Dad's 62 Ford Galaxie

[Texas82GP]

I'm getting behind on updates again, so here goes....

Two Saturdays ago, I went over to Dad's to continue working on the car. Dad had been working on installing the vinyl windlace that goes along the top of the side windows. It needs to go on first and then there are some tack strips for the headliner that go on afterward. Thankfully, Dad had kept the original vinyl windlace all these years. He was thinking along the lines of replacing it because it was an off-white color. Neither of us were aware of a reproduction. I examined the pieces when he got them down from the shelf and I was amazed by their condition. They were still pliable and weren't torn. I urged him to clean them up and use them. His concern was the color was wrong. He has a black headliner for the car. When the cars were new, they all had white headliners. He cleaned both up and they were kind of a dingy off-white. I told him no problem, we can paint those with SEM Color Coat. So the first thing we did two Saturdays ago was paint those pieces. I had Dad clean them with SEM Vinyl prep while I set up the gun. They turned out really well. Here is a look at one of the vinyl windlace pieces mocked up in the car earlier the week before. Not a great quality pic but the only one I have....

You can see the sort of ivory color. We spent about an hour and a half painting them. Afterword, we broke for lunch. After lunch, I got out to the garage a little after dad and was horrified to see he was already installing the freshly painted passenger side windlace! It had maybe been a little more than an hour since we had painted it. It was fine. That paint is tough. You have to stretch that windlace over hooks and you have to hammer down tabs on the roof inner structure. The paint took all of it with no damage. Here is a look at the piece back on the car, now Landau Black....

You can see I didn't get the very end of it with paint. Here is why....

I painted them hanging up. We had pulled plastic over the entire car, and I actually had them hanging from the garage door opener tract in the center of the open bay. It's no matter. It doesn't show. You can see in the pics above that Dad had to pull the chrome channel that the quarter window rolls up into along the top of the window opening in order to install this windlace.

While Dad was putting the passenger side of the car together (windlace, tack strips, quarter window upper channel, inside A-pillar trim, outside A-pillar trim), I got under the car. No leak at the new pinion seal. I went ahead and re-installed the new drive shaft. Next, I went ahead and filled the GearVendors unit with Dexron III. This essentially completed the GearVendors installation. I moved forward and was pleased to see the drain plug on the Toploader dry. I've had a little trouble with a drop of gear oil forming on it after several weeks. It's a 9/16" square plug so I ended up putting a 15/16" wrench over the 9/16" wrench for a little more leverage and tightened the plug a little more the last time I worked on it. That seems to have done the trick. Next I moved forward and looked at the engine pretty carefully. Around a month ago I did a lot of cleaning and wiping of the pan, the sides of the block and the bellhousing. I wanted to make sure the oil pan wasn't leaking. As I mentioned before, we've had some trouble with oil on the bellhousing and in the clutch inspection cover. When the bellhousing was out of the car earlier this summer, I had come to the conclusion that the back of the intake was leaking, based on the witness marks. Finding everything clean and dry around the oil pan two Saturdays ago reinforced this diagnosis. I went ahead and drained the oil and pulled the oil filter. Then I started tearing the engine down to pull the intake manifold. This is about as far as I got....

I didn't make it over there two Sundays ago. Last Saturday I went back over to get back on it. Dad was working on installing the all the windlace, tack strips, etc. on the Driver's side. I moved forward with getting the intake off. Unfortunately I was dumb and didn't plug the hole in the intake where the distributor was with paper towels. You guessed it, I dropped a flat washer off of one of the intake bolts down in the engine. Not fun. I had to pull the oil pan to retrieve it. It's not that terrible on this car. I pulled the sway bar loose for more room forward (it's a front sump pan on this car) and I dropped the oil pump down in the pan. I probably had it out in a half hour. I cleaned out the pan and no washer! Dang it! Fortunately I found the washer laying on the inside upper edge of the engine block casting oil pan rail. I got the oil pan rail scraped and cleaned up. I got the oil pan all cleaned up. I ordered another Milodon crush proof oil pan gasket from Summit. Then I got back on the intake. I got the intake pulled and got it all cleaned up, top and bottom. I didn't finish that until about 6 on Saturday. Here's a look at the engine torn down...

I still need to clean up along the intake side of the heads, and clean up the valve cover rails on the heads, as well as the front and rear rails of the block. When we put the intake on the engine, we did so on the engine stand. We used RTV. I guess it was just a little too thin along the back but I didn't see anything obviously wrong. I'm very confident of the diagnosis though. I guess it doesn't matter much. I'm doing the intake, the valve covers, and the oil pan. We just don't want it to leak! We have a Felpro Performance intake gasket set to put it back together with. I'm leaning towards using the front and rear gaskets that came with it instead of RTV. What do you guys think? I really don't want to put this thing back together and have it leak oil. We've been plagued with leaks the entire time with this thing.

That's about it for now. As you can see, I have a hard time stopping and taking all the pictures I should. I need to take a picture of the cleaned up intake and need to take a few pics of Dad's completed windlace, tack strip, etc. assembly. It looks great. Sean, Dad and I are going to a concert Friday night and will likely have a pretty good time so I fear Saturday might not be super productive but I'm planning to go over on Sunday as well. I hope to have the intake and oil pan buttoned up by the end of the weekend. I ordered a new power steering pump earlier this week. I can't believe new ones are available. The one on the car is off a parts car that all the rest of the power steering came off of. Dad rebuilt it but it groans a little and when I pulled the lower radiator hose, so I could pull the fuel pump to carb fuel line off the fuel pump, I noticed it was leaking a little bit, so I think that is the next project. Anyway, I'll follow up with the progress. Until then, thanks for following along.

Best,

Jared

 

[Texas82GP]

We had a good weekend on the Galaxie. We got a late start on Saturday thanks to our Friday night antics but we worked late. I got over there about 10AM and we didn't stop until 8PM. The first task was to scrape the intake side of the heads and to clean the front and back rails of the engine block. It was pretty painstaking work to keep trash out of the ports and out of the valley. Here's a look at it all cleaned up....

I didn't get any feedback on whether to use the cork gaskets that go at the front and back of the block or just use RTV again. We ended up using the gaskets. They took some careful trimming where they meet the side gaskets. I used a light amount of RTV at the water ports and in the four corners where the two gaskets meet. Here it is, ready for the intake....

Those front and real rail seals were self adhesive. The adhesive is good on them. They stuck well. Here's the intake back on it and torqued down. We put the distributor back in it to help align the manifold. It has to come back out to install the oil pump driveshaft. At this point the oil pump was not on the engine and the oil pan was just hanging loosely from a few bolts....

And here's where we ended Saturday night. Rocker shafts in and torqued, carb and spacer installed and hooked up. Surge tank, thermostat, upper shroud and new upper radiator hose installed....

Also Saturday night I spent some time applying Sharkhide to Dad's new Moon Equipment finned aluminum valve covers. I also glued the valve cover gaskets on them. Unfortunately, they are too tall and the driver's side won't clear the brake booster. Still, It was a productive day.

After chores, I went back over late Sunday morning. Dad was already working on cleaning up the old valve covers and getting them ready for new gaskets. I got online and found a pair locally and Dad went after them. Meanwhile, I jacked up the front of the car and got started on installing the oil pump, oil pump pickup and oil pan.

Putting the pan back on was a bigger challenge than taking it off. When I pulled it, I just unbolted the oil pump and let it drop in the pan. Going back, I put the pump on first and torqued the bolts. Then, following the shop manual's advice, I hung the pickup by the top bolt (the pickup hangs from the side of the oil pump). That way, the theory is that you can swing the pickup up towards the crankshaft and get the pan in there. The problem with this approach was that it was impossible to install the lower pickup bolt because it was too far below the pan rail. I just couldn't get my hand tool in there, let along see it. I ended up pulling the pan back out and hanging the pickup from the lower bolt and was able to get it back in there. I also had to turn the engine to move rear most counterweights a little to get more clearance. I had put some RTV where the bottom of the timing cover meets the block and where the rear main cap meets the block ('the corners') but it had dried by the time I got the pan back in position. I had to carefully scrape and clean that off and reapply with the pan sitting on the crossmember. There was some swearing, but I got it done and feel good about the outcome.

Meanwhile dad glued the new valve cover gaskets to the old covers and got them installed. Next I re-attached the sway bar and then installed the clutch inspection cover. I also primed the oil filter and installed it. I hooked up the wire for the oil pressure sender. Pretty much everything is hooked up at this point with the exception of the distributor cap and wires, and the lower radiator hose. Dad filled the crankcase with fresh 30 weight VR1. He also painted the new oil filler/breather cap to match the valve covers. I think we worked from about 10AM to 5PM. It was a good day. We had a few hiccups along the way but we overcame them. Here's what it looked like at the end of the day....

At this point the distributor needs to come back out to install the oil pump driveshaft and then we plan to prime the engine since its been sitting for quite some time. Then the distributor cap and wires can go back on. After that, we're going to replace the power steering pump with a new one I recently sourced. Then the pump to carb fuel line can be tightened up and the lower hose can be installed. Then we can fill the cooling system and fire her back up. It's going to be awesome to have a running/driving car again. I hope all of this work has turned out right. I hope the car is smooth and leak free. I hope the GearVendors is a great success.

On the horizon after that are flushing the brakes, and we are going to rebuild most of the front end. The springs are tired so we're going to do the control arm bushings and balljoints while we are in there.

Oh, here's a few pictures of the headliner tack strips and the vinyl windlace that I mentioned in the last update. I just didn't have pictures....

Dad's very close to being ready to put the headliner in. I think once the car is running he will take it to the upholstery shop that did the seats for Sean's Camaro and have them install it.

That's it for now gents. I'll update when there is more progress to report. I hope you guys are enjoying the updates, and thanks as always for following along.

Jared

 

[pontiacgp]

Fords were pretty easy to hotwire back then....

 

[Texas82GP]

Fords were pretty easy to hotwire back then....

Way too easy! Update coming.....

 

[Texas82GP]

Well now that the site is back up (thanks GP403) I'll post an update. I went over to Dad's Saturday morning. The plan was to replace the power steering pump. The one he had on the car was off a parts car. He rebuilt it but it had a slow leak from the front shaft and groaned a little bit. I was shocked a few weeks ago to find that new ones were available. I ordered one. When it came in, I was disappointed to see it was made in China. Still, we wanted to address the leak and if we could get rid of the little bit of groan that the pump had, it would be a win-win so we decided we'd give it a shot. Now was the right time because the lower radiator hose was still off and we didn't want to put it on and fill the cooling system, only to decide we wished we had done something about the pump. Believe it or not, it took most of Saturday to swap the pump. It is not an easy place to work. It is under the A/C compressor. I've never seen such a big car where there is no room to work. Here's a look at where the pump lives.....

Here's a look at the new pump with the brackets and pulley swapped over....

You have to pull the pump with the brackets. You can't leave the brackets hanging on the engine, which is what I wanted to do since none of the bolts will come out. They hit the pulley. Pulling the reservoir first and installing it last was definitely the way to go. It opens up a good bit of room. It was a bit of a job but we got it done. Tightening the belt was a particular treat. I'm not sure how one guy is supposed to do that by himself. Next we put on the new lower radiator hose. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but its a fight on this car. The power steering pressure hose runs underneath it. It's very tight to the sway bar. You have to wrestle it in there and wrestle it on both ends. It was nice with me being able to hold the clamps in position while dad tightened them though. Here's a look at it all back together....

The fit and finish of the new pump is very good. So far I'm impressed with the quality. We don't like using anything Chinese on this car and most of the time the quality of Chinese stuff sucks but it looks like Cardone is doing a good job with quality control on this.

Next, we turned our attention to the distributor. I had stabbed it in there to align the intake manifold when we were installing it, but at that time the oil pan was just loosely hanging on the block by two bolts and the oil pump was off the engine. We had to pull the distributor and install the oil pump driveshaft, and reinstall the distributor. Before I removed the distributor, I had carefully marked it on where the rotor was pointing and I made a few reference marks so that I could presumably get it back very close to where dad had the timing set. Unfortunately, I had to turn the engine to move the rear most crankshaft counterweights up into the block so I could get the oil pan back on. I hadn't thought of the fact that I was changing where the rotor would be pointing. To muddy things more, when I put the distributor in to align the intake, I was one tooth out, but didn't care. Still, I thought I knew where we were and still thought I could get it back to where it was.

We also wanted to prime the engine. The problem was, we are using an ARP heavy duty oil pump driveshaft. It doesn't have a keeper. Most of the time, when you pull the distributor, it comes with it. The last few times we've had the distributor out, I've just stabbed it back in that way. It looked scary trying to stab the oil pump driveshaft without it stuck in the distributor. It looked like there was a decent chance of dropping the shaft down in the oil pan, necessitating oil pan removal (again). We decided to blow off priming the engine and to just stab the distributor. I had trouble getting it to where I thought it needed to be and at one point the oil pump driveshaft came free from the distributor. I decided to try and get a 1/4" drive socket and extension on it and turn it and confirm that it was engaging the pump. I felt like it was. I pulled the extensions out and the socket stayed down on the driveshaft. Crap. I was able to retrieve the socket with a strong telescoping magnet and we decided against putting the socket back on there to prime the engine. I finally got the distributor back where I thought it should be. We pulled the #1 plug and rolled the engine over to TDC on #1 using a remote starter switch. The rotor was pointing right at the #1 plug wire terminal. At that point I think it was about 8:30. All we needed at that point to start the car was fuel and coolant. We hoped we could get the car going the next day and take the first drive to test all of our work, including the GearVendors Overdrive. It was all back together....

 

[Texas82GP]

Sunday morning I had chores to do and had to help my mom for a bit. I didn't get over to Dad's until noon. We mixed up the coolant. We went with the yellow extended life coolant. I went with the concentrated coolant and distilled water over the 50/50 because of cost. The 50/50 was going to be about $82 with tax. The Galaxie takes 5 gallons. I was able to buy three gallons of concentrated coolant for $52 and they came with a total of an $18 rebate. The distilled water was less than $3 for three gallons. Dad saved $45 by us mixing it ourselves. I mixed it two gallons at a time in a clean bucket (one gallon of coolant, one gallon of distilled water). When we poured the coolant back into the bottles, we ran it through a paint strainer just in case.

We got the cooling system filled an mixed some Stabil in 5 gallons of fresh gas. We poured all of that in the tank. We had charged the battery on 2 amps all night. Dad gave it the first try. He cranked it several times. Nothing. Not even a cough. The fuel bowls were empty. The fuel line from the carb to the fuel pump was empty. I'm guessing the fuel pump was empty from evaporation. I went back to the gas station and got us another gallon of gas. We used a little ketchup squirt bottle to fill the front fuel bowl on the Holley. Dad cranked it over and it coughed to life. It sounded bad. It sounded like it was running very slow and on about 4 cylinders. It wasn't showing any oil pressure. It ran for maybe 10 seconds and Dad shut it down. We were worried that the timing wasn't right. We were worried that the oil pump driveshaft wasn't engaged in the oil pump properly. We had that bad feeling down in the pit of our stomachs. This wasn't how this day was supposed to go.

We pulled the distributor cap and pulled the #1 plug. We cranked it back over to #1 TDC and confirmed timing. It checked. I checked the oil. It had been a bit over full (only 5 quarts in it, including almost an entire quart in the oversize oil filter). It was now showing at the top of the safe zone, which suggested to me that the oil pump had picked up some oil. At this point, I didn't know what else to do so I pulled the distributor. The oil pump driveshaft came with it. The oil pump driveshaft had oil on it. A good sign in my mind. I managed to guide the driveshaft back into the engine with needle nose pliers and get it engaged with oil pump. I pulled the passenger side valve cover. I started turning the oil pump with a 1/4" drive ratchet. I heard air coming out of the passenger rocker shaft. Pretty soon I had oil all over the passenger side valvetrain. Dad turned the key on and the gauge was showing oil pressure. I never would have thought you could pump up the engine with a ratchet. I thought it would take forever. I re-stabbed the distributor. We put the valve cover back on an buttoned everything up. Dad tried again and it fired right up. It sounded a lot better, but there was a lot of valvetrain noise. Evidently the lifters had bled down and not priming the engine the first time was a mistake. As it warmed up it quieted down and smoothed out. We watched temperature and oil pressure while we tweaked the timing and curb idle. Before long we had it running good. It was great to hear it run again.

I went to lock down the distributor. While I did, the negative side of the coil zapped me pretty good and I lost the offset distributor wrench. It got into the fan a bit and was thrown to the ground. I shut the engine down and we looked for carnage. Everything looked ok. I finished tightening the distributor hold down and cranked it back up. I jacked up the front of the car and we turned the front wheels left to right several times to bleed the power steering. The pump was silent. At this point there were no leaks. I sped the engine to 1000 RPM and had Dad turn the wheel left to right several times, as per the shop manual. Everything was fine. We set the front back down and prepared to take the first test drive. Sean was over with his son. We were all going to go on the first ride in a long time. The passenger side of the car was a little tight to the garage door track so Sean was going to guide Dad out. Dad gave the steering wheel a slight turn and that's when it threw the power steering belt. The car didn't move an inch. As soon as it started making noise Dad shut it down. We opened the hood. There didn't appear to be any carnage. I didn't even pull out the belt. Everything under the hood was 180 degrees +. Too hot to work on. It was like 5:45. We shut the hood and called it a day. It was disappointing, despite the fact that much had been accomplished.

Dad called me Monday morning. The belt was damaged. It was twisted. The power steering pump was in the same position as when we installed it so the belt had been stretched off the pulleys. He was ordering a new belt. I cautioned him against the trouble I've been hearing about on this forum about the new V belts stretching a lot and requiring three or more adjustments. All the belts on the car a Gates Green Stripe. We decided on a new old stock replacement that he found online. It is the exact same belt that we had on the car. Hopefully by getting old stock we won't have the problems with belt stretch. That's where we stand. Dad checked the coolant and it was way down so it had burped. He topped it off. He checked the oil and the power steering fluid. Everything looks good there. The floor is dry so far which excites me greatly. I hope it stays that way. Hopefully we'll get the new belt on Friday and we can put it on Saturday morning. We're thinking me dropping the wrench is the reason it threw the belt. We're figuring the wrench got tangled in the belt on the way down. It definitely got thrown to the ground. I won't make that mistake again. Hopefully getting the new belt on will go smooth and we can take that first test drive Saturday morning. I hope next weekend I'm able to report the Overdrive is awesome and that there are no leaks.

On the horizon, probably starting next weekend, we're going to tear into the front suspension. The springs are tired and we're going to do everything else while we're in there. We still have the brakes to flush. Beyond that we want to get the headliner installed and then we're going to transition back to the body shop. We have some minor issues to address body-wise and then we're hoping to send the car out to paint this fall.

That's it for now friends. I update when progress warrants. I hope this wasn't too long. As always, thanks for following along.

Best,

Jared

 

[pontiacgp]

That wasn't a long post, there are times when it take a bunch of words to describe what happened....and you kept it interesting...

 

[JAMCAR223]

That's STILL great progress! No need for disappointment... that encouragement!! Looks like It won't make the cruise- in, this Friday, but you guys are getting closer. Remember it's BOP night this Friday, so if you guys can still make it ( Sean's & your truck ), please do. Erik and I will be there representing the GBodyForum, and sharing the passion for these cars. Soon enough you guys will ALL be there together!!

 

[1evilregal]

great progress on it , as always! I know being that close to a test drive, only to not happen can be fustrating, but clearer heads prevailed, and you didn't end up doing something that could've undone all your hard work (like I myself would do....)

looking forward to the next updates!

 

[Texas82GP]

That's STILL great progress! No need for disappointment... that encouragement!! Looks like It won't make the cruise- in, this Friday, but you guys are getting closer. Remember it's BOP night this Friday, so if you guys can still make it ( Sean's & your truck ), please do. Erik and I will be there representing the GBodyForum, and sharing the passion for these cars. Soon enough you guys will ALL be there together!!

great progress on it , as always! I know being that close to a test drive, only to not happen can be fustrating, but clearer heads prevailed, and you didn't end up doing something that could've undone all your hard work (like I myself would do....)

looking forward to the next updates!

Thanks for the encouragement guys. It helps. The worst part for me was seeing Dad disappointed after being that close to driving the car. We've gotten past all that at this point. Here's the next update......

So I didn't post an update last week because Saturday 8/25 didn't go our way. I went over to Dad's that morning and we got to working on replacing the power steering belt. The NOS replacement had come in on Friday. It sounds like a little thing but it probably took us two hours. The lower radiator hose is right beneath the pump. So is the power steering pressure hose and the fuel hose from the hard line on the frame to the fuel pump. You can't pull up on the pump by its reservoir to tighten the belt or you will likely do damage. It explicitly says not to in the factory shop manual. There is no good way to get a pry tool in there from the bottom and push up since all that stuff is right under the pump. The factory service procedure shows using a C-Clamp on the brackets. That would work fine if the car didn't have an A/C compressor right above the pump. In the end, after getting the bolts tightened up once and being dissatisfied with the tightness of the belt, we ended up using a floor jack and a 2"x4" as a ram from below and were able to get the belt tightened that way.

We cranked the car up and everything seemed ok. We took it for a test drive. We stayed in Dad's neighborhood and the attached adjacent neighborhood just in case. We probably drove 6 or 7 miles. Dad marveled at the smoothness of the new clutch and NOS flywheel. The car seemed really quit to me. We had the windows down. I could hear the exhaust from the rear of the car through the window but I think all the insulation and sound deadening have really helped. I don't think we got above 30 mph. We didn't try the GearVendors. When we left Dad's house we had 20 lbs. of oil pressure. That didn't sit right with me so I kept an eye on it. The engine ran pretty cool but as it warmed up to running temperature, the oil pressure gradually fell. It got to the point that I said something to Dad. He hadn't noticed. By then it looked like we had maybe 10 pounds of pressure. We turned around and went back to the house. Dad pulled the car in the garage and left it running. The valvetrain sounded noisy. Again, this wasn't how our day was supposed to go. Instead of getting started on the front suspension work, we went and bought a mechanical oil pressure gauge to check the pressure. The second gauge agreed with the one in the car.

At this point, I had to regroup. I didn't know what to think. I was afraid we had somehow wiped the bearings out with the trouble we had the Saturday before, but I didn't really believe that. I ordered a tool to cut open the oil filter from Summit and then I went home. After I got home, I ordered another pan gasket, pump gasket and pickup gasket and decided I must have gotten something wrong with installing the oil pump. It occurred to me that the pump had been ported and that the passage in the block had been enlarged but I installed the gaskets as-is and didn't think anything about it. I thought one of the gaskets must be blocking the flow. Perhaps it was misaligned. Perhaps the pickup wasn't seated square on the oil pump. I didn't know. I was upset about it all last week. I also ordered some 5 quart paint mixing cups to try and salvage the fresh VR1 oil.

This past Saturday morning I went to Dad's. I pulled the oil filter and dumped as much oil out of it into the paint mixing cup as I could. That oil looked ok. I started cutting the oil filter open and then turned it upside down to prevent metal contamination from getting in it. I was doing it over a drain pan. Once I got it apart, we looked at the oil in the pan and there was glitter. I blamed this on the cutting operation. We examined the filter pretty closely. There was some trash, more than I wanted to see, but I didn't see any metal. This is the first time I've cut open a filter and done this type of inspection....

It's worth noting that the drain plug has a magnet and I didn't find any metal on it. Next, I drained the oil from the oil pan into another 5 quart paint mixing cup. All of the oil went through several paint strainers. I got a little trash but no metal as far as I could tell. It seemed to be upbeat news but we still didn't understand the nature of the problem. I ended up saving about 4 quarts of the oil. The bubbles in the oil were freaking me out a little bit so I poured the 1 new quart we still had in another clean container and compared the bubbles and the general appearance of the oil.

At this point, I didn't know what else to do but pull the oil pan. After doing so and cleaning it up, I discovered our problem....

I don't know how well you can see it, but that circular mark is where the pickup was hard on the bottom of the pan and where it rubbed off the finish. The pickup hangs off the passenger side of the oil pump by two bolts, one above the other. It turns out, the bolt holes in the pickup are so large that with the bolts loosely installed, you can rock the pickup itself up and down probably 3/8". We felt better. We knew what the problem was. I got the pan rails on the block cleaned up while Dad worked on cleaning up the pan in preparation for a new gasket. Next, I glued the new oil pump to block gasket to the pump and then trimmed it to match the pump.....

Then I glued the new pickup to pump gasket to the pickup. I installed the pump on the block and torqued the bolts to spec. We were ready to put the pan in but were out of time. I had to go home to sit with my nephew as my brother and sister-in-law had plans with my niece. To be continued.........