What did you do to your non-G body project today? [2023]

[Ugly1]

So the original plan was to finish the oil charge on the compressor's crankcase and to that end I had paid a visit to the service shop and picked up a gallon of 30W Premium mineral oil. The old oil had been left to drain out overnight as it was about as stiff as molasses and slower than an 16 year old trying to avoid school. About to add some layers and head out to the back when I get the sounds of diesel coming from the front street. 1/2 hr later I am in the front driveway with a scoop and moving out what the plow dropped off; a wet mushy heavy pile of white crap, one half scoop at a time because this stuff is cement snow, aka heart attack snow and mostly water held together by obstinancy.

Get that done and out into the shop. Dump the oil bucket that had been left to catch the drain down; about full and more in it that I had would have been the case. Rethread the cap onto the drain pipe and set the petcock back to closed.

Normally the refill would have been an hour of funnel and slow pour work but this time I decided to score a small siphon pump from the local big box car parts store and use that. Took about 8 repetitions and maybe 1/2 hour but got the oil in and minimized the mess and slop in the process. Fired up the compressor and let it build up some pressure.

Went ahead and pulled the air filters and blew them clean, then re-installed them. Now for the why of this.

When I put my Non-G-body --GBody away for the winter, the relief valve on the Canton Pre-oiler had started to hiccup and spit oil out of the reservoir. During the winter I had Canton send me some replacement valves so's I could do a valve swap. Thing here is, to do the swap you have to drain the air pressure side of the reservoir to take the pressure off the oil side. Once you do the swap, the tank has to be repressurized as fast as possible to equalize the two chambers. If not, well I have what is left of the original tank sitting over in the corner; they do blow up quite suddenly and thoroughly; drove the one end cap right off its threads and down into the inner wheel well cavity. Good thing it happened in the front driveway or I would have lost the whole oil pan into the bargain. Nothing like having to deal with 5 quarts of oil that just got vomited all over an asphalt drive to ruin a week.

So got that done, Lifted the main door to check on the snow/ice pack and removed some of the immediate crud away from the door sill. Closed the door and discovered that the upper weather seall was still not sitting tight against the upper door frame so now i have to pay yet another visit to Home Deppott to see if they have a long flap door seal that I can PK screw to the upper leading edge of the door. Bother. Fortunately the internal and ambient temps right now are just about equal so the furnace isn't likely to fire off.


Nick

Like your description of the oil mess! Always tell trainees” if you ever had to clean up after a qt of oil ,think 5,10,or even 100 gallons of it, just this is Teflon liquid “. Some get it ,most don’t. And I always tell them “You will spill it, just a matter of when.”

 

[86LK]

I haven't checked out garage journal in a while. I should.

I've got a 1 floor house with the attached 2 stall to the left. It's 24ft wide, 22ft deep with the hip roof. I don't have room on the side of the house with neighbors so I have to go back. It's just the question of how do i add a garage to the back and have the roof lines and wall heights line up.

I have a 9ft ceiling in the existing garage and think put a pass through to an addition on the back yard side of the garage if I take out the man door and a window, but getting the roof and wall height right is the challenge.

I suspect you'll be ripping the entire upper structure off, extending the walls for length, installing new joists and rafters, then re-roofing.

just the same, you'll need to supply better pics that what you've got for people to have a better idea. sounds like you have a full hip roof on the garage, not like my house with a partial hip roof on the garage.

garagejournal it is....

 

[ck80]

I suspect you'll be ripping the entire upper structure off, extending the walls for length, installing new joists and rafters, then re-roofing.

just the same, you'll need to supply better pics that what you've got for people to have a better idea. sounds like you have a full hip roof on the garage, not like my house with a partial hip roof on the garage.

garagejournal it is....

It's been probably 3 decades since I spent some time working under an architect for a few years (I've gotten around) but, depending on how the rest of the structure is situated you could possibly leave the existing hip roof if you made your rearward addition with a ridge beam centerline that starts with and basically extends the wall of the main dwelling rearward. You then have two options depending on house/layout - you have half the garage behind the existing stepped down portion and half behind the main house, or, go with a salt box style roof over the garage extension which only intrudes a couple feet behind the main house, and, wouldn't necessarily be out of architectural character if it was either a colonial/reproduction style or a contemporary.

There's ideas for sure to be had with better pictures and info.

 

[joesregalproject]

Today was Grandpa LaCrosse episode two- Intake Gaskets.

I wasn't planning on doing them this weekend but my grandfather was out yesterday and the temp light came on. He didn't want to drive it until I looked at it. I already had the gaskets so I figured I should just replace them. The oil had some coolant in it, but no oil in the coolant. The failure point on the gasket was obvious once I got it apart.

I replaced the thermostat and one of the coolant elbows while I was there, changed the oil and filter and put some Seafoam in the crankcase. I'll change it again after a week or two. Afterward I took it for a ride on the highway, let it get up to temp and punched it a few times. This car doesn't get to stretch its legs too often so I'm sure it needed it.

There is an exhaust leak I can smell but not hear. I'm gonna need to look into that on the next episode. Seems to be near the rear exhaust manifold.

 

[CopperNick]

Decided it was about time to deal with the air leak along the top edge of the main garage door and made a fast dawn raid on Home D to see if I could get a wind baffle and get out before the horde of AM weekend honey-do warriors started to show up. Did manage to acquire a couple of 9 footers and a 7 footer so brought all that home and had breakfast.

Got out to the shop around 11.30 and spent the next 2.5 hours up a ladder battling with the door and the wind baffle to get them to get along. Finally got a match that would work and showed no light along the edges. High probability that I will pay for it in sore muscles and ab pain tomorrow.

STill have to replace the outside upper door gasket with one that has a longer flap. The Oem version just does not lay enough face on the door frame to get a good air tight seal. May have to be a spring or summer project as the back ramp is still mostly ice under the frozen snow.


Nick

 

[Flyers9928]

Update! Used hood installed, new front lenses installed and upgraded all external lights to led.

 

[pagrunt]

Update! Used hood installed, new front lenses installed and upgraded all external lights to led.View attachment 218417

You wouldn't be in need of some tail lights? I have a set of unused ones bouncing around the garage that never made it on my '96 step side. No circuit boards.

 

[Wraith]

Spent Sunday working on the Boxster. I hate this car. So the rear BCM is bad, by virtue of the idiotic way Porsche drains the roof. The roof drains are inside the car underneath where the convertible top dips into the body. "When" they clog they fill up and spill that water into the cabin floor and with the rear BCM mounted underneath the driver's seat, voila!

To clean the roof drains is easy, unless your rear BCM is fried because it operates the top. Look up the emergency way to open top, not so much there but it's very similar to closing a top that won't close which involves removing rods that control the roof and rods that control the rear clamshell. Luckily for me at some point the plastic rod ends snapped off the roof rods. Sucky part is there is hardly any room to remove the clamshell rods but removing the front seats, the engine sound cover, and the rear package tray they came loose. Copious amounts of soap, water, air, and finally a vacuum cleared all the drains. Unfortunately due to clogged drains I had more water in the driver's floors before the fix. Now it sits with fans running after sucking up 5 gallons of water to dry out the 2" foam that is under the carpet.

Next up is to program the new $450 rear BCM module once it's all dry.

 

[Bonnewagon]

I am trying to repair a 1967 firebird tilt column that was collapsed in a crash. After scoring some critical parts I am slowly fixing the damaged stuff. Today I dealt with the collapsible mast. That is the outside part of the column that looks like expanded metal mesh. It is designed to collapse in a crash and it did. We figured that a mast from a standard column may work the same so we cannibalized a 1968 parts column. The mesh part was similar, the lower section was identical, but the upper end was different. I decided to leave the lower section with the mesh alone, but cut the mesh at the top. Then graft the tilt top end to the mesh. Not knowing the actual assembled length I left it as long as I could. I can always shorten it but I can't lengthen it. It is very delicate work to weld the mesh ends to the top. They want to just melt immediately. The ones that did I had to reinforce. Here is a pic of how it turned out. The small piece on the left is the standard column top. You can see it is longer and shaped different than the tilt one. The next thing is to assemble it and see if the rest of the parts fit properly. Please ignore my Frankenstein welds. No one is going to see them once it is all done. So far so good it looks like the mast is the proper length and oriented properly.

 

[CopperNick]

Would going with silver solder or maybe a two part epoxy of some kind been a possibility? Absolutely digging the work and effort you had to make to get the halves to make nice with each other. Lowest I can get my Mig down to is 22 ga and wish I could drop down to 24 some times. TIG is a non-starter for me because the Tig frequency and the frequency used by my pacemaker are too close and the TIG would cause the p-m to stutter or mis-trigger.

On the bright side, once you get it all put back together and rehung under the dash, no one will ever see the work, only the results and how good it looks.



Ah, Boxster, so BCM is "Brake Control Module"???? Or ??? Me no savvy Deutschischist?? techno geek.

Nick