BUILD THREAD Sweet Johnny & Gina: A Love "Two Large" To Fail

[Sweet_Johnny]

The backs and sides of the seats do appear to be black, but the carpet, trim, dash, and soft parts look blue. It's possible that they're faded or have been swapped at some point. Based upon what I've read about factory carpets vs aftermarket I'm thinking that the carpet might be a replacement piece.

 

[spidereyes455]

Many times black upholstery and carpet will fade to a blue or purplish color. My 88 T-bird was like that. It had black and gray seats but they were faded to a purplish blue.
Just like many of the early red interiors in g body's will turn pink or light purple.

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

I managed to be productive today and stopped by the American Family insurance office in Derby to make it official: Gina is now insured. After flirting with the ladies a little bit I made the trek down to Wellington, Ks to get a tag and was successful there too.

I still couldn't drive the car due to the headliner foam disintegrating and getting in my eyes, so I once again enlisted my father's helping hands. We took some simple plastic sheeting that's used when painting and used Bondo spreaders to tuck it into the trim around the perimeter of the headliner. With two layers of plastic in place I then used the boxes that our shop lights came in to make cardboard bows to support said plastic. Following that I used duct tape to hold things together but did NOT apply tape to anything but that plastic and cardboard. I'm not ruining my trim. I'll take pictures of that in the sunlight tomorrow, it's too dark to see right now.

My first actual excursion with Gina went off without a hitch, aside from a side marker light going out and a weak throttle return spring. Eliminating that leaky catalytic converter jumped a little higher on the "to do" list though, because when combined with the holes in the floor it leads to very stinky clothing and quite a headache.

Tonight I drove into Derby and got a few items for Gina at the Dollar Tree, added another $20 worth of gas to the tank, then stopped at a local place with "Taco" in the name for some fuel of my own. On the way home I verified that the secondaries are in fact opening and the transmission downshifts as expected. Today was a good day.

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

Many times black upholstery and carpet will fade to a blue or purplish color.

Then I imagine that's exactly what happened here. I admit to being kind of excited about the blue and black combo, I think it looks nice. But the numbers don't lie, and nobody swapped 3/4 of Gina's interior- she was black on black on black.

Again, thanks for helping me clear that up.

 

[SoFloG]

I managed to be productive today and stopped by the American Family insurance office in Derby to make it official: Gina is now insured. After flirting with the ladies a little bit I made the trek down to Wellington, Ks to get a tag and was successful there too.

I still couldn't drive the car due to the headliner foam disintegrating and getting in my eyes, so I once again enlisted my father's helping hands. We took some simple plastic sheeting that's used when painting and used Bondo spreaders to tuck it into the trim around the perimeter of the headliner. With two layers of plastic in place I then used the boxes that our shop lights came in to make cardboard bows to support said plastic. Following that I used duct tape to hold things together but did NOT apply tape to anything but that plastic and cardboard. I'm not ruining my trim. I'll take pictures of that in the sunlight tomorrow, it's too dark to see right now.

My first actual excursion with Gina went off without a hitch, aside from a side marker light going out and a weak throttle return spring. Eliminating that leaky catalytic converter jumped a little higher on the "to do" list though, because when combined with the holes in the floor it leads to very stinky clothing and quite a headache.

Tonight I drove into Derby and got a few items for Gina at the Dollar Tree, added another $20 worth of gas to the tank, then stopped at a local place with "Taco" in the name for some fuel of my own. On the way home I verified that the secondaries are in fact opening and the transmission downshifts as expected. Today was a good day.

Old GM headliner is the most abrasive horrible sht to the old eyeballs! Congrats on the first excursion, the beginning of good memories.

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

Old GM headliner is the most abrasive horrible sht to the old eyeballs! Congrats on the first excursion, the beginning of good memories.

Thanks! It was very relaxing and enjoyable for me, and I almost felt like I took a trip back in time. As far as the headliner foam goes, that stuff simply blinds me. I don't know if my contact lenses make it worse by acting as flypaper but I knew it was something that needed addressed immediately.

On a lighter note, the leaking catalytic converter does an excellent job of heating up the passenger floorplan. So well, in fact, that it's causing liquid to evaporate from that section of carpet. But the best part is that it provides heat so I don't freeze with my heater hoses blocked off. I didn't even need my gloves and it was 35° outside.

 

[SoFloG]

Thanks! It was very relaxing and enjoyable for me, and I almost felt like I took a trip back in time. As far as the headliner foam goes, that stuff simply blinds me. I don't know if my contact lenses make it worse by acting as flypaper but I knew it was something that needed addressed immediately.

On a lighter note, the leaking catalytic converter does an excellent job of heating up the passenger floorplan. So well, in fact, that it's causing liquid to evaporate from that section of carpet. But the best part is that it provides heat so I don't freeze with my heater hoses blocked off. I didn't even need my gloves and it was 35° outside.

We're barely getting below 80° at night lol

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

This cold front snuck up on us after a lot of precipitation and my joints are not happy about it. I'd love for it to be 80° right now so I could go outside and clean the engine bay. But I think I'll take this opportunity to type up the fuel pump story...

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

The fuel pump story starts with removing the old one, which of course isn't exciting in the least. However, once removed it exposed something else that gave me pause- amidst the thick, dark sludge that remained in that section of the block there were coiled pieces of metal. They appeared to be the remnants of a spring from days gone by, possibly from the original fuel pump. I knew that it had been replaced due to the presence of Fel Pro blue gaskets. These pieces in conjunction with the undiagnosed noise from earlier combined to make me quite uneasy. This purchase was starting to seem like it might have been a mistake, but I powered on.

I proceeded to take my old fuel pump with me to the Auto Zone store, as history had taught me it would be necessary. I'm glad I did because when I placed it on the counter and announced what vehicle I was working on the guy asked me what part I needed. This of course was after he looked up from his phone screen, which was now sitting on the countertop still playing videos at full volume. He never left his seated position on the stool.

We looked and looked throughout the system and just couldn't find a 2 port SBC fuel pump at this store, but there was one 7 miles away. Trying to find the giant oil filter I sought was even more difficult so I thanked them and left, and since I still needed a fuel filter I decided to just buy everything at the other store. Presence of mind dictated that I stop at the O'Reilly's that was across the street from store #1, possibly saving me the hassle of driving to another town. This visit was fun because nothing listed for Oldsmobile was correct and we combed through parts for K5 Blazers, C10s, Corvettes, El Camino's, etc. ad nauseum until we found one... For the 1978 El Camino I suggested from the start.

Then we searched for a fuel filter after I described what it looked like to the young man helping me. This resulted in me simply typing "Rochester fuel filter" on Google and showing him a Fram part number to reference for a Wix unit. Now that I had a fuel pump and filter I needed that oil filter.... but couldn't stomach the $24 Wix price tag at this juncture. I refuse to use Fram for anything, and I don't know enough about Micro Guard filters to trust them so I returned to Auto Zone (store #1) for a good old S5 from STP. Unless they've changed in the last 10 years I've always known them to be a blue Wix oil filter.

Once I returned home it was of course raining again, so I just accepted that and went to work. This is where I hit another snag that I should have caught earlier: My new fuel pump came with 2 gaskets for the pump and none for the plate that goes between it and the block. Fantastic.

I was pretty sure I had one floating around the garage (again, for 20 years) and after searching a few places like this one I managed to find it over by my bench grinder. Here's the trio.


I found myself to be completely without any type of gasket maker or sealer of any kind, so I had to be extremely careful to not tear this bad boy during installation. It's a good thing I put the pump gasket on upside down and had to perform half the procedure twice- I needed the practice. Utilizing the bolt designed to hold the pump pushrod out of the way I was able to finagle the setup into place and tighten the bolts. I reinstalled the factory fuel line between the pump and carb and crossed my fingers.

 

[Sweet_Johnny]

Well I was going to load a video of Gina running for the first time in years, but without a "real" cell phone number I don't meet YouTube's requirements to qualify as human. I'll take care of that tomorrow.

Edit: still working n it...