Well, here we are at the start of another week already, and I haven’t yet updated y’all on last week’s progress.
There’s not a whole lot to report on really, just some work on a couple of small projects and one very good find.
With the wheel wells completed and scratched off the “to-do” list, I wanted to focus on stripping the old paint and primer from the filler panel that goes between the back window and trunk lid. I set it up on the stand and got to sanding off what I could from the flat areas with the DA.
Here it is just about to get started, with the lower trim still installed on it:
Roughly halfway through a squirrel must’ve ran by, because I got distracted and started tinkering with project #2.
I’ve had an ad up here looking for a driver’s side bucket seatbelt in dark claret for a couple weeks now with no real promising leads. The problem I had with mine was that the retractor assembly wasn’t retracting when the buckle was undone. All the usual culprits like the door popper/seatbelt ComfortLock spring were checked, but were all present and in good working order. I began to suspect it was the main spring that retracts the belt inside the housing commonly known as the clockspring.
In talking with Scott (Injectedcutty) one night about my possible options, I remembered that I still had the tan set of bucket seat front belts left over from The Brown Bomber and started wondered about the feasibility of swapping out or repairing the clockspring part of the assemblies. After digging them out of storage the following night, I began carefully dismantling the passenger side spare belt assembly first. I figured if I broke or couldn’t properly reassemble the thing, I wanted it to be on the passenger’s side spare, and not on the one I really needed.
With the assembly firmly chucked up in the vice and the outer protective covers removed, I very carefully pried up the cover that houses the clockspring. This was initially a bit nerve racking, as the outside of the cover has “DO NOT REMOVE” stamped in it in big bold letters.
Meh, nothing ventured, nothing gained right? Even with the belt retracted into the housing as far as possible, there was still a bit of tension once I pried the cover up. I slowly unwound it, making sure to count the number of turns as I took the tension off it.
It worked out to around 6 1/2. With the spring tension now safely removed, I got a thin screwdriver in under the cover and lifted the spring and cover off together.
Here’s what the insides look like once you’ve got it apart. The black one on the left is the original from the claret belt, and the white one on the right is from the passenger’s side tan belt. You can clearly see the coiled clockspring inside:
If you look closely at the top of the cover in the passenger’s side one, you’ll note that the inside part of the spring is anchored in a slot to keep the spring from spinning in the cover and actually provide the retractor action:
Look closely at the one that came from the claret belt. Note how it’s not only no longer anchored in the slot, but it’s actually distorted and pulled out. You can see the end of it in the left part of the pic.
Success! I now knew why the belt wasn’t retracting, and better yet, how it came apart and that I could fix it (or at least replace it).
After repeating the same careful disassembly procedure but with the spare driver’s side clockspring, I swapped it over onto the claret belt assembly. Adding a couple 3 extra turns or so to compensate for the spring weakening over time to the 6 1/2 I counted when disassembling, I clipped the clockspring and cover back onto the seatbelt assembly, and bolted it back into the car.
I’m very pleased to say the entire operation was a resounding success, and now the seatbelt assembly works properly, just as good as new! Better yet, it cost me exactly zero dollars, and I now no longer need a replacement belt!
As I was screwing around with these 2 projects, I was also secretly working on project #3.
Earlier last weekend, I happened upon an ad in the local online classifieds for a 10 bolt posi that looked suspiciously like what I was looking for. The seller had posted a pic of the casting number on the carrier housing, so after a couple of minutes doing some online sleuthing, I confirmed it was exactly what I had been looking for.
It was a 3 series carrier, Eaton style posi for an 8.5” GM 10 bolt, with 28 spline axels.
Trying not to get my hopes up or get too excited, I contacted the seller to inquire if it was still available. To my delight, it was!!
It appeared to be in exceptional condition, and after confirming with the guys here on a separate thread, it was determined that the spider gears and even the clutch packs looked great. Feeling it was well worth his $150 asking price, a deal was struck after he agreed to throw it on a Greyhound bus and ship it down to me. (It was a three hour drive north of me, one way).
$33 in shipping and a day later, I had it in my hot little hands. I couldn’t beat the cost of shipping, it would have cost me more than that in fuel alone if I had’ve gone and got it myself. Here it is once I got it unpackaged and on the bench at work:
Wasting no time, the following day I removed and replaced the carrier bearings with all new Timkin bearings and races. It’s all wrapped up in the pic to keep it clean until I’m ready to install it. After this pic was taken, I wrapped up the exposed bearings as well.
Now that I had closure on 2 of the 3 ongoing projects this week, I could finally redirect my attention to the poor forgotten filler panel. After getting the last of the old paint stripped off it, I bolted it up for a test fit.
This is where things kinda took a turn for the worse.
Once the filler panel was aligned and positioned in its final spot, I had a huge gap between the filler panel and the trunk lid. I’m talking big enough to drive a damn bus through, it was close to a 1/2”!!
Unacceptable.
I quickly realized that I had moved the trunk lid too far back to get good alignment with the quarter panel extensions, and that the only solution was to move it forward again until I got an acceptable gap back at the filler panel. After spending nearly half a day adjusting, tweaking, and fine tuning every little minute adjustment, I had all of the components aligning and playing nicely with each other, except for the extensions.
Here the filler to trunk lid gap now that everything’s been readjusted:
The perfect fitment and alignment of the filler panel and trunk lid affects so many other things downstream of them. The quarter extensions, the license tag housing, even the height you set the trunk lid bump stops to are all affected.
Here, I’ve now got much more acceptable gaps to the license tag housing...
...but here is the trade off. I have no choice but to go back in and adjust the angle and distance that the extensions sit off of the quarter panels. This needs to be done by sanding off material on the edges where the extensions bolt to the quarters, and it needs to be done at the correct taper so that they match the angles of the taillights.
You can see how much too far back the extensions are now:
This helps illustrate it a bit better yet. It’s roughly 3/16” per side that these will have to be shortened.
All is not lost or horrible tho, I’ve actually already got the driver’s side extension modified and fitting good again:
There’s a little bit of body work that will need to be done on them though, as the height decreases as they move forward. Again, not the end of the world, because the car needs a block sanding and at least one more reprime before I’ll be satisfied enough to drive it this year.
Whadda ya gonna do? Sometimes it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Just the nature of the beast.
Thanks for checking back and following along with the highs and lows on the old girl, until next time everyone.
D.
