickly rose to levels I've never seen in my lifetime. The water came out of the banks and water did get into the barn. Unfortunately, all of my tools were on the floor of the barn. After finishing the spring pack removal, and knowing it would be a few days before I could return, I had put everything that would fit back in my tools box, so nothing was completely ruined, however I did have to completely clean and oil every single tool I had taken to the barn, which at this point was substantial. This was a long and tedious process. Fortunately, nothing was damaged, and none of the cars in the barn were effected. The worst part was that the barn floor was quite damp and muddy, which I couldn't clean until it dried. The middle of the barn dried quickly, so the pictures look decently dry, but where I was sitting was wet and muddy. No tools could be sat on the ground, and I had to make sure no part of me touched the ground or I would have been covered in thick mud. Fortunately, I had a creeper. This was the first time water had ever reached this height in over 50 years.
The next step was the camber and shock mount bolts. I would expect everyone would not be shocked to learn that this bolt has no desire to relocate.
I provided the bolt a deluge of penetrating oil over a period of days, accompanied by heat and hammering. I put a bolt on the end and used a series of progressively larger hammers ending in a sledge hammer, which did nothing. In anticipating of one day hoping to remove the upper differential crossmember bolts I had purchased three, two-jawed pullers. I attempted to use but they also had no effect on the cantankerous bolt. At this point, I am at a loss of how to remove this. I have no tools adequate to handle this, and I am considering if cutting it out would be possible. At this point I am unclear how to proceed.
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