Where’s the video with audio of the exhaust???
Quite the nice ride!
Quite the nice ride!
Texas82GP's Roadmaster
- Thread starter Texas82GP
- Start date
Congrats! I'm glad you stuck with it and figured everything out. I had a feeling the first balance job was botched. In their defense, I've had balancers have a glitch and just not want to balance a tire and there is no reao reason why. But I realized it while it was happening. I told the customer I had a suspicion something was up and instead of holding them up that day, I sent them on their way and said come back as soon as you have a few.minutes and I'll rebalance them for free. All were grateful. They came back and said it did vibrate, I rebalanced them, they were way off, and all was well. And that was on a Coats balancer...
You're still working on that thing?! You didn't even have to paint it!
Lmao just yanking your chain. Car looks great Jared, glad you've got the issues sorted out. Now go put some miles on it!
Lmao just yanking your chain. Car looks great Jared, glad you've got the issues sorted out. Now go put some miles on it!
Next time to get a frozen nut off a stud put it in a tin of motor oil, heat up the oil and leave it for an hour or so. That's I got all the broken studs out of the body bolt anchors.
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Thanks Bruce.
Thanks! Let me see what I can do on a video. The exhaust is pretty mellow so I don't know how well my cell phone will do.
Sadly, I think they were just lazy. They left most of the weights on and didn't change anything. The guy that balanced them this time was probably 10 years older than the kids he was working with and seemed to be the shop foreman. He was efficient and professional. He pulled the weights off and then gave it weights where the machine said they were needed. For the most part, they were big changes. I learned something. Next time I'll pull all the weights off myself.
I know, I'm slow. I don't stop until I get it where I want it though. It pretty effortlessly glided up the north freeway at 85-90 mph last night going home. I think it is pretty much ready for the trip to Orange Beach. I think I have heat shield touching somewhere. I was getting some vibration at idle in gear. I'm going to get it back on stands this weekend for a look and make sure everything is tight.
Me too. My best friend in high school had an 85 Delta 88 Royale. We drove that thing out to Austin many times back in the mid to late 90's and I always thought it was about like driving the couch down the highway. It was a large part of the reason I wanted a B-Body.
Great tip Steve. I'll try that next time. I was really picky about the condition of those studs/nuts so that if I have to take it apart again, it's in good shape. I ran thread chasers on the three old studs and all the nuts. I put anti-seize on everything. I got some replacement studs from Dorman that would have worked but I deemed them inferior in quality and rejected them for the GM studs.
Thanks for the feedback guys. After the inspection I mentioned above, I'm going to work on the full-size spare conversion. I have the wheel and tire and the cover with cardboard and instructions. I just need to determine if I have all the hardware or not. Everything is there for the compact spare but something may be different.
I'm worried about the group reply, I hope everyone is social distancing in that post..... 🤔
Well, I didn't drive the car all last week. I was hearing a resonance or vibration which I suspected was the exhaust against a heat shield somewhere, so I parked it Monday night. The weather was horrible the rest of the week so I don't regret it. I had a few hundred miles on the work so I wanted to get under the car and re-tighten the exhaust and make sure nothing had loosened or shifted. I got off work a little early Friday so I went home, changed clothes and went over to the storage to work on the car.
I started with replacing the belt and tensioner. Yes, I replaced them when I did the tune up but for the past several months I've had a chirping sound when I start the car up cold. After it warms up a bit, the sound goes away. I ignored it for as long as I could but it was really starting to get to me. When I initially got the car going again, after the tune-up and replacing all the hoses, I inadvertently got coolant on my new belt. I think this was the source of the noise. That or the Chineseaum tensioner. I replaced the GM belt with a Dayco that was reputed to not squeak on old pulleys. I replaced the Delco tensioner with a Gates one made in Canada. The noise is gone, so I'm happy. I'll keep the other belt and tensioner as emergency spares.
Next I found the source of the resonance/vibration noise that was bothering me. It was the driver's side converter against the heat shield under the driver's side floor board. I massaged the shield and got clearance. Easy solution. Next I removed the low oil lever sensor as it was still seeping 😡! It's a Delco new but I didn't use the O-Ring that came with it. Instead I used the original style sealing "washer", which was dumb. I replaced the sealing washer with the O-Ring, reinstalled it and then topped off the engine oil. I think that leak is cured. Next I checked tightness of most of the exhaust system and didn't find any problems. Then I moved on to tightening up the rear shoes a bit and tightening up the adjustment on the parking brake. Finally, I made an adjustment to the driver's side heat shield between the gas tank and the tail pipe. I did so by loosening the little bolts that secure it, repositioning it, and then tightening the bolts back up.
The results: This thing is really smooth. I kept it home all weekend. We took it to pick up the Galaxie at the painter's house on Sunday. I drove it to work yesterday and today. It's essentially flawless. I heard a little rattle this morning backing in here at work so I'm pretty sure that's one of the gas tank heat shields so I probably have a small project there. The bolts are small, course thread sheet metal screws. If overtightened, they curl up the thin metal shield and don't tighten up. There is at least one on each side like that. I should be able to just flatten the metal and then they'll pull up.
All in all, I'm very happy with it. The A/C is ice cold, it's super smooth and while it's no 400 HP power house, it's not a gutless turd either. It's a really nice car.
Tonight I'm going to look at the heat shields back there and probably start looking into swapping in the full size spare. It's ready for the 545 mile run to Orange Beach as far as I'm concerned. I'll likely daily drive it the rest of the week and then clean it up this weekend and put it away for the trip.
That's it for now friends.
I started with replacing the belt and tensioner. Yes, I replaced them when I did the tune up but for the past several months I've had a chirping sound when I start the car up cold. After it warms up a bit, the sound goes away. I ignored it for as long as I could but it was really starting to get to me. When I initially got the car going again, after the tune-up and replacing all the hoses, I inadvertently got coolant on my new belt. I think this was the source of the noise. That or the Chineseaum tensioner. I replaced the GM belt with a Dayco that was reputed to not squeak on old pulleys. I replaced the Delco tensioner with a Gates one made in Canada. The noise is gone, so I'm happy. I'll keep the other belt and tensioner as emergency spares.
Next I found the source of the resonance/vibration noise that was bothering me. It was the driver's side converter against the heat shield under the driver's side floor board. I massaged the shield and got clearance. Easy solution. Next I removed the low oil lever sensor as it was still seeping 😡! It's a Delco new but I didn't use the O-Ring that came with it. Instead I used the original style sealing "washer", which was dumb. I replaced the sealing washer with the O-Ring, reinstalled it and then topped off the engine oil. I think that leak is cured. Next I checked tightness of most of the exhaust system and didn't find any problems. Then I moved on to tightening up the rear shoes a bit and tightening up the adjustment on the parking brake. Finally, I made an adjustment to the driver's side heat shield between the gas tank and the tail pipe. I did so by loosening the little bolts that secure it, repositioning it, and then tightening the bolts back up.
The results: This thing is really smooth. I kept it home all weekend. We took it to pick up the Galaxie at the painter's house on Sunday. I drove it to work yesterday and today. It's essentially flawless. I heard a little rattle this morning backing in here at work so I'm pretty sure that's one of the gas tank heat shields so I probably have a small project there. The bolts are small, course thread sheet metal screws. If overtightened, they curl up the thin metal shield and don't tighten up. There is at least one on each side like that. I should be able to just flatten the metal and then they'll pull up.
All in all, I'm very happy with it. The A/C is ice cold, it's super smooth and while it's no 400 HP power house, it's not a gutless turd either. It's a really nice car.
Tonight I'm going to look at the heat shields back there and probably start looking into swapping in the full size spare. It's ready for the 545 mile run to Orange Beach as far as I'm concerned. I'll likely daily drive it the rest of the week and then clean it up this weekend and put it away for the trip.
That's it for now friends.
I'd hate for your car to contract Covid 19 on your trip after all that work, so if I were you I'd invest in one of these before the trip-
