It Rolls!
First off: a huge high five to @raylim for lending me a steering wheel so I can work on refinishing mine while still being able to move the car around the lot.
Ray responded to my request and graciously offered to ship me his spare to use as long as I need. How cool is that?
Thank you very much Ray, you epitomize the best of this community, and restore my faith in humanity.
(Custom shifter not for sale.)
Finally, after 4 months (!) I went up to my car last weekend! The trip was initially intended to watch the dyno and take my engine "home". But, there's been a delay: race cars take precedence during race season.
I totally understand, but it meant the focus of the trip had to change – and that's not necessarily as easy as it seems.
This may come as a shock to some of you, but being 531 miles away from your project car is not ideal to making progress.
It's true.
Please understand, that while so much of the world is suffering, that is NOT a whiny complaint – matter of fact it's a strong reminder to be grateful and appreciative of what we had – and what we hope to have again: the freedom and confidence to travel safely.
I have been fortunate to make some quick trips, and quickly learned that most or all work plans for a trip disappear once you get punched in the face. i.e. broken bolts, rusted parts, stupid little nearly-impossible-to-reach-things, too cold to paint, rain, etc.
As a result, those limitations and hurdles amplify the small advances and make them feel big – and this trip was a perfect example.
Since the dyno was postponed, I decided to get my car to actually roll. That sounds straightforward – and probably is straightforward for 99% of you car guys – but for me, it would feel huge.
Taking a small step back... my car barely rolled when I first got it in late August 2019, and it continued to roll for a few trips as we moved it around to allow for my brother's access to his toys.
But for the last several trips, my car has been living outside on a trailer – mostly under a cover – but not always. Ancient tires went even flatter and harder, and devolved into self-defeating wheel chocks.
It was ugly. The car did not roll.
So, the new plan: service the wheels, slap on new tires, and hopefully assess the brakes (I confess I hadn't even really looked at that stuff closely), and get this thing rolling again.
By the way, I went back and looked at my travel history. Since we bought the car in August 2019, I've flown up to the car for 7 weekends - and one of those early on I hardly worked on it - did some family stuff and spent a day visiting Mike Young's Roadster Ranch (replacement fender, 5-speed tranny).
All in, over the past 18 months, I reckon I've spent a whopping 12 or 13 days actually working on the car on location. And much of that time was spent unpacking, family time, setting up, breaking down, cleaning up, and storing for the next trip.
I just haven't had a whole lot of time to do much more than just dismantle the thing.
During that time, when I'm at home, I've spent some time clicking away at the glowing box, looking for cool wheels. The coolest ones I found were on Craigslist in Canada.
I absolutely love these wheels! (If anyone has some of these, my birthday is coming up)
But the seller didn't have PayPal, so he wanted me to send him a check, and once the check cleared, he'd ship the wheels.
Hmmm.
So I replied and asked him to send the wheels down, and once I get them, I'll send him a check.
Never heard back.
So the car remained not-rolling.
But, in time, I actually got the hubcaps looking pretty darn respectable, and decided to go with stock wheels for the time being. Clean 'em up, buy some tires, and the car will roll, I can worry about cool wheels later.
I got to my car on Thursday afternoon, drove straight to a paint supply store to get some POR-15 in case I had time to do the second coat. (Didn't happen.)
So I went to work getting the wheels off. All bolts came off easily, but since the car was half on a trailer and wouldn't roll, and I was by myself, I had to do some backwoods engineering. Stumps for jack stands in back, and since I couldn't get the jack under the front because of the trailer, I actually had to put jack stands under the slightly raised front, then jack the front of the trailer to make it do a wheelie thus lowering the trailer out from under the bottom of the tires. Voila! Wheels were off!
Took the wheels to Big O to remove the tires, then straight to my brother's shop to start sandblasting. This was my first ever sandblasting experience, and now I want to sandblast everything. No more having to shampoo the dogs and getting everything wet!
I ended up getting one wheel mostly done on Thursday.
Ate elk burgers that night. Amazing.
Friday, I spent the entire day manhandling a 20 lb wire wheel grinder thing. Brutal.
I had Popeye forearms for a day, and I finished sandblasting the last wheel just at closing time! Woohoo.
Curiously, three of the wheels are dated 3-67, and one is dated 1-68 (which is after the car was initially sold). I don't know what the spare is dated.
Supper was Venison Hirschgulasch Stew. Amazing.
Saturday was a lazy-ish morning. I dropped the wheels off at Big O to mount the tires on the prepped wheels, then ran some errands with my nephew, and bought some wheel paint, they only had one color of silver, so I got what I got. Unfortunately, another bummer of this short trip is that I just didn't have the luxury of time to paint the wheels first, let them dry, and then install the tires. I had to install the tires, then paint the wheels with the tires on. My nephew taught me the playing card technique and it worked great. It was a drizzly day so we huffed paint in one of the garages. Kids, please don't huff paint.
At some point in the fog of paint fumes and breaks in drizzle, I think I started to remove the front brake calipers, and I was very happy with the dirty but solid condition – or may have been the fumes.
So, I'm going to restore the calipers, the lines, and I got some new piston assemblies from Mike Y. Thanks Mike!
We let the paint dry that night, took an aspirin for the huffing headache, and ate Barbecued Jalapeños stuffed with dove breast, cream cheese, wrapped in bacon. Amazing.
I didn't have much time Sunday morning, but finished removing the front brakes, did some rust mitigation, pulled the trailer away from the car, and put on the front wheels. Easy peasy.
But the rear wheels still wouldn't roll – the drum brakes had locked up. I don't know what I would have done if it not for another awesome brother moment. He knew that the rear drums had an adjustment thingy, and that was likely the problem. We needed to loosen that up - but - that square adjustment bolt was frozen, and since it's kind of hard to reach, he was worried because those round off very easily. And since his "perfect tool for that" was at his shop, he improvised. He took a 1/4 inch socket extension and used the female end of that to fit over the square adjustment bolt, and a crescent wrench to turn it.
I don't think I would have thought of that, and likely would have rounded that bolt off. That worked like a charm, and the car rolls!
So, I put the rear wheels back on, and rolled it onto the trailer. My brother took it to his shop where one of his guys can hopefully start working on some of the patch panels. The bodywork is now my biggest and most immediate concern.
Next up – Brake Calipers?
