Hood hinges back on and the hood brace in place.
Not a fun job, but the hood needed to be cleaned up and painted. I’ve removed the sound mat attaching posts. I’ll just paint it this time and next time I’ll put on some stick-on sound deadening when I’m doing the interior floors.
Hard to get a shot of a black hood in detail. Turned out nice. Just need to hand paint some areas of the front lip and a big paint chip.
All ready for the road. Just need to check the electric choke and set the timing. I’ll go with an initial setting of about 8 degrees which will give about 27 with the vacuum advance in.
My low pressure 90 deg. fitting came in so I can check the AC system for leaks. I found a serious leak somewhere when I tried to vacuum the system. It would vacuum to about -20 and then no more. When I stopped the vacuum pump the vacuum in the system quickly disappeared.
The usual way to find a leak is with nitrogen, but I couldn’t find any small canisters of the stuff. So I opted to sacrifice some of my R22 refrigerant instead. I sprayed all the connections with soapy water before I let a small amount of refrigerant into the system.
I quickly heard gas escaping from the condenser area. It turns out that the condenser is cracked near where the lower connection is located. Can’t really get a good shot. I sprayed more soapy water in the area and the bubbling was quite evident.
So much for the condenser. Rock Auto has them for $160 plus about $35 in shipping. I don’t want to delay getting on the road so I’ll order the condenser and put it in over the winter. I’ll need to take the hood off again to get at the condenser connections, but that’s not a biggie with help from a couple of my coffee buddies.
This about ends this session on the Chevy. Still lots to do and I’ll get at it over the winter. I’m looking forward to getting the AC working, reupholstering the seats, installing the correct antenna and maybe getting some sound deadening mat over the floors and under the hood. I’m not really happy with the aftermarket radio I bought so I may try and slip in the AM/FM radio I saved from the Caprice. The aftermarket radio starts every time I start the car which is irritating and the buttons are just too small. I does have a CD drive that I’ll miss, but the Caprice radio has a cassette feature so I’m not totally lost.
In the meantime I’ll post bits and bobs now and then as I go through the fall.