Tag Archives: Car Parts

Mustang Hose Woes

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I was about to start the pillar moldings mini project when I ran into a couple mechanical issues.

About a week ago the Mustang began squealing when pushed to high revs.  That normally indicates one of several problems.

1. It could be a water pump

2.  It could be the power steering pump

3.  It could be a pulley

4. It could be a bolt that was holding the alternator bracket to the engine worked itself out and was in contact with the fan belt.

5. It could be a combination of the any of these.

Now the Mustang did, every once in a while, drip some fluid from the power steering control value but it wasn’t a huge deal.

Well, Saturday I went to start her and the battery was dead.  It’s over 3 years old and I had left the lights on the day before and had to have it jump started.  So off to the auto parts store I went and pick up a new 3 year battery and stuck it. When I started the engine up, it made the squeal and I decided I needed to fix this, before the pillar molding.

So with a neighbor revving the engine I noticed the bolt protruding from the water pump/block ( it passes through left side water pump housing in to the block).  With the revs the fan belt would flex and briefly hit the bolt.   This bolt was “custom” made when we were fitting everything up to reman’ed long block and was about 7 or 8 inches long.

It took a bit to get that back in place, had to loosen up the alternator’s other two supports and toss a little loctite on the threads and she was good to go…..almost…..

Yeah….option #5 above was the correct answer BTW.

Started it up and there was still a squeal – not the same squeal but clearly an ‘accompaning’ squeal.  Shortly after that a power steering hose let go and well liquid does what gravity  make it do and I spent the afternoon cleaning the driveway.  So there went my allotted time for Saturday.   So replacing both hoses seem the best way to go and they’ll  be in today.  Right now it’s at the shop down the street, I had no time to undertake this task at the moment, will be traveling the next couple weeks.

One of my travels takes me to the National Corvette Museum.  I’ll spend an entire day there which include the assembly plant tour.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

V8 Reference Book

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I grab every book I think is useful in any of my hobbies.  I happened to be at the mall the other day and had some time kill and wonder down to Borders books store.  Pick up a book entitled “Ultimate American V-8 Engine Data Book” 2 Edition  by Peter Sessler, published MotorBooks.

This book has engine identification codes, component casting codes, internal dimensions and specs, and power and torque ratings.

It goes back as far as 1952 and covers Fords, GM, Mopar, and AMC, Packard and Studebaker.  It includes big blocks and small blocks.  There is a lot of information.

I learned from this book that all of the engines possible for the Corvette in 1984 were rated @ 205 hp.  The CFI was the main power supplier, but it also had listed a couple TPI’s (engine suffix code ZFC), TBI (engine suffix code ZFJ – supposedly for export only) and a 4v for California (engine suffix code ZFF).

They also inform you of the transmissions that go with the engines.

There are listings for cylinder heads parts or casting # as well as intake and exhaust manifolds as well.

I think this one is worth the  $30.00.

This is a great transition to introduce an up and coming feature for this blog.

I love engines…(duh).  To me the history of development, what was used when and where and maybe even why can be fascinating.  I’ll be tossing out specs and the like and hopefully some, ” I would have never guessed that” information.  Now, I don’t have this all in my head, it will be researched stuff or some experiences. (My 1974 Torino was a good case study..tell you the story soon).

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Abandoned Cars – Contest – Win a Hot Rod DVD

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One of my favorite things are abandoned cars.  Every year I get the Hemming calendar of abandoned vehicles and look forward to various car publications that have a section where they highlight these photos.   

One of my fondest memories growing up was playing across the road from where we lived with an old Plymouth, 1950’s vintage that was left in the field.  I remember my dad saying after I asked him if it would run, that it needed a carburetor.  My brother and I tried to fashion one out of can and some metal fins from an old ice tray.  This was back in the late 60’s, we were pretty young.   

Out here in the southwest you use to be able to see them all the time.  The desert really knew how to tear down a car.  As late as the mid 90’s you could still find them along the side of the road of major highways and if you dared to head out in to the mountains of southern Arizona, trek up the nearly impassable mining roads you’d find them.  There would be anything from the 1930 to late 1950.  Some would be sitting right beside the road or a mine and many could be down the mountain a ways, not a road in sight.  When they died the owners left ’em where they fell. But often, since the road was so narrow, they would push them off the side and down the mountain.   

During the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s I spend some time in the mountain, looking for ghost mining towns and generally in join the trips with relatives.  You would find abandoned car dotting the dirt roads that wound up and down the canyons.  Somewhere in the mid 1990’s the Forestry Department started fencing off the old abandoned mines and as part of a plan to allow the areas to return to their natural state, blocking off the mountain roads to make impassible to all but the most daring 4 wheelers. eeeerrrkkkkk….I’ve been places in a 1970 Monte Carlo that some folks with 4 wheel drive won’t go.  Part of that initiative was to haul out the old wrecks that had been there for decades.  So a lot of them are gone.   

I recently began look for abandoned cars as a hobby and photograph them.  So I thought maybe some of my readers might what to join in and catalog the wrecks and their locations and well as photographs.   

Then I thought, maybe a contest would be fun.  So I’m looking for the readership to email me photos of abandoned car that you run across.  Of course there are some rules.   

What qualifies as an abandoned car?  I’m going to be pretty liberal here and we’ll extend the criteria to include neglected backyard finds as well. It has to appear to be pretty much untouched and neglected.   

Two more rules:   

You have to provide a general location and it has to be an original photo, not snagged from the internet.   

Here is one example.   

The house in the photo had been empty for some time according to the locals in Tombstone, Az.  These three cars were in the back yard covered with weeds, trees and debris.   

This a 1950's Chevy pick up. I wasn't allowed to get any closer.

 

Next in the same yard was this:   

Chevy Monte Carlo

 

And this Ford coupe:   

Ford Coupe

 

I’ve one more good one..but I’ll save that for later.  

For the first two individuals writing in with a good photo of an abandoned or neglected car, I have a DVD from the Hot Rod Magazine Library “Dream-Build-Drive” collection.  

You can email it to me (timsweet@cox.net) or post to my Facebook page (look me up: Tim Sweet).   

Thanks for reading.   

Tim

SCCA Event 4/25/2010 Auto Cross Part II

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So the other cost I mentioned will be in the area of tires.

In this event I just ran with my street tires 255/50 ZR 16  BFG GForce Sport and stock rims (only chrome). There was a lot of tire spinning and some smoking.  The surface of the track was…well lets just say less the optimun..ok…fine…it was horrible.  (You could toss in a few cuss words in front of horrible and you wouldn’t be over dramatizing.)  It was black top, cracked, uneven and there was grass and weeds growing on the far end. The tires looked rough when I finished the 10 runs.  Too many more events (this was the second auto cross on these tires) and I think I’d have to replace them.

So that really means that to protect the street tires and the chrome rims, I really ought to have an other set of tires and rims.  Now you are talking money that many of us average guys aren’t going to spring for.  This is true for vette owners..tires are not cheap for the older vettes. Not so for my co-worker running his Civic, they are reasonable. 

Take my C4  the tires and the Wheels are uni-directional.  Not unusual for tires, but my 1984 C4 rims only go one way and are labeled left front, right front and the same for the rear.  I do have the original set of rims that I will eventually restore to the factory aluminum and clear coat, but right now they would for auto crossing.  But the rubber can run upwards of $700.00 and if I put racing rubber on it, according to SCCA rules it will change my class.

The last cost is the “I broke it cost.”  They could be just about anything on a car that’s racing.  Anything mechanical, brakes (oh..they will wear out a lot faster in auto cross…or at least the way I do it!!!!), undercarriage,  right down to the dreaded “cone damage”. (yeah…yeah….I know you aren’t suppose to hit them…I know the object of the race..but man did I kill some of them ‘good’..no doubt!!!)   I did no damage to the vette but I did see a Evo that took out a portion of his front air dam.

In fact the vette performed flawlessly, only problem was the driver.  I’ll get to that next blog.  You’ll laugh and I’ll give you my times and points and we’ll talk about PAX times and classes.

Thanks for reading.

SCCA Event 4/25/2010 Auto Cross Part I

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The name of my blog includes “racing”.  This isn’t meant to be watching on TV and reporting back, it’s meant to be my events.  My blog title also includes  “Average” and includes budget as well.  (You might as well include ‘time’, as in average amount of time to spend on the hobby.) 

I just finished running a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) event.  It was a blast!!  I’ll get to my times in a bit, but first, let’s talk about cost of this particular event. 

Straight up to join SCCA there is the yearly fee for the national membership and there is the fee for your regional membership. Total cost here was $80.00.   Now the events are not free.  In my regional club which run events in the Tucson areas and Phoenix as well, they have to offerings.  They have a round for points and time and they have the time only round.  There are separate prices for each. 

Today when I showed up (you can pre register and save ..I think…$10.00) filled out all the paper work and went to pay.  The fellow taking the money asked if I wanted “time only” and  I’m thinking…do I only want to be timed…so I said “No.” and he said “That will be $30.00.”  So I paid. 

Now I have co-worker who talked me into joining SCCA and he attends regular events at the local drag strip – the auto cross is held in the huge drag pit/parking area.   He cleared up my misunderstanding and said if I wanted the “full” experience I need to go back and say yes I wanted the ‘time-only’ round as well.  That cost me another $10.00. 

So putting this together we are at 120 big ones this month to race.  Not too bad, I’d have to say. 

There are more costs and I’ll get to that in next portion of this subject. 

SCCA Event 4/25/2010

Auto Factoids for 4/11/2010

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We have a couple big ones this week. 

4/13/1904   Cadillac plant burned to the ground.  More info on this site:   http://www.car-nection.com/yann/dbas_txt/Factq-s.htm 

Hey, on the same date in 1965 Pontiac produce car number 10 million!!  We miss Pontiac!! 

On a lower note, Volvo produced its first car on 4/14/1927 

1927 PV4

 

4/15/1924  McNally published its first road atlas. 

4/16/1908 Oakland began selling its brand of cars. 

I believe they actually began producing cars in 1907.

 

4/17/1969 Ford began selling the Maverick.  <cricket…..cricket…>  Come on..it was a good car and getting more and more collectible!!! 

wait…for it….wait…for it 

OH YEAH…..4/17/1964……Ford produced the MUSTANG!!!! 

Oh..wait..that's not a 1964...it's my 70!!!!

 

Oh..here ya go. 

1964 2+2 Fast back

 

Thanks for reading 

Tim

C4 Vette Valve Cover Gasket Replacement Part V

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I’m now at the point where I can re-install the valve covers.  I’ve painted them and cleaned up the gromets (for one of my vette buddies who was dismayed when the saw the interim pics).  

If you remember I had to remove a few things including vacuum hoses, spark plug wires, a/c parts.  In addition the bolts that hold the covers down had spark plug wire holders  and other brackets for hold wires.  

Brackets that would mount through with the bolt for the covers passing through.

 

Keep this in mind as I explain what I learned from my decision to use Fel-Pro gaskets. 

Ok..fine enough dramma..lets get to the lesson I learned (which is often learned the hard way when you have average skills and less than average experience). 

I am not smarter than the engineers at GM.  They knew what they were doing when the used permatex…it was all about the bolts.  Specifically, the length the engineers decided do use, or maybe it was the budget guys. They knew how to follow the build sheet. Here is the bottom line.  The length of the bolts supported the thin layer of the permatex and the brackets shown above and that was it. 

They did not support the thickness of the gaskets.  They were just under a 1/4 too short.  With the brackets and the Fel-Pro gasket in place barely two threads poke out, not enough to catch the thread on the engine.  errrk….When did I know this and what got into your head to do it anyway? 

Fare enough question.  I found out when I queried a couple of Corvette forums about what gaskets to use.  I got a lot of responses, everyone has an opinion..ya know!!!  But only one had actually done an 84 C4 and he said..if you don’t use permatex you are going to have to get longer bolts and BTW your bracket for the spark holders won’t fit.  So I knew this before  I picked up the valve covers (but not before I ordered the set from the supplier).  

Why I didn’t go with the permatex solution was the amount of space and jostling what I had to do when I took them out.  I was pretty sure getting them back in would be worse and the changes of wiping off the some of the permatex and messing up the seal, making the odds of redoing it high. 

Finding the longer bolt took some doing.  The auto parts store…yes..yes.. the same one that said they didn’t have anything but cork and when querying another employee show me what I and originally asked for..didn’t have the proper bolts.   The 84 C4 was all metric, bolts and nuts, you can even switch the digital the dash from US to metric.  The heads are 11mm the threads were 6mm and the pitch was 1/4. 

I ended up at ACE hardware and the only thing that would work and look good were the chrome.  Ok…average guy with average budget…warning..they weren’t cheap…I know that when the manger took me to the back of the store and showed me a stack of boxes that were padlocked shut.  They lock them up!!!!  They were over $2.00 each, washers were nearly a $1.00.  

So I decided on the chrome but they only had 7 bolts..I needed eight with washers as well, they only had 1 washer.  When did we as a nation have a shortage chrome???  Any way I went ot another Ace and the guy there didn’t have any, but tried to tell me the ones I purchased at the other ACE wasn’t correct.  He had the washers so I picked those up and traveled to the next ACE (they’re a lot like Walgreens..they’re on nearly every corner here in Tucson). 

Replacing the covers was about the same as removing them and while doing it I was very glad I didn’t use the permatex, most of it wouldn’t have made it on the covers or the engine.  I’m thinking at the GM factory they put the valve covers on before the AC and all the vacuum hoses and alternator…etc. 

Tomorrow I’ll  finish this up….well maybe…one more lesson was in store. 

Thanks for reading. 

Tim

C4 Vette Valve Cover Gasket Replacement Part II

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Here the next installment of the removal of the valve cover.  There is very little room in this engine compartment, as compared to my 70 Mustang, and I had to remove a few things to just get the covers out.

But first a couple of mistaken assumptions I need to clear up.  GM did not use cork from in the factory for the 84 vettes.  They used Permatex sealer gasket maker.  I got that wrong.  Carrying on with that assumption as I viewed the old material in one of the videos, I suggested that the gasket had been replaced once before.  That was based on the previous assumption that the factory used cork..in fact, what you will see in the video (post that one tomorrow) is the original factory seal.  With 64k original mile, I’m guessing that is correct. (Learning is good…oh and don’t worry..I have one more lesson to share…..sigh)

These next photo shows how tight it is on the right side of the engine.

The black outline shows the span of the valve cover.  The white shows the pieces that have to be removed.

There are a couple videos coming up andlet me tell you that aren’t great… its tough to record with one hand and work with the other…oh…well…you’ll see.

This next video shows the air cleaner coming off and a vacuum hose.

This next video is more of the same.

errrk.. I’ve learned that this blog take a while for video to process so I’ll have more video loaded tomorrow….errrk.

Of all the parts I had to remove on the right side the worse (meaning it’ll cost me later) was the A/C electrical sensor.  You can see that in the picture above circled in white.  Yeah….I know why the garage wanted $700.00 to replace these…..

More coming up tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

C4 Vette Valve Cover Gasket Replacement Part I

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When I advertised this project I blogged that I didn’t understand why GM, given how hot the 1984 C4 ran, would use cork as the material for the valve cover gasket and how I wouldn’t replace them with cork. So I called a popular Vette parts supply house and ordered Ultra-Seal.  I did check locally. ok fine, I checked one place, the Checker Auto down the street, where, through some extremely ineffective communication (the guy didn’t know what he was talking about or what they had in stock), the employee said, “All we have is cork.”;  to which I said, “No, thanks.”; to which he said, “I can order something else.” to which I said, “So can I.”   (There… that bit of typing is for you grammar-sensitive types.)

I also tossed a query on the forum for the Vette group I belong to, and a couple said they do still use cork, and a  couple highly suggested Fel-Pro.  Funny, they said they got them from Checkers.

Yesterday, I received the Ultra-seal (made by Mr. Gasket) I ordered from the Vette parts place. The Ultra-seal…was cork!!!!!! So much for the description on the web.  So I got on the phone to the Checkers down the street and I got an employee that actually knew what they had in stock.  They had every type: rubber, rubber with metal, liquid, metal, and cork.

So when I got there, I picked up the set of the Fel-Pro and Mr. Gasket’s rubber gaskets.  I hear my inner critic say “Hey, average car guy!!!  Yeah…I’m talkin to you, Mr. Average budget!!! What do ya think ya doin’?!!”

Here’s the deal.  I’ve never taken the valve covers off the Vette before, I’m not sure about the clearance, or the angle of the plane the valve cover sit..yadda..yadda.  Plus, I kept the receipt so I can return them…and I will!!!!  Promise!!!

So the Ultra-Seal looks like this:

CORK…BAD!!!!

Sorry about the pic ..didn’t open them because they have to go back.

The Mr. Gasket I purchased from Checkers was metal covered with thick rubber:

Mr.Gasket Rubber and Thick Metal

They are very similar in thickness and shape as the Ultra Seal.

The Fel-Pro are the ones I’m going to put on the car.  They are metal covered with thin rubber and the holes are re-enforced with metal washers and are grooved.

Fel_Pro grooved and will hold better during installation.

So that will be next up.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Wrenchin’ Tip – Hose Installation 3/31/2010

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Often if you get the right size radiator or heater hose it will be a tight fit(eerrrkkk….don’t tighten the clamp first!!!!….just kidding…eeerrrkk) getting it over metal fittings.  You can buy them bigger but you are asking for leaks!!!!   Here are a couple of tips.  One I’ve used and the other I haven’t tried yet.

1.  I live in Arizona, and it’s hot here and normally if you are going to have problems it will be from over  heating in the summer time.  I’ll take the hose and leave it on the concrete driveway for a while in the hot sun.   That often softens it up enough to slip on.

2.  This one I have not tried.  If you have clear wire-pulling  compound, you can rub a light amount around the inside of the hoses and it will slide right on.  Here is a link where you can find some.  http://www.twacomm.com/catalog/dept_id_608.htm

Thanks for reading.

Don’t forget our project car contest.  $100.00 online shopping gift card to your favorite auto parts web site.

Tim