Graham’s Corvette Blog and Studebaker bits ‘n’ bobs

Back up on the Quick Jack hoist – getting lots of use!. I found that on the high setting I can just get the hood open which is great.

Time to overhaul the power steering pump, control valve and piston.

Removal was a bit of a bear. 44 years later and everything is tight. One cotter pin didn’t want to come out so I had to split the castle nut. Fortunately I was able to get at the nut with the small splitter. Four ball joints needed to be opened. One being on the control valve that wouldn’t take the ball joint splitter, but I was able to squeeze in a pitman arm puller and it just came off. Otherwise I would have had to fight with the pitman arm to remove it from the steering box which I really didn’t want to do.

Two afternoons later and it’s all on the bench. The hoses were all toast as most fittings where seized on to the pipes. So they couldn’t be saved.

Nothing beats having the right too for the job. I tied pulling the PS pump pulley off with a small three legged puller (attached onto the pulley center and not the outside of the pulley as they just tend to bend), but that didn’t work at all even with heat from a fax max. Happily my car nut chum happened to have the correct kit. With it I was able to get it off without damage to the pulley or the pump – I can get a $36 core charge refund fjor the old pump if it’s in good shape for rebuilding.

Pulley sand blasted, sanded and ready for paint. I tape the inside to keep the paint off the surface where the belt rides. I have had problems with belts slipping (squealing) when I painted the inside of the groove. I’ll paint with Tremclad rust primer and cheapie-do Princess Auto gloss black – this is a try out of their paint.

Next I will break down the ps components.

These are the new Power Pack heads I have in my ‘stuff’. They have 1.72 intake and 1.50 exhaust ports. This is quite a bit smaller than the later heads with 1.94 and 1.50 sizes. However, the smaller power pack head runners increase the velocity of the fuel at low speeds giving improved low end response and fuel mileage. The problem is putting them on a 350 limits the effective revs to about 3500. Not a big problem for me. Still I don’t like to limit the engine, especially when using passing gear.

A problem with the older heads is they don’t have bolt holes in the front to mount the alternator bracket or the AC bracket – as above. There are alternator brackets available which fasten to the water pump and the AC has 4 mounting spots and might well be fine with three or maybe the head could be bored to handle that mounting bolt as it is quite high and should miss the water jacket.

I’m in no rush to make a decision. A lot will depend on the condition of the ’88 truck motor that I’m hoping to get later this year.

In the meantime I continue to get parts ready. The PS pump is getting a nice coat of shiny black paint.

I’ve buffed the aluminum wheels and now I need to address the corrosion in the slots. First step was to sand them down with fine paper.

Matching the original colour in the slots was a challenge. What I found that works was using a rag and a bit of aluminum paint I could put a real fine coat on the aluminum and that matched the original pretty well.

The slot in the middle has the rag applied aluminum paint and the slot to the left is the original.

All shined up and ready to go the the tire shop. I’ll transfer my Firestone tires from the GM rally wheels and then put those up for sale.

This is one of three 8″ buffing wheels I got off Amazon. The pictures I saw seemed to imply that they could be used with an angle grinder – 11000 rpm.

Hard to tell, but the whee looks really nice after a buffing with the course wheel and brown compound then the medium wheel and green compound. When I went to do the final buffing with the soft wheel and red compound…disaster.

The wheel disintegrated before I even got to apply the red compound. Reading the fine print I realized that the wheels were meant only from buffers with a speed of around 3000 rpm. The two other wheels must be made well to have stood the almost triple speed I was using – yikes!

I picked up a used Craftsman two speed buffer and that worked well on low speed with the blue (course) and yellow (medium) wheels. I ended up using course compound and the course wheel to take away all the corrosion and the yellow wheel with green medium to fine compound to bring them to a shine. I’m not trying to get a super shine or to the point they are concours. I’m happy with excellent drivers and good for local car shows. The two pictured were the worst of the set and they look just nice. Now I need to find $100 to get them mounted and balanced!

Primer coat on.

I have retaped the center so that the black paint to come will just clear the primer. That way the primer won’t be peeking out under the black.

I started to wipe down the pump with parts solvent and a thin layer of cover paint began to disintegrate. The paint underneath on the reservoir seems good enough.

The pump body itself turned out to be raw casting under the cover paint. I’ll give the whole pump a good coating.

Two have OK dark centers – correct for ’79.

And two have the paint blistering. I’m using a mild household paint remover to get the old paint off. It’s a bit of a chore. Seems the automotive paint is tough stuff. I think I should have used heat to remove the paint, but my heat gun just went south.

The nuts cleaned up nicely. Five are a little worse for wear and I’ll replace them on my next parts order.

Finally got my reman power steering pump. Looks good, but the paint is likely minimal so I’ll sand it down and give it another coat of semi-gloss black.

I had hopes that the two low cylinders in the engine had stuck rings and would loosen up. I could then fix the timing chain and PS pump and drive the car while I got other stuff done. Unfortunately the two low cylinders remained at 70 and 80 lbs. Also most of the plugs show a degree of oil fouling. So really the engine is toast. I’ll fix the PS pump leakages and continue to drive the car until I can change or refresh the engine.

I have a lead on a 383 stroker (just a 350 with a 400 crank and special pistons). If that doesn’t work out I also have a lead on an ’88 truck engine that can maybe provide a re-buildable block. I haven’t checked out the cost of boring the block or the cost for refreshing the heads. The cost of a mild cam, lifters, bearings and pistons is about $600. I prefer to work on an engine and when ready, swap out the existing engine. The only delay might be the time to get the heads re-done.

I have found a set of aluminum rims, nuts and centre hub caps that are not in too bad condition. I decided to get these ($800) instead of buying new centres and rings for the existing steel wheels. If I can sell the exiting wheels for $100 or a bit more then I’m not going to be out a lot and I’ll have lighter aluminum wheels. They will lower the car’s un-sprung wheel weight and so improve the ride especially over bumpy areas.

This is the worst one. It will need serious buffing and new paint on the center section.

I’ll pick up buffing wheels and compound from Amazon – local parts shops don’t carry the stuff.

A lot of the crud comes off with cleaner wax. I’ll do the back sections and everywhere else I won’t be buffing. It’s raw aluminum so it needs a wax coating to protect against corrosion.

All ready for the finishing up of the safety check – I hope – this coming Wednesday.

Picked up the Edelbrock manifold. Seems OK. I’ll tackle that after the timing chain work and the rebuild of the PS system.

Stopped in at Moloand’s Corvettes and found a few parts. I need a tach face, but they are as a friend says – unobtainium! So I had to pay for a complete used tach. With it I also got a complete printed circuit board for parts backup.

Also got this set of sport mirrors with driver remote. Apparently they will be a bit tricky to install. We’ll find out once the Chevy is off the road.

Can’t imaging how this piece of the door got lost. It will replace a rough piece of metal now covering the access hole in the driver’s door.

A key part I needed for the PS repairs. A PS pump bracket. Mine has a broken off lower mounting tab.

Components for delay & mist wiper functions. I’ll install this with other dash work later in the winter.

Some ugly driver’s door armrest. Nevertheless it is solid. I’ll clean off the crud with TSP pre-paint cleaner (good for removing mould too) Then prep it and paint with vinyl paint. I’ve been using desert sand colour as it is what I can get locally and it goes well with the doeskin interior.

Last little goodie I found was a good used driver’s door handle escutcheon. A good cleaning and a coat or two of desert sand spray and it’ll be ready to go.

Lookin’ forward to my winter work 😉

The flex hose on the right side didn’t seem to fit properly into the brass junction box. Not cross threaded, but just stiff and not a nice snug fit. Sure enough it started to leak during the bleeding process. Tightening it a bit more and this happened. No luck getting one from a local parts supplier so I have to wait until one comes in from a Corvette supplier.

In the meantime I’m puzzled by the lack of heat from the heater. Here’s my setup to blow out the heater radiator. Brownish antifreeze came out, but it doesn’t seem to be blocked. I checked out the heat/AC flap and it is OK. Checked out the new hot water cutoff valve and the vacuum switch under the dash to control the cutoff valve and all seems fine.

I thought that maybe I had a mouse nest in behind the heater core ( I had earlier remove nests from the inside of both doors). It would have been a monumental task to take the heater box apart so I drilled a 1-1/4″ hole in the box and used my vacuum mini hose to get in and around the inside – no evidence of a nest. I used a proper hole plug to seal up the opening.

So I am at a loss. The engine does run cool. Maybe it’s just a thermostat that is stuck open and so the low temperature of the coolant results in minimal heat from the heater. I won’t touch the badly corroded thermostat housing until the car is off the road for it’s winter repairs.

I have been having issues with the right rear brake setup. The right rear wheel was seized when I got to the garage. It appears to have a collapsed flex line. Something I have heard of but never experienced. That would explain all the problems. With the car on the hoist and the brakes pumped up the right rear wheel was locked. Releasing the pressure by opening the caliper bleed valve allowed the wheel to turn. So now to remove 44 year old rear flex lines.

Even using the special wrench for the job the fitting didn’t want to move. So I cut the hoses and got them off that way.

The problem was that the nut was seized onto the brake line. The lines appear to be in good shape so to save them I heated the fitting till it was red and that loosened them up nicely.

Two nice new flex lines. Sold by Raybestos, but made in China. China can make good stuff if that’s what the buyer wants. Hopefully this is the case here.

New flex lines in place. Time to bleed the lines 🙂

Lift tabs and two remaining latch points sandblasted and ready for paint.

This is a latch kit I can get. I’ll buy that later.

I decided that I had the time to paint the frame. After I completed the repairs I sanded it down and applied a coat of Tremclad rust primer to the surface corrosion on the hinges.

The bolts I was using for the frames stuck out on the sides too much so I had to grind them flat for the covers to fit without scraping the frame. After all this work I found that the screw kit for the storage trays contained short flat head screws that work perfectly on the frames. Only trouble was there was only 8 of them and I needed 16!

Doors with new trim pieces and painted pull tabs in place.

Doors fitted and ready for installation, but there are problems – again.

My original repairs didn’t work out. The small bolts interfered with the flanges that the frame mounts to. So I had to change the repairs this time using screws that fit in existing holes in the mounting frame.

Final fit. The frame is nice an tight on the flanges and it looks nice in the fawn colour with the gold carpet.

Heading out today to Bridgewater, NS to check out a used Edelbrock Performer intake. Hopefully it is in good shape and will not be too high for the Chevy.