Vlad's rides thread

[vlad01]

I checked the housing, there were a few little dings and nicks, so I filed them down and smoothed it wet n dry.

Cleaned it all up and oiled the housing.


Finished installing the new bearing, seal and retaining collar. Used some tiny bit of molly based engine assembly lube to help from galling and ease the pressing, oiled the seal and shaft.

Much the same like the other side, hand brake in, disk on, adjusted the hand brake and it works mint as now, few click up to full lock, where it was the full range of the lever and the brakes still turned by hand, a sign that maybe it will actually work this time lol.
While I was as it, I replaced all the rear brake hoses with the new ones from Hopper's stoppers, including the diff one, and they all fit superb!

You might even say they fit...

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Yesterday, I went for the rear panel and boot area rust proofing from what I learned on the shitbox, that it's a prone area, especially with mud and dirt accumulating and the long went winters keeping the mud/dirt saturated.


It all looks excellent here. I am going to paint it with cavity wax, but only from the middle back, as I plan to get the rear windscreen removed and one or some pin holes welded up, properly epoxy primed, painted and windscreen primer and it all install back in, then I will resume the cavity wax there after and that stuff will interfere with the repairs and painting since it is so hard to clean off.

One seam where they didn't put enough seam sealer, some light rust staining, but nothing bad at all. That will be filled with the wax.

Used my go to cleaner, and pressured washed the boot seal, came up great, was chockers full of crusty mastic sealer and mud.

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[vlad01]

With the bumper off I can clean all the other seams and do the same with the wax.

Can also remove and inspect the boot vents, becasue surprise surprise, yet another leak on the shitbox and it's one of these vents. Now that I can see how the water runoff flows there, it's that very rear one's back edge where the water runs directly down it, is where it would most likely leak once the foam seals get old and perish. I found a used one in my stuff and I noticed one edge of the seal was dark, shrunk and brittle while the rest is nice and clean and soft. So the water and dirt itself much age and perish the seal, not very convenient. I would put a bet on the spare I found being that rear one as the aged section lines up with the water mark seen here.

Btw, among that nest of spider eggs and crap, there is a small pine cone lol

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Speaking of leaks, I got the last major one sorted on the shitbox.

Removed the garnish, cut a hole at the base of the wiring's PVC sleeve for drainage. Then for good measure, epoxied the wires in the sleeve so no water could get through.
I had some small amounts of water get through in the spare wheel well, but only a few dribbles. Probably already mentioned some pages back, that vent is suspected, but now I've seen how it goes, it's most likely that foam seal that I need to sort.

Other than that, no more water in the car and it now stay's dry. I also bought some of those disposable moisture absorbers from Bunnings, the calcium chloride based ones, not the silica gel ones. These can absorb way more than silica and they do not saturate, the continue to pull water until they fully dissolve and fill the container with water/salt solution. It worked so great, I got them for my other cars. I then tried putting them around and under my car, one at the bottom of the K frame in the engine bay too. And wow! totally eliminated the condensation issues I've has since I started working on cars more than 20 years ago. I sooooo wished I knew this earlier, would have saved a ton of money, time and stress trying to combat this issue. The stupid thing is they are so cheap and last so long. I think like $4.80 each from Bunnings. The one in the shitbox has been there for probably a month and a half and has not produced any liquid yet, still at the absorption stage which I do believe is the shorter stage, with the wetting stage lasting far longer.

I actually got some for the house too and garage too, added into the central heating intake cavity to dry the air that gets distributed throughout the house as we have had some mold issues on the windows this year even though most are double glazed and should not be able to get condensation, but hey, Kyneton boasts a 90%+ relative humidity 24/7 nearly all days for like half the year or more with a large portion of those days temps being at or below dew point, hence the condensation and wetness on everything, indoors even, like in the case of the shed, some rooms in the house even.

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And speaking of leaks again, but in a slightly different context.

I got sick of this one on the header, due to the bad/mismatched union I mentioned at xmas last year. So I got sick of putting in exhaust putty every 2 weeks, got old quick.

Sorted!

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Now the latest issue with the shitbox is the interior light no longer comes on when using any of the doors, but works fine with the manual switch on the dash. Probably the timer module near the glove box?

[vlad01]

Shitbox's interior light woes spontaneously fixed itself, so I won't worry about that for the meantime then


Some more progress.

Rebuilt the good caliper and also redid the throttle body as the original attempt to paint it with this same caliper paint ended up blistering quickly in a few spots that must have been to oxidized, that was back in 2023, so I figured to make the trip to Melbourne worth it for blasting the caliper, I prepped the throttle too and painted it again. The Duplicolor caliper paint is by far the best paint I have used for this sort of thing, but the alloy or metal must be blasted to remove all oxide, otherwise existing oxide just keeps on going underneath.

Once it's done right, it seems to last forever. The timing cover on the shitbox which was also done around 2023 or 24 maybe, has seen a lot of road and grime, oil, condensation, cleaning chemicals etc... and it still has not shown any signs of letting up.
It also looks very close to freshly cast alloy, most high bright ones like say an intake manifold or brake caliper. But it might look a little over done for alloys that are high in zinc and have a natural dark tint to them, even if freshly cut apart. But given what the throttle looked like originally, I'll take the overdone look any day.

The paint has virtually no build, so the coated look or runs aren't a problem and it drys uniform and there is no gain or lay pattern, which actually makes it hard to tell if you have covered all areas sufficient enough as it all looks the same. I can't recommend it enough.

The caliper body in the middle of the heater is not painted yet in the pic, pre warming it, but you can see how close the paint matches the garnet blasted raw alloy (glass bead blasting is much more bright and smooth, garnet is dull and darker with a grey tint).

It all came up great, although I normally paint the bracket black becasue I think it looks better, I did this one the same silver as I knew the new caliper on it's way had a zinc plated bracket, so at least it will match the other side, either way it actually looked just like a brand new one out of the box.

Tossed the Forza pad in, ready to go!

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[vlad01]

One side sorted while I wait of the new caliper.

Put the TB back in and got the rest of the intake and engine bay stuff sorted.
I added this cable management velcro strap that was laying around to pull the clutch cable back a little from resting on the ignition leads. I once had my rear lead snap off the terminal holder from the clutch cable touching it.
It didn't need much at all, a very light tug towards the inner guard and it's all good, and it's gentle on the heat sleeving and the brake line/heater hose too.

The only other thing I want to do there is add some small bit of pinch weld on the seam of the chassis rail where the cable pushes against, so it doesn't rub the two points together and up eating into each other.

I also want to make a better solution to the intake pipe going into the Mace box and filter.

I plan to upgrade the cotton filter to a paper pod with OEM filtering efficiency since nearly all non paper filters are actually terrible at best to downright awful at picking up small particulates.

My plan was to 3D print an inner adapter (pod in question is 4" ID) which also integrates a bellmounth since nearly all filters do not even have a basic radius. On the outside of the Mace box, a flange with the outlet is to be also 3D printed, so it all bolts though the box wall, just like factory air box. Then I need to figure out the intake pipe itself. I feel like I need a fab'd one where it starts to curve down before it goes past the coil pack. I want to also make a mount on it and hardware to bolt to the engine crane hoisting point bracket, much like I jerry rigged on the shitbox, as it's evident the inner guard bracket is piss weak and doesn't like any form of movement or vibration that comes from moving away from the stock airbox.

If only I could figure out 3D modeling and cad stuff, have had no luck on that front (both finding software that is free and works and one that isn't all code/parametric based, what happened to all the GUI based interactive CADs that were the norm?) , but I am considering seeing if AI can do it for me if I can't do it any other way.

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With the rear body vents and leaks, here is the evidence that the rear ones leak becasue of the run off coming from the bumper rail support on body, the water/dirt runoff goes over the back rear vent's rear edge as mentioned a few posts back. Well this is what it does to the seal, front one is nice and clean, soft and tacky, the rear one at the point of the water runoff is stained, shrunk, brittle and hard. It shows clear evidence of ingress despite not yet at leaking point. But on the shitbox and probably other cars I have own, this leaks.

You can make up a self adhesive seal from what's available at Clark Rubber. I should have something in my stash, but you can actually buy whole new genuine vents for around 40 odd bucks. So I am just going to get two, and put the good front one here on the rear of the shitbox to fix the remaining weep it has there, like hand me downs, but for cars lol.

It's pretty cool to be learning new things about these cars that I have missed in the past. I guess as you get older, you start to notice and have foresight into the little details that make a big difference.

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[vlad01]

Washed up all the panels and seams under the bumper and boot/tail light area.

Gave it a few days to dry so any water than crept into the seams and cracked sealer dried out before the cavity wax.

Other than some iffy looking seam sealer, the back end of the car is in great shape otherwise, especially for something this old and untouched for the most part.

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The new DBA caliper arrived. Only 140 delivered on special though ebay. I couldn't find any used ones anywhere other than a few on ebay (wanting 200+) and Commwreck who had them on hand, but were asking 110. So new one it was. It's money I didn't want to spend, even on the principal of having just a bad bracket on mine, but what can you do when the entire used market is dry and asking drug money for basically remaining junk at this point.

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[vlad01]

Other side done, but was a bit too tight on the hose for some reason. I jigged some of the bits around to make up the difference but it was still a bit tight, then I noticed it. The fittings on the end of the hose had slightly different bends in them, this side was bent rearward much more than the other side. So I carefully with a soft pine block of wood and mallet, tapped the fitting to bend it carefully back to the same angle the other side was on. That was what the issue was. Only maybe 1-2 deg out was enough to make the hose too tight that the ends were angled and the hose was almost a straight line point to point.

Now it's nicely curved the same as the other side. So I guess the fittings can vary some, I did in fact check the lengths of all hoses before install and they were spot on and identical. This is why it was a wtf moment as it was only a subtle bend difference.

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Got all the wax done, to get into the tail light areas, I used a syringe with a needle that I bent into a curve to reach around and over the seams through the small opening on the bottom. I used an artist? brush to spread it out some and used that for all the external seams.

I stopped short on the boot seal lip on the windscreen side, since I plan to have that removed and some rust/pin hole/s fixed. The wax will make the job much harder, so I'll finish it off later. I am sure I already mentioned this in a previous post somewhere, but it's a good idea to keep the wax away from any repair areas until the repairs and painting are completed.

Was just enough wax to do the job, I had that since the red car, 2017 I think, so perfect amount to finish the all the jobs I needed it for.

I also did the roof gutters as it's also prone to the seam sealer degrading too, which it has a little already.

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[vlad01]

Got all the bits to get the bumper back on. Gave the bumper a pressure wash, was full of dry mud everywhere, all in the slots for the brackets. Makes it much easier to install and not so messy too.

New vent seals vs the old squished ones.

Oh and I found the bleed nipple on the right reco'd caliper had leaked between last working on it. It was tight, so I took it out expecting a bad nipple surface and it was, somehow I missed that it had been machined rough and had heaps of deep grooves. The other spare from my unused rebuild kit was ok, so I swapped it and tighten it good. I checked again after a few days and it was sorted! Next time, all new calipers I think.

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Took about 15 min to toss all that on and install the bumper.

Mud flaps, 3+ hours. Real PITA, but I made it harder by also screwing on these speed nuts on the back. I should have done the mounting first, taken the bumper back off and finished the speed nuts with it all off the car. They were virtually impossible to get on in situ, but I did it... hence the 3+ hours. I really needed a 2nd person to re-mount the bar if I was going to do it the better way, so the hard way it was.

Given the plastic is soft and it doesn't take much to rip the screws out, I figured this was a good addition. I have had my mud flaps on the rear rip off trying to get into the narrow driveways with big curbs way back when I used to live in Bendigo with my first car since most houses I rented there had really old fashioned narrow driveways that didn't fit a commodore, so you often had to mount the curb to get in and out. My Vacationer used to rip those screws right out, but the flaps were hard and brittle at that point. These are soft, but I feel it's safer to have speed nuts on the back.

The left side flap took the longest as it has most hole positions such that a lot of them are close to the edges and moving one takes away from another. So a lot of time was spent trying to get exactly the right spot without having too little material on the edges of some of those holes. I had to file one the holes into a slot on the vertical strap to get it to reach properly so not to be too close to the edge. Right side was much more forgiving in that regard.

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[vlad01]

Pumped up the tyres and tossed them back on.
So the car is now derivable and my next task is to do a quick run to the servo and back, fresh fuel and dump the ATF out of the box and refill for the actual run in. Will prob do 300k on the run in, then aim for like 1k and slowly up the Ks as I go. Maybe 3k, then 5k, then aim for 10k normal intervals. The box should last wayyy longer following this service interval.

Some more final-ish touches to the engine bay. Installed a little section of pinch weld where the clutch cable sits against a sharp edge.

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With the one good vent the white car had, I cleaned it up and used it to sort the leak in the shitbox.

In this pic you can see the rear seal looks black while the front one still shows some white.

Removing the vent, I checked with my finger nail, yep hard and brittle and shrunk.

Chucked the good one in place after I cleaned the opening and for good measure I gave the surface a thin coat of rubber grease to help the good but used seal to seal up. Hopefully that is the last of the leaks (touch wood)

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[Charlescrown]

Are those vent seals available or did you make them? I've been chasing water entry into the spare wheel well for ages and think it may be those seals.

[VTXU8]

It's either those vent seals or rear quarter glass seals(left and right) or both that allow water into the boot. I ended up doing both seals that finally fixed it. The vent seals I used silicon too.