Page Fifty - Whoa and Go Update

 

Fifty pages! I Should get a medal or something, maybe some ice cream…

First the WHOA

Shopping at Tom’s Parts Pile:  Sunbeam parts are surprisingly easy to find, at least most of them.  My favorite vendors once carried new front brake discs and complete exhaust systems, but not now.  Maybe they will again, but I need stuff now!  So, I’m off to pick through Tom’s Parts Pile.

Tom is my Alpine buddy and fellow autocrosser who owns a slick 1967 Alpine, same color as mine.  Tom decided that his Alpine needed such modern claptrap as free-floating brake calipers and lightweight cross drilled discs at each corner, a dual master cylinder (not to mention all kinds of engine upgrades, interior lighting, a working clock for the dash, but I digress).  Fortunately for me, before he decided to turn his back on the old ways, he bought a bunch of standard Alpine stuff, namely new front discs and newly turned rear drums to decorate the shelves in his garage.

I found a place that will lathe my really quite rusty front discs.  They have plenty of metal left, but it will take several passes on a lathe to get to the good metal (they are heavy enough to anchor down a decent sized boat in a swift current too).  But now I don’t have to do that because Tom is the man!

The Rear Drums:  I have four rear drums; two from the Organ Donor that might be salvageable, but it’s doubtful, and two from Alphie which are definitely salvageable but why do people reach for a bigger hammer to break the grip of rusted-on brake shoes?  Only one drum doesn’t have big chunks banged out of the edges.  I mean the friction surfaces are intact, but I’m not putting natty old drums on Little Lord Alphleroy! 

Tom had two that only had some surface rust from their dormancy on the shelf AND they had been turned before their nap.  Problem solved!

Not new, but cleaned up, painted with turned friction surfaces, bling bling!

A quick bead blast, some light sanding and a bit of exhaust manifold paint and Bob’s your uncle once again!  They are pristine and perfect wrapped around Alphie’s new brake shoes.

Mounted and with an old janky spinner
(I'll either get them rechromed or find some nicer ones)

The Front Discs:  A lesson in sequencing – after a couple of hours banging out the old bearing races and pushing in the new ones, I learned that you have to grease up the inner wheel bearing and install it in the hubs BEFORE you put on the grease seals.  I also learned that you have to bolt on the discs BEFORE you mount the hubs and snug down the outer wheel bearing.  As you probably gleaned, I did a lot of undoing before I managed to get one hub and disc buttoned down.  Oddly enough, the other disc went on without a hitch, huh?

New Parts! New 10 year old (+-) discs, new bearings, new seals and new tie rod ends (I threw them in the pic because they're new too)

Sorted!

Shiny Exhaust:  Not part of the WHOA but God bless the folks who make stainless steel exhaust systems.  Sunbeam Specialties and Classic Sunbeam don’t have any in stock, so I turned my browser across the pond.  The gang at Sunbeam Spare in merry ole’ England set me up and shipped them to me faster than if I ordered them in the States, go figure, but how awesome.

I didn’t take any pics before I put it in, sorry for that, but it was way too easy.  Before I installed it, I couldn’t help myself, I’m weak, I have a problem, truly…I buffed out the Y pipe.  Look, it had browning from the welds, and I knew I could make it gleam under the car where it will face all manner of grime, and no one will see it, but it looks smashing, really!  If you are under the car, you can check your make-up.

I also bought some slick stainless T clamps too, just ‘cause I’m not well.

OOOOHH! AAAAAH!

Yeah, I buffed out the Y pipe - it's a symptom

Everything is stainless - the tubes are a ferrous stainless but no rusty rusty!

Gotta say, I love it!

Now for the GO

U Joints:  In my last order from Sunbeam Specialties, I got two spanking new u-joints, not an amazing purchase, but it allows me to get the prop shaft (that “drive shaft” for those in the colonies) spiffed up and under the car.  Well, not yet, I have to get it balanced before installing it.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

If it looks kinda short, it's because it's the prop shaft for the overdrive transmission - pretty, ain't it? (as far as drive shaft can be pretty)

Next up:  Sound deadening and re the doors go on… again.

Page Forty-Nine - Stop and Steer

 

It’s been a minute, but here’s what I’ve been up to.

Disc Brake Calipers

It might surprise you that sixty years, with however many of them spent outside or in various soggy environs, can grow gobs of rust, shocking I know.  Alphie’s calipers were pretty much frozen with rust, but the Organ Donor’s were abjectly fossilized.

Rusty with one piston freed.  The other piston is solidly stuck!

With enough leverage and skinned knuckles, I was able to pry Alphie’s calipers apart.  And I thought I would break down the Organ Donor’s for extra parts, at least for the bolts, silly man.  But no amount of force was breaking apart what chemical reactions had welded together.  The Organ Donor’s calipers are ballast at this point, blunt murder weapons.

The hardest part was freeing the pistons from their holes.  As you may know, whereas modern disc brakes use floating calipers (meaning they slide on pins, allowing them slide back to center after each peddle push), Alpine calipers are fixed using a piston on each side of the disc with a balance port between the caliper halves to equalize the hydraulic pressure, which is how they re-center.

Now, if a piston is stuck, you can use air pressure to push it out.  BUT after one piston busts loose (which it did rather violently, making one Alpine mechanic jump a wee bit and make noises), the other piston stays comfortably snug in its hole.  The air pressure now simply vents out the hole where the freed piston once lived.

I tried various methods of holding the free piston in place to get air pressure to the other side, but to no avail.  Finally, and because I could see that the old pistons were manky and because I could order shiny new stainless-steel ones, I decided that drilling a hole in the stuck ones (remember, there are two calipers) and tapping them with threads offered the best chance to free them from fossilized bondage.

I drilled and tapped threads in the hole.
A bolt pushed the piston out where nothing else would

My concern was that I would 1) drill through the piston and into the caliper wall, 2) strip the threads, requiring me to drill bigger holes and 3) muck up the bottom of the piston holes with a bolt pushing out the stuck piston.  As it happens, 1) I didn’t drill into the caliper wall because I was watching it very closely, 2) the threads held dutifully, and 3) neither the drilling nor the bolt pushing against the caliper wall mucked up anything.  Go team me!

I sacrified the piston, but there's only a small scar on the caliper bottom

With lots of bead blasting, powder coating and cast-iron paint (because the color of the cast aluminum powder was too bright for my tastes), the calipers are happily clean and ready for new pistons and gaskety sealy parts.  (The shiny ss pistons are backordered, but when they get here, everything will be spanking!)

Brake Servo

Power Brake Booster for my American readers.  Brake fluid is icky stuff; it corrodes almost everything it contacts, collects water, turns to jelly, and generally makes a bloody mess.  Tearing down the servo takes many rags and a few spray cans of brake cleaner.

Just a heads-up, there’s a big spring in the can part of the servo that, when you loosen the last screw on the backing plate, will shoot everything out the back, making your favorite mechanic jump and make noises, again, just FYI.  And there’s usually loads of smelly old brake fluid in there from decades of leaking seals.  It smells terrible too.

Grungy and gross, the dissambled parts of a Girling brake servo

Cleaning everything up is gross but simple.  Removing the valves from the valve body is the big chore.  Again, the brake fluid and everything it corroded in the aluminum valve body makes an impressive glue, and the parts are small and won’t survive heavy-handed prying and banging.  I soaked the valve body with all its innards in WD 40 for a couple of days and used mostly air pressure to break everything loose.  The lower valve jumped out easily.

But the high-pressure control valve, or more specifically the end plug behind the control valve, at the back of the valve body was stuck like a mosquito in amber.  Soaking didn’t work.  Spraying copious WD 40 in it and on it didn’t work.  Brake cleaner didn’t work.  Puffing 120 psi of air pressure, nothing.  What finally worked was gently slipping a very thin feeler gauge between the valve body and the end plug O-ring braking the adhesion between the aluminum wall and the O ring’s rubber,  then pumping in lots-o-air pressure finally blew it out.  Oh, and when it finally blew out, your mechanic jumped and made noises yet again.

Cleaned painted and powder coated parts with a (second) rebuild kit

Finally disassembled, I cleaned, bead blasted, powder coated and painted all the parts (from two servos so that I had more parts from which to choose – yeah, I did the feeler gauge/air pressure, jump when it broke loose thing twice.  It went a bit easier the second time because I knew what to do.)

Another heads up, don’t cluelessly rip out the big leather seal that seals around the can because the rebuild kits don’t have a new one.  (One should at least glance through the rebuild kit before going at it.)  I had to order a second much more expensive kit that had a leather seal in it.  Thanks Harmon Classic Brakes for having a kit with a leather seal.  Eh, live and learn.

Spanking!  (We'll have to wait until I have
Alphie running to know if it works!)

With new seals, new stainless-steel hardware and slickly painted/powder coated parts, I built me a shiny new (looking) power brake servo!

Steering Box

Tearing down the steering box is simple but be sure to count the ball bearings!

The bearings at the top and base of the steering shaft are loose bearings that spray out everywhere when you take the bolts out.  I should have been expecting it, but nope.  I looked in the parts manual to find out how many bearings went where.  They’re a big pain to get back in too, just FYI.

Dissasembled and cleaned

I finally found a trick.  I would load the individual bearings for the top of the shaft and use a spring clamp at the bearing race to hold the bearings in place while I loaded the lower bearing in their race.  I used one bolt and a huge fender washer to hold the bearing race and shaft in place while I loaded it in the car.

Sporting some slick paint and powder!

So, (just FYI) with the engine and front suspension in place, you can’t wiggle the assembled steering box, shaft, and outer shaft sleeve into the hole in the firewall, I discovered.  I had to remove the outer shaft sleeve, insert it into the firewall hole (with new grommet in place) and thread the shaft through the tight space between the engine and wing (fender) well and into the outer shaft sleeve to get the steering box nestled into its bracket on the frame.

Sparkling and finally in its spot

With one bolt through the steering box and into the bracket, I removed the bolt and fender washer, slid the outer shaft sleeve in place and fitted the three 5/16” bolts to secure the whole thing back together.  By the way, fit the steering column into its bracket under the dash before tightening all the bracket bolts because I had to wiggle the steering box in its bracket to get the steering column seated in the right place under the dash.  It’s the little stuff that makes ya crazy(er).

Installed and ready to impale

Next, I’ll tell you about getting fossilized U joints out of a drive shaft that sat under a tree for thirty (plus some) years.

Page Forty-Eight - What a Knob

 

A focal point of floor shift cars is the gear shift knob.  And like most junk junkies, I love easter egg hunting in consoles, glove boxes, boots, the mysterious abyss under seats, moldy boxes, and other dark nooks and crannies in old cars.  I found a collection of Alpine shift knobs in Alphie and the Organ Donor.

The original knob is a black Bakelite affair, slightly green and grungy with age.  It has the shift pattern, a good thing, but it’s as boring as golf on the radio.  Not my first choice, but I gave it a good cleaning and shine, and I must say, it came back much better than I thought it would.

The original Bakelite knob
I forgot to take a before pic, sorry

Screw a stud into the knob - this one is off the head
("Screw a stud into the knob," it's too easy.)

Chuck it up in the drill press (pillar drill) to easily polish your knob
"That's what she said", again, my apologies, I'm still 13 years old

I will probably throw it on for judged shows because stock sometimes grabs an odd point (although with a walnut dash, very UN-stock, it probably won’t matter.)

I found two aftermarket knobs in the bottom of a console or buried in a glove box; both are wood with foil Rootes emblems under murky plastic lenses.  When they were new, they were probably quite spiffy, but time and neglect haven’t treated them well.  But they gave me an idea.

Assorted shift knobs unearthed during Alphie's tear down
(Except the one on the left, which Mike made) 

The foil Rootes emblems were tattered and crumpled, but I bought a Rootes logo lapel pin when I ordered the replacement keys from Triple C Motor Accessories.  The lapel pin is smaller than the foil inserts, so I couldn’t just replace the foil with the pin.  But my neighbor Mike is an accomplished wood turner, really his stuff is amazing, so…

With one of the wood knobs with the shape I wanted and the lapel pin in hand, I moseyed to Mike’s house and asked him if he could turn a knob similar in shape, but with a hole in the top the diameter of the lapel pin.

For Mike, this was a 15-minute job.  The only catch was that he had to order a 5/16” X 24 insert (fine thread, of bloody course) to match the gear lever.  After a quick turn on the lathe, Mike forstner bitted a hole in the top of the knob exactly the diameter of the lapel pin.  And Bob’s Your Uncle, it is as perfect as I knew it would be.

Chunk-o-Walnut chucked up in Mike's lathe

Rounded out

Mike matched the shape of one of my "found" knobs
He oiled the walnut, hence the color change

PERFECTION!

Since I don’t have a chintzy clear plastic lens to cover it, I planned on a two-part resin that I see folks using to make all manner of craft projects to do the trick.  The stuff’s expensive, about 30 bucks for two 4-ounce (118 ml, for the metrics among us) bottles!

With the lapel in place, before adding the resin
I wish the resin had turned out this clear

Mistake: I wanted to reproduce the convex shape of the chintzy plastic lens, so the resin would need to be higher than the top of the knob.  The resin would settle into a flat plane at the tip of the hole.  I had a paper circular gasket from something somewhere that I taped surrounding the hole so that the resin would settle higher than the surface of the wood.  Solid plan, but the resin is the best glue ever, and I had to sand through the gasket since it wouldn’t just pop off like I had planned.

I found a threaded rod with 5/16” X 24 threads (I think it is one like the studs that hold the thermostat housing on the cylinder head) and chucked it up in the drill press (aka the pillar drill for the Brits).

With it spinning merrily along, I could sand the resin down to shape, and with continually finer sandpaper, I smoothed it out and the resin slowly cleared.  Wet sanding with 3000-grit smoothed out the resin, but it was still a bit cloudy.

Mothers Mag & Aluminum Polish parted the clouds in the resin and gave everything a pleasing shine.  Now you can see the tiny bubbles that didn’t float out during curing, alas.  (I need a vacuum pot to get all the bubbles out, note for the future.)

This close-up shows the tiny bubbles in the resin
The spots on the walnut is the woodgrain

Some wipe-on polyurethane and some paste wax, and Alphie has a custom shift knob, and what a knob it is!

Page Forty-Seven - Suspended Progress

 

This is how it goes when resurrecting dead cars; you spend 95% of your time restoring individual parts, only 5% actually building the car.  

I painted the car, true, but it’s too damn cold to wet sand anything, so I decided to install the wiring harness.  I positioned the harness in the body but found that the dash locates it, which means I needed to complete the dash, so I did.  But installing the dash would be stupid because all the sanding and polishing threatens my lovely burl walnut dash.

So, I figured I would install the rear suspensions.  Which means I needed to measure and bend the hard brake lines on the rear axle.  Which means I needed to prep and paint all the rear brake hardware.  Then I found that I couldn’t finish the brake lines until I ordered new wheel cylinders…  I think you see how this is going. 

Since I’m restoring the rear suspension, may as well do the front suspension at the same time, right?  Only logical...

Prepping and Painting Suspension Parts - the axle housing took a lot of elbow grease, putty knives, scrapers, and thinner soaked rags to cleave 60 years of oil-caked dirt before I could unleash the sand blaster on it, not the indoor bead blaster, mind you, but the outdoor, siphon fed one that blows grit into places you don’t know you have.

Where we started

After scraping, cleaning and sand blasting

After painting with Eastwood's Extreme Chassis Black
(It looks better than my photo shows, I promise.)

The rest of the hardware, including the front suspension A-arms and assorted hardware took TIME and much compressed air.  Each piece required a minimum of two sessions in the bead blaster, most took four or more.

The pivot arms of the front upper and lower A-arms had to spend several hours in rust dissolver, then several sessions in the bead blaster.  The air compressor is tired!

Half cleaned: pic shows the blasting sessions to bare metal
(The backing plate is powder coated.)

All but the A-arm is powder coated
The A-arm is Extreme Chassis Black rattle canned (needs another coat)

The powder didn't stick well to the upper A-arms
Should have blown off the powder and spray painted it

I first applied the powder coat primer (grey).  The black powder
didn't stick to the primer - I think because the primer insulated the metal

The leaf springs only sucked a little.  The hardest part was pushing the old bushings out, actually holding the spring while holding the “pushing parts” (sockets and whatnot) in place and pumping the press jack.  Rust requires persuasion!  Yeah, the rubber part pushed out easily, but the steel outer sleeves were tough.  I finally found the right combination of ½” sockets, metal plates and hunks of steel and pipe to break rust’s formidable grip.  Cleaning them was easy enough.  I clamped them down, slapped a wire cup to my 4” grinder and had a time with them.  Some lacquer thinner finished the job.

The bushings before I started pressing them
It doesn't show in the pic, but I marked where the bushing offset goes

The rubber parts press out easily
The bushing's outer sleeve? Not so much

Bushings, post-pressing

As it turns out, pushing out the A-arm bushings was a bigger pain, requiring all my ingenuity, my entire collection of sockets, and some yoga moves to press them out.  I had to press around the pivot bars without bending or marring the A-arms themselves.  That took a sentence to write but an entire day to execute.  AND I’ll have to press the new ones in (should be easier though, no rust, clean and slick).

Paint - I painted the big pieces with Eastwood’s Extreme Chassis (gloss) Black primer and paint.  I used the spray gun for the axle housing, front crossmember and leaf springs, but either powder coated or Extreme Chassis Black rattle canned the remaining pieces.

Eastwood’s Extreme Chassis paint is brilliant stuff, creates a cracking, shiny finish.  But it takes at least two days to dry.  I found that it still leaves fingerprints in the gloss after a day.

I powder coated as many of the suspension parts as would fit in my oven.  Powder coating is, hands-down, the best and toughest coating for parts facing the slings and arrows that undercarriage parts must endure.

Assembly is where progress ground to a halt.  Bending brake lines requires massive patience, double, triple, quadruple-checks, some luck, and the right tools.  (Measure six times, lay it out and stare at it for a LONG time, test fit it, before even contemplating cutting anything!)  Sunbeam “helps” us by making some of the brake fittings bubble flares and others double flares.  I may do a side post about how to make each, but I only had a flaring tool for double flares.  I had to buy a kit (Harbor Freight again!) that makes bubble and double flares.  And I had to learn how to manage it.  How did I restore junk before You Tube?!

I bought a brake line set from Sunbeam Specialties, so I knew I would have to bend and fit the lines.  (To be fair, nobody makes a pre-bent set of lines for Alpines.)  But I ordered the wrong kit.  I ordered the kit for early Alpines (I think), which don’t have “T” junctions on the rear axle.  Not a big problem in that I was only missing one line, which I added to my next order from Rick and the crew at Sunbeam Specialties.

It could be that I got the wrong brake line kit altogether or my Alpine is weird, but Alphie’s “T” junction requires bubble flares while the wheel cylinders require double flares.  All the flares in the kit are double flares, and the lengths are a bit long for the locations.  Since I have to re-flare the ends, it’s good to have some extra length.

Left - bubble flare, Right - double flare
(I made the bubble flare, not perfect, but it will hold pressure)

Wheel cylinder with double flare cone receiver at the hole 

Alpine junction with bubble flare receiver -  a concave dish, no cone
This is the "+" junction in the engine bay

The old wheel cylinders were serviceable but dodgy; it’s the brakes for Pete’s sake, important components, not a place to scrimp on buckage (poundage, quidage?)!  I decided that I had better wait for the new wheel cylinders before making the final bends and flares.  Just because the old cylinders use double flares doesn’t mean the new ones will, don’t bugger it up.

Here’s where things stand.  I have gobs of bright glossy suspension parts laying about waiting to be assembled, with about $800 worth of parts in shipment.  When I manage to get everything in the garage at the same time, I’ll chuck them together and suspend Alphie!

In the meantime, I think I’ll bolt Alphie’s little motor to the shiny front crossmember and fit it in Alphie’s chest.  We’ll see how many unforeseen tasks that digs up!

Some More Pics:

Leaf springs, painted with new bushings, rubber wraps
and shiny new hardware

The bubble flares, the other ends have double flares
Thanks Rootes Crew!

Alphie has a new rear end!

Shiny new brake lines - a few crinkles, but not bad

The front suspension is next with all spanking new parts!
(The chunk of angle iron on the lower A arm is to prevent smushing it
when I press in the new bushings.)