Sadness: Goodbye Jane

Well, it sucks.  But it was considered a "total loss."  The car known as Jane is gone forever.

Long Time No Post

But we have made progress!  We finally fixed the exhaust.  We had to special order original pipes because no one around here will custom bend pipes with the old flange like we needed.  But given the non-original nature of some or our engine/manifold... we had to wrestle it a little bit.  In the end it's on and it doesn't leak.

Then we put on new leaf springs to help out the sagging rear end.  We found that the leaf spring mounting plates were cracked - which is pretty crazy given that they're just a slab of metal that holds the springs/shocks up.  Fixed.  That stuff and the exhaust was about $350.

Then we took it to the local tire place for an alignment and inspection ($102).  As expected our "eye-ball-alignment" was way off, but it rolls straight now.  And to Eli's surprise it passed the safety inspection on the first try!

With that, I went and got some plates ($40) for the thing and he legally drove it to work on 6/14/2017.

Lame video, I know.  But I was excited.  The car is a long way from finished... but it's nice to see it move around.

This stuff cost: $492

Total project cost: $4131.51

It looks like a (beat up, old) car again!

We got a new air filter.  Yea, that was actually pretty hard to find.  Eli put the fenders and bumper back on.  Check it out:

Notice the blue(ish) door.  We got that off craigslist from a nice guy named Gene.  It has all the internal hardware (or most of it).  So, now both doors actually latch closed!

Here it is running for the first time without fluids spewing out of it or anything.  Some idiot at the wheel is pulling a stupid face.  Classy:

So, the choke is busted. But we opened the brakes and were surprised to see them in good shape!  It might be time for a test drive soon.

This stuff (used old door, air filter) cost: $83

Total project cost: 3639.51

It started!

We had our expert (Pawpaw) come over after we put the carburetor on and we began pretending like we knew how to get this car running.  We discovered that we pinched a metal fuel line and leaked the foulest smelling gasoline I've ever smelled all over myself and the garage floor, but we routed it around the hole temporarily.  After replacing the points in the distributor and getting an education on timing we manually shoved the choke closed and cranked the engine until, to Eli's glee, the thing fired up and ran!

The distributor does what?

Then it promptly started spewing oil out of the bell housing.  35 seconds of elation followed by disappointment.

How does oil get into the bell housing?  Why, through the rear main seal, of course!  So, pull the engine back out.  The rebuild kit that we had used came with an old rope-style seal, and Pawpaw warned us at that time about those.  Well, after pulling the engine out we saw that it was, in fact, pinched and rammed itself over exposing about a quarter inch of rear main with no seal at all.  Hence the rather profuse leak.

We noticed two more bad things as well.

First of all, there were metal shavings in the oil pan.

yea.  NOT GOOD.

Upon further inspection though, it turned out that it wasn't as catastrophic as we had feared.  The flex plate bolts are just a little too long and apparently the new crank bearings have a side flange that is microscopically wider than the old one and the bolts rubbed their ends on it.

Simple fix: clean out the oil pan and get some washers for those bolts to make them shorter.  They probably had washers on them in 1968, but someone between then and now lost/discarded them.  We didn't lose them.  I swear.

Second, we noticed a leaking freeze plug.  Rookie mistake here: we should have replaced the freeze plugs when we had the engine out the first time.  So, we decided to do it with it out the second time.  That meant we had to remove the exhaust manifold (which we also should have just done the first time around).  And we promptly broke 3 bolts.

new freeze plugs and a couple broken bolts.

So, drill, drill, break drill bits, tap, buy new bolts, etc... No problem.  What a pain.

Putting the engine in with the transmission already in the car was a new challenge, but we man-handled it just right and got everything bolted back in.  We even put in the new fuel line tube.  Then, with no exhaust pipe connected, we cranked it over again and it started right up and ran!

All of this happened in about a week.  Eli is more excited than ever to drive the thing now.  He scrubbed the old carpet and put it back in with the old seats.  He then put all the fenders back on except the drivers side because we still need to fix that door.  Next up: exhaust pipe and brake system.

This stuff (freeze plugs, bolts, points) cost: $50

Total project cost: 3556.51

Those torque boxes

So, we've recently been working on replacing torque boxes and front floor panels.  To save money Eli decided that we'd just use metal from an old lawn tractor trailer for the floor boards.  We did purchase a new passenger torque box ($87.99) as it was completely rotted.

from the outside bottom

rot cut out and new box half in

complete box in

floor metal welded down

I forgot to take pictures of the driver's side torque box, but it wasn't nearly as rotted as the passenger side.  So, we patched the one bad rusty spot on the box and took the same sheet metal approach on the floor.

floor metal

before, and Eli is going to town grinding

So, it took longer than expected, but it wasn't too expensive.  Also, I should note that we welded a small support from the floor support to the rocker panel on either side since our floor metal wasn't grooved like the original and we worried about flexing.  It's solid as a rock now, so I'm not sure that was necessary, but it's there!  He's ready to put the old carpet back in and bolt the seats back down.

Eli put in a new replacement heater core ($25) too and some new heater hoses.  Oddly enough, the radiator hoses looked pretty new so we'll reuse those until they explode.  It's now ready to fill up with anti-freeze.

Also, we put new front brake hoses on ($12 x 2).  So, in theory we could put in some brake fluid and see if that works too!

This stuff cost: $136.99

Total project cost:  $3506.51

Close up the engine, put the suspension back together

In the last few weekends we put the head on and closed up the engine.  We managed to snap the old thermostat housing in half trying to get it free from the head so we grabbed a new one from O'Reilly Auto parts.  It was cheap - $8.49.  We decided that the exhaust manifold is easy enough to get to on this car that we wouldn't bother replacing the gasket at this point.  We can do it later if it leaks.  We used the engine crane to hold the head for us and sat it in place so we could torque the head bolts in.

After that we put on the new thermostat housing and a new thermostat we got... just because they're cheap ($7).  Here's a shot of the front of the engine at this point and Eli putting in the first oil it has seen in weeks.

Later, we put the new front brake lines in place and put the suspension back together with new ball joints, tie rod ends, upper control arm shaft kits, and shock absorbers.  We borrowed the spring compressor from Auto Zone again.  The other new parts ran $240.36.

We actually put the front tires on and sat it down to see if it worked.  I mean, we knew it would... but you know... it was still fun to jump on the front and watch the suspension flex.  While laying under the car putting the drive shaft back on (mostly just to get it out of the way) we noticed to Eli's dismay that the torque boxes are in far worse shape than originally thought.  So, that's our next step.

This stuff cost: $255.85

Total project cost: $3369.52

Valve Seals

Today we replaced the valve seals in the head.  It went pretty well after we removed the rocker arm.

Once we were finished with that we hooked the speedometer cable, shift lever, coolant lines, and dipstick tube up to the transmission.  We then replaced the passenger side brake line.  That means we're ready to put the head back on with the new head gasket.

Making progress!  We also made pb&j sandwiches and put doritos on them.

awesome.

Today cost: $0

Total project cost: $3113.67

Put the Engine and Transmission Back In

So, we got a tip from Pawpaw about bolting the engine and transmission together and putting them into the car in one piece.  That sounded good so we decided to try it since we'd both struggled lining up bell housing bolts to mounted engines on other jobs.  As it turns out it was the torque converter that drove us nuts today.  It wasn't sitting into the transmission all the way which made it impossible to fit the transmission and engine together.  After the 4th try, we finally got that figured out and they fit right together.

Then we figured we'd try to drop it in there.  This actually went very smooth.

The idea was to have a pretty steep angle.  It seems odd hanging from the hoist like that, but once you drop it in and begin lowering it, you "catch" the transmission with a floor jack and it all starts to level out.  The transmission mount bracket went in like a snap and the motor mount bolts weren't much trouble either.  A little wiggling was all it took.

Today cost: $0

Total project cost: $3113.67

Engine reassembly finished

Before:

After:

So, the timing set we bought from RockAuto.com... the gear on the crank shaft was very slightly bigger than the old one so the timing cover wouldn't fit on.  Real dumb.  So, we just put the old one back.  I'll have to go to the site and leave a lousy review.  Also, we nearly destroyed the timing cover seal when some idiot (me) put it on backward and had to take it back off.  Hope it doesn't leak!

Looks like a real engine again huh?

Today cost: $0

Total project cost: $3113.67 

Engine reassembly

So, we did buy the wrong bearings.  But that's ok, we ordered the right ones according to what was in there and reassembled the engine.

I didn't take enough pictures apparently, but the cleaned up rods went back in with no real trouble. Fresh rings, new bearings... It'll probably work.  Eli sprayed some Ford blue high temperature paint on it to make it look pretty.

Also, we ordered some new brake lines at some point.  CJPonyParts.com put them on backorder for us so we had to wait a while, but they came in and we replaced the long line running from the front to the back.  This clears the way for us to put the engine and transmission back in once the engine assembly is wrapped up.  Upon further inspection, we may be able to reuse some of the other brake lines.  They don't look bad at all.  The long one had some rust/corrosion at the rear so, we decided it was best to yank it out.

This day (pre-bent brake lines) cost: $112.99

Total project cost: $3113.67

Engine disassembly Day 2

Today Eli finished disassembling the engine while I was at work.  That consisted of him removing the harmonic balance (thanks for the tool Pawpaw):

Then he removed the timing cover, water pump, and crank shaft.

After that he scraped all the gaskets and cleaned out the piston ring grooves.  While he was busy I finished welding on the passenger side fender apron patches.

Also, we found this tacked to the side of the engine.  Turns out it's a re-manufactured engine.  And we might have ordered the wrong sized rings.  More on that to come...

This day cost: $0

Total project cost: $3,000.68