Monday, June 9, 2008

More Dismantling

I was pretty frustrated this weekend, with a stupid race in LA taking away my Saturday. Despite visitors in town I still managed to make it in for a few hours on Sunday. The tasks were assorted.
  • Spray the entire chassis with degreaser, hitch up the bug to the Jeep, drive it over to the car wash and high-pressure wash the whole thing. It's pretty clean now, though there's some stubborn gunk that really won't come off.
  • Lift up the front end of the car and lube the front torsion bars
  • Drill away. When we cut out the spot welds, we left little craters in the base metal below the floor pan. That's what we get for not having a proper spot weld cutter. So that they don't hold water and rust, I drilled through them with a 1/8" bit. We'll weld through those holes on the bottom and fill in the craters with weld material.
Then it was time to continue dismantling things, in part to inspect, in part to repaint the engine cover, and in part because it' s kind of fun. First were the heat exchangers, which are commonly rusted and damaged in these cars. Mine kind of rattle around, so I'm guessing they need replacing. Problem is that I really don't actually know what they're supposed to look like, so I need to take them out to compare with a new piece. Here they are out of the car:



They're not really supposed to come out like that, with the parts of engine cover attached, but the screws connecting the heat exchangers to them were rusted on nice and good, so depending on what pieces I decide to replace, I'll need to do some cutting. Here's a view up close:



Now, I just don't think there's supposed to be a gap, or at least that big of a gap between the exhaust manifold and the actual heat exchanger. Seems like a good amount of the hot air would escape through there. We'll have to see.

Next step was to continue removing the engine cover. The front and rear covers are off already as are some venty things on the front of the fan housing. To get to the screws holding in the fan housing, the intake manifold has to come out... which is OK, really, because the heat risers on the intake manifold are all rusty and ugly and I was thinking of changing it just for aesthetics. Here are the fan housing with the generator and coil still attached and the intake manifold in its three parts (the central section with the carb still attached and the two outer sections that actually connect to the intake port):




You can see the rusty heat risers tubes. One issue that I'm not quite sure about is the air control thermostat. It's supposed to be there according to the manual I was using to take this all apart. But I looked pretty carefully and couldn't find it. Is it missing? Kind of makes me wonder if the fan has been operating to spec this whole time. Yet another matter to figure out.

So anyway, right about now is when I start to have that "I hope I can put this all back together" feeling. This engine is starting to look kind of bare.



Next time... welding (hopefully)

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