Projects from THE COMPOUND

[DRIVEN]

My brother has his '69 Volvo 145 wagon for sale. That means his '72 Westy will become his daily driver. The transmission has always been really noisy (bearings) so he picked up another one a few months ago. Hopefully it's quieter. All racked up.

Yank the engine. Replaced the rear motor mounts.

Old one out and on the floor.

Replacement installed after replacing all the shifter bushings.

Dropped the surprisingly heavy exhaust to replace the copper O-rings where they meet the heads. Hopefully no more leaks.

I'm waiting for him to bring me a new clutch. Throwout bearing was SUPER loud and the disc had 2 cracks between the cushion springs. Never seen that on a VW before. I guess I'll start cleaning the shop up in anticipation of the new arrivals tomorrow. More to come.

 

[DRIVEN]

Well, looks like a clutch set is $250-up and 3 days out. Plan B (don't laugh 😳 ) was to just weld a bead at the cracked spots and punt. If the clutch didn't work fine and look almost brand new I swear it wouldn't have gone back in. Still not sure why it had contact marks from the flywheel bolts on the hub.

Empty bay = success! New transmission is quiet and shifts better than the old one too. Time to clean the shop.

 

[DRIVEN]

Spent most of the last three days cleaning the shop. It may not look much different but I did a ton of organizing and pressure washing. It hasn't been this clean since I moved in 12 years ago. If nothing else, I just feel better. Here's some before and after shots.
Before--

After--

All to make room for this--

That's original paint. The odometer shows less than 6000 miles. For you guys familiar with points and judging, this car is a 997. Solid lifters sound sexy. Don't be jealous.

 

[DRIVEN]

Well, the Impala is pretty much done. All the little leaks are fixed and the tune-up stuff is done. This thing sounds GREAT! Been waiting on the water pump for over a week. Since this is a mega-numbers-matching car I had to send the original out to be rebuilt. It's been sitting in my empty bay patiently waiting. It should be wrapped up Tuesday or Wednesday. It's replacement is already loaded in the trailer. Stay tuned.

While it was in a holding pattern I went over to the owner's house and pulled the exhaust manifolds on his '55 convertible. He didn't like the rust look so I had them ceramic coated in cast iron finish. I would consider all of his cars over-restored and this one is no exception. No car ever came out of a Detroit factory this nice. The bottom side is just as clean as the top. I should have grabbed a couple pics.

Remove

Coated

Installed

Other side too. If you've never been up close to one of these, the PS pump in on the back of the generator.

All done.

 

[DRIVEN]

The Impala finally went home yesterday. But not until a last minute accelerator pump failure. Starts so easily now and runs perfectly. It ran pretty good before but was getting harder and harder to cold-start. It didn't help that the restored had disabled the choke. So, the owner picked up the '62 and dropped off his Tbird. This one is just needing some brake work and a hose clamp to fix a coolant leak. Probably a battery too. The color is hard to describe in person. It looks really pink in the photos but more red in person. Yes, he bought this one for his wife.

Current tally:
'62 Impala - DONE!
'55 Chevy - DONE!
'69 Boss 429 - CANCELLED
'57 Thunderbird - In process
'68 Roadrunner - Pending
'66 Cobra - Pending

 

[Oldsmoletick]

Part of me says it must be nice to work on such pristine vehicles, then the other says it must be hell. All people bring me are rust buckets and sh*t boxes (yes there is a difference, lol), I need not be too careful while working on them. I get nervous working on too nice of a car, especially if it's not mine.

 

[DRIVEN]

Yup, you nailed it. The upsides are that nothing is rusted in place and everything is clean. The downsides are that parts are expensive and aren't usually just down the street and I need to take a lot of time protecting everything. For example, I had to replace the water pump on the Impala. Since everything needs to stay numbers-matching I had to have the original rebuilt rather than just replacing it. Napa charged me $170 just for the rebuild service and it took over a week (so the car was taking up a bay). Once I got it back I had to try 3 different brands of paint to get the right color match. Once I had it installed I had to spray the same paint onto a sheet of plastic and use a Qtip to dab along the gasket mating surface to hide the fact that it had been disturbed. It's deceiving because you look at it and think, "That's pretty wide open. I can probably whip that out in 20 minutes." Wrong! There's also the pucker factor of worrying about damage and just keeping everything clean. These are fun to work on but I make waaay better money on Camrys, Explorers and Outbacks.

 

[Oldsmoletick]

Once I had it installed I had to spray the same paint onto a sheet of plastic and use a Qtip to dab along the gasket mating surface to hide the fact that it had been disturbed.

:shock: I have heard of meticulous, but that's a whole new meaning.

Keep up the great work! Awaiting pics of the rr , always wanted one of those, though likely, never will get one, lol.

 

[DRIVEN]

I'm not sure yet whether it'll be brought to me or I'll be going to it. It's being stored about 40 miles away. It's this car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfu5P9sjdwM . Not sure if there are any full episode clips floating around. The one I posted is pretty choppy. On the actual TV show the owner takes delivery at the end. It's not mentioned on TV but he actually wasn't even the winning bidder. That guy couldn't get the money together so the seller contacted him and offered it for his high bid. Television magic. I'm getting ahead of myself. One car at a time. I'm off to work on a Tbird.

 

[Oldsmoletick]

My color of choice to boot......sweet car.