Wilma

As expected, the "work" done by or to a previous owner masked a substantial amount of metal without substance.  Brown doilies in place of sheet steel on the driver's side, scattered clusters of negative space on the passenger.  Since I tend to be backwards in general, I've ordered the pictures likewise.

Righty-blighty:

Lefty-looseohgoddamnit:

I was surprised to find that the passenger side would turn out to be the bigger pain in the ass to form a patch panel for, on account of the contours.  Compared to the driver's side, it had been spared the worst of oxygen's creeping, gnawing hunger.  Here's what ended up being left of the passenger side:

I found an unexpected amount of comfort from the rot being cut out of both sides of the floor (mostly due to being able to put my feet on the ground).  Nonetheless, if I didn't replace the metal, I'd start getting tickets for the trash I normally throw on the passenger's side floor.  After thinking about it for a while, I decided the cheaper alternative was to fill the void with metal that wasn't rusted through.

I don't have much in the way of metal shaping tools, so I was glad to have a friend's flange tool on loan to accompany my hammer, pocket-sized parallel jaw pliers, busted-ass tin snips, and (most importantly) a work bench who's builder wasn't concerned with tight tolerances when fitting the 2x4s together.  Thanks to these tools, I was able to form some 22ga sheet (courtesy of the same friend- thanks again, duder) into crude approximations the missing floor sections.  Here's how the passenger side looked when mostly tacked in:

As ever, things are still moving forward, despite the bullshit surprises. I don't at all regret chopping out the floors, though I wish I had taken the Gremlin out for a quick trip to get some gigantic ribs at the drive-in.  Would've made it easier to check out the underside of the vehicle after my meal arrived.

I'm no scientist

So I like to keep my discoveries to a minimum, given that they are often more trouble than they're worth.  A recent discovery with which I can be credited is a set of artifacts from a sub-type of homo sapiens, the "Lazy Asshole".  Unfortunately, this genotype is in plentiful supply, so my find offers little to no value.

As they are often meet with derision and hostility by other organisms in the ecosystem where they take up space, Lazy Assholes often camouflage themselves to be indistinct from others.  As such, they are largely identified by their behavior, which results in their implementing "fixes" that cover problems up and result in the worsening of conditions that they're supposedly attempting to remedy.  See the following image for an example.

Glad I caught it before sending Gremlin to the exhaust shop. . .

In more pleasant news, it looks like the Gremlin had a family visitor in the neighborhood last night!

Handsome fella.  There weren't many badges left on it, though I'm curious if it's a Gremlin X on account of the interior.  Several fun touches could be seen, such as the wheel caps that had the mascot Gremlin on their faces. If the owner visits this page (yeah, I left a note), hopefully they'll feel welcome to add some details about their Gremlin in the comments.


UPDATE: What the hell, dude?  I'd be ashamed to show my head in public if I did something like this.

These lines are for fueling my rage

Lot of money, time, and respect lost by myself and others lately.  You see, I'm still working on the new fuel lines for the Gremlin.  These damn things have threatened the well-being of this project, as well as my mental state (and I don't exactly have a lot of acreage to spare there).  I even made sure to pick up the "easy to bend" coated lines that Napa sells, specifically to help offset my arrogance in expecting the fumbling monkey paws at the ends of my arms to bend even the simplest of curves. 

It was pointless.

At least for the first eon.  Much as Odin attained clarity on the mystery of the runes by hanging himself from Yggdrasil, my hermetic suffering has yielded knowledge of how to bend nickel-copper tubing.  I'll let you decide which skill is more useful.

While I generally try to make sure I bring enough to share with the rest of the class, I don't really have much to offer here, except this:

• Dicking around to find a better tool than the awful implement shown in my second picture is pointless.  Life is hell and we're all cursed to suffer reliance on this obscenity.
• If you don't absolutely have to bend tubing, don't.
• Many (arguably) better options exist for fuel delivery. 
• Corn fuel has rendered all but the most absurdly expensive completely useless.
• Bending lines is bullshit.

To close this out with a proof of my claims, I discovered while writing this that I overlooked something during my suffering.

I guess being gifted with occult knowledge still doesn't make up for being blind in one eye (or failing to pay a modicum of attention to what you're doing).  

Bllllrrrrrgghhhhllppppguhhhh

It's always amazing to me when I'm reminded of exactly how much activity is often required to ensure that nothing happens.

As I'd briefly mentioned before, the focus of my latest efforts had been to get Eagle and the Gremlin in good enough shape to be featured in a small budget movie.  I was on a time crunch as it was, but made sure to schedule things to get Eagle maintenance done last Wednesday, get towing for the Gremlin worked out Thursday, and use that Friday to tie up any loose ends that may have been dangling at that point.  Seemed like I had my ducks in a row, so naturally I was certain that something was going to fly into the fan and make sure that my carefully managed time took its place in the toilet.

After leaving Napa with the remaining brake drum kit I needed for Eagle on Wednesday, I encountered some of the special style of disregard for other humans that you have to wade through while living in Seattle. I'll spare you the details of what happened and get right to the result: my transmission no longer went in reverse.  Park and neutral were also funky, in the "go forward when giving gas" kind of way.

Totally certain that my transmission was shot, I limped the wounded Eagle to my buddy's place and started looking for compatible Jeep transmissions on Craigslist while we looked into diagnosing the behavior.  After a bit of searching, we found someone else describing the exact same behavior with their a998.  The consensus as to the issue's cause?  Locked clutch packs.  Being that I'm not really in the market for the expense of a transmission rebuild (though it wouldn't be bad to have done at some point in the next 25k miles), we started thinking that the packs should be able to get unstuck if we put Eagle in reverse and pushed it backwards.

Eagle put up a little resistance at first, which started to give way gradually, and then suddenly- with an unexpectedly loud "BANG!", followed by behaving as normal in all gears.  So far, so great, right?  Well, yeah.

And no.  As we did a restrained test drive around the block, we decided it was time to goose it just a little to make sure all was well.  By just a little, I mean "tap, tap, press, hold" on the pedal.  Just enough to give a couple jumps up before pressing down about 1/3 of the pedal travel, peaking at maybe 3,200rpm (from just under 2k) in the space of two to three seconds.  Then a CV axle exploded.

Since we were going uphill, the fact I had yet to do my rear brakes became a particularly pressing concern when considering there was a medieval mace attached to my passenger hub, flailing around in my wheel well.

Bizarrely, the damage to my brakes turned out to be (comparatively) minimal since the CV happened to strike the soft line just right and wrap itself up in the hose, as opposed to just shredding it like wet cabbage.  I had also managed to stop just in time and minimize my turn just enough to keep the wound line from being twisted to the point of getting ripped apart.  It was probably the luckiest misfortune I've encountered in recent memory.

Tasked with repairing this and not just throwing parts at the problem, I started to go a little crazy trying to establish an actual, demonstrable cause.  I was certain that the transmission event and the CV joint being rent asunder were isolated incidents that had been bizarrely timed, because how the hell could they be directly related?  That said, I wasn't about to dismiss the idea that they may have shared a common point of inspiration.

My thoughts turned out to be correct, from what I can tell.  After I assessed the state of the Eagle's front end, chased a few red herrings, and cut some CV axle stubs, I found the front axle end play was roughly 3/16-1/4".  That's faaaaaar in excess of the service manual's max value: .003”.  The jarring event that resulted in transmission fuckery had likely allowed for axle shift to take place to enough of a degree for that CV joint to bind and disintegrate.  With the level of play I found, the fact that the opposite CV joint was completely ground out as well, and the point of failure/degradation of both CVs being up at the axle flange and not at the stub joint, it looks as though the CV failure was one that was going to happen sooner than later.  A bad morning was all that it took to tip things over the edge.

It's amazing that both CVs didn't go, all said.  It also looks like I've got a pumpkin that needs scooping (or bearings that need replacing, at least), though I've decided that I'm probably not going to solve the mystery in any greater detail than that.  I just don't have the time to devote to it, as my being side tracked for the movie that wasn't to be (on account of all these delays, you see) has already set me way backer than I ever would have thought.

What I've done in the meantime is this: made sure I was in 2WD, cut the axle stubs from the busted CVs, and torqued the spindles to spec in the hub to retain and secure the front wheel bearings I drove myself to madness to replace (and keep the wheels on, I guess).  From there, I disconnected the front driveshaft between the transfer case and front diff, and set to doing the brake maintenance and repairs from the CV club's whirling rampage that were needed to get Eagle back in service.

While Eagle's fine, if somewhat reduced in operating capacity, I'll miss the 4wd for sure.  Luckily, the driveshaft looks a little tired (though usable), the u joints were probably due to be replaced anyway, and the diff/bearing work should be easy enough with everything already disconnected.  If I find that I have more time in the future than I'd expected (unlikely), or the need for the increased resell value that putting the ~$500 plus labor to repair the 4wd would bring (more likely), I may just take care of it myself instead of expecting someone else to after I sell it.

Now. . . where was I before all this shit started?

Get your shoes on, Gremlin! Gotta get ready for picture day

Getting the rear end done-done right now.  Feeding the diff some gear oil, torquing the hanger bolts to spec, and finally solving a problem that's cost me a couple years off my life because no good answer could be found.

The '78 Gremlin (probably '77 as well, dunno about others) had rubber isolation pads ("isopads") sandwiching the leaf springs, though I couldn't find any repros or alternatives to using them.  I found some polyurethane pads that are supposed to work for the Pacer, figured "close enough", and picked them up a while back.

Unfortunately, they missed the mark by quite a ways.  After dicking around with these pads for far too much time, I found that a sharp knife, drill, and (not strictly necessary, but saves hours of work) a band saw makes them fairly serviceable.

Drill holes, chamfer the outside bend edges, and chop away whatever gets in the way.

I'd prefer rubber, but whatever. Better than nothing, even if it's quite apparent that I've been gnawing on them like a rat.  Prothane part #: 60559, 60560

Well, well. Someone finally got off their ass and did a thing.

I know it wasn't nearly a full rebuild, but damn, I feel like I might have actually accomplished something here. That's contingent on the thing running, of course, so I'm restraining my enthusiasm for now.  I am pleased with the calico of new paint, existing head paint, and the old AMC blue on the block that's become thoroughly oil and grime-impregnated, all picked out with various shades of crap metal silver.  There's little rhyme or reason behind what got paint and what didn't, though I'm going to be doing enough painting of the body that I didn't really feel like dicking around with any more on stuff that wasn't going to be seen (or stay looking good for more than a week).

Gonna tie the motor up to the hoist tomorrow and put manifold and headers on, since I think this engine stand has been about pushed to its limits and I prefer to stay on the good side of whatever mood it has.  I'd like to run the fuel and trans cooler lines before I drop all this mess in, as the space will be welcome, though I may just shelve everything for the moment so I can get the hood, fenders, and doors back on. If I can do that by the 1st, I'll be able to have the Gremlin take part as a background car in a movie.  More on that as the time comes, though.

One last piece of advice: don't drink or fool with anything labeled "shop water", and don't expect any further details regarding it beyond this.

Shop-borne Illness and Disease Index, Vol 4, Chapter 18: Curse, Capt Blackthumb

The curse of Captain Blackthumb (aka, "the Blackthumb", or sometimes, "butt thumb") is a common affliction that occurs whenever nitrile gloves are used to cover digits that are frantically working to accomplish a task, whether to meet a looming deadline, powerful enthusiasm, or both.

The initial stage (wherein the curse has the opportunity to take root, though infection is not guaranteed) is just after thumb shield breakage has occurred, but long before anything resembling a break from the task at hand will end up taking place (for a related malady that occurs in the index finger, see appendix A: "tar poker").  Plate 1 illustrates a hand that is susceptible to Captain Blackthumb's hex.

The most effective treatment method discovered to date is preventative, and also the one least-likely to occur by those who contract the ailment- actually stopping for a second to change your damn gloves.  In all other cases, amputation has proven to be a viable alternative.

Well that took more time than expected

Just gonna gloss over the 6 day gap in updates here to say some stuff has actually been done.

This is more-or-less where we were at yesterday.  I was getting ready to put on the oil pan, though couldn't stop staring at the pump.  The voice of anemic protest that was trying to convince me that the pump was fine and never gave indication of problems before was eventually drowned out by the gnawing need in my gut to check it out and make sure.  I would be pretty pissed to do do all this work and have my oil pump shred itself apart within a matter of a few miles.

Gut wins again.  Feeler gauges verified no gear to wall clearance and the scoring of the cap from the gear faces is about 1/16" at its deepest.  So a run to the 24 hour parts store later and I have the replacement pump that's getting put in today. Not looking forward to pulling that pickup tube, but it's time to zip the engine up after that's done.  Mating the transmission to lower it all in one shot, tweaking a couple things for the rear leaf isopads, then it's off to the exhaust shop.

Too tired to give a decent update, however

I can add a couple pictures.

Ain't no glassman gonna slow me down

I think I may have grown complacent in the wake of my victory over the coil springs.  The level of potential calamity associated with the removal of an engine just hadn't quite dawned on me until it was already underway last night.

Everything went as well as you could hope for someone pulling a motor for the first time (and doing it solo, to boot).  No damage to the engine, as far as I know.  No injuries.  No property damage.  Shit bolted right up to the stand, too!

I flipped it over and took a look to see if there was any kind of awfulness to be found from the stop leak, or any other indicators of bad times coming.  Everything looked good, minus the lower half of the rear main seal having been substituted with RTV at some point prior to my owning the vehicle.

I went ahead and scraped off the oil pan gasket and pulled out the RTV slug, so that's all ready.  Now it's time for gears, seals, and so on before tying these two together and dropping them back in together.

The wind blows fierce and I am unarmored.

Glassman pulled a no-call/no-show.  I'll spare you the details of my customer service trials up to now, but rest assured that my hauling ass to have everything prepped and ready for his arrival went without reward.  In other news, fall began this past Sunday.  It's cold.  It sucks.

Fuck you, glassman.

Quick question: how many peanut shells are in your cowl right now?

At present, my answer is "zero".  If you asked an hour ago, I would've said "some?”, but the correct answer would've been twenty-two.

Sad to say, I'm not confident that there aren't more hiding in there.  In case you're wondering why I'm vacuuming the cowl instead of finishing up with the damn engine already- the glassman arrives tomorrow to install the windshield.  I've been well aware of when this was going to happen, but the fact that I need to dress up the area where the glass goes in escaped me for some reason.  While that sounds like a short thing to attend to, I assure you it's much more of an aggravation than you'd expect.

That's with most of the rusted metal being cut out.  This is going to be fixed up tonight, though it's not going to be a permanent (or correct) fix. For this to be corrected the right way, it's going to require a new cowl be welded in place if this one.

I'll post details on my half-assed solution in a bit, but right now I need to get some brake fluid.  I figure if it strips paint like it's nothing, it should get this damn windshield adhesive off, or eat the paint underneath it.  Same results, either way.

HEAD ON!!! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE ENGINE BLOCK!!! HEAD ON!!! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE ENGINE BLOCK!!!

But don't really. You have to put a gasket between them first.

That AC hose continues to be a pain in the ass. If it weren't for the fact that I'll be driving places where air conditioning is going to be an important concern, and that I want to avoid converting from R12 for as long as possible, I would've cut this damn thing long ago.

The bigger challenge, though, is that the 258 lacks the key studs to align the head and block that were introduced with the 242.  I gave one honest attempt at setting the gasket and placing the head on correctly without shifting the gasket, and that's all it took for me to confirm that doing things that way is dumb as hell.

There's half of the solution. Cut heads off bolts, cut slots for a flathead, screw into block, toss gasket on, then head, unscrew with long screwdriver.  Maybe fish it out with a magnet.  You could use appropriately-sized set screws, but I had these bolts lying around already and I figure the smooth collar would be a better guide stud than one that's threaded.

The other half of the solution was to use the lift to lower the head.  Doing it by hand sucks, man.  Anyway, here's a shot of the valve cover in place (though not actually attached):

Happy birthday, Gremlin!

Today marks 40 years having passed since the Gremlin's engine block was cast. My hope was that motor would be finished today in celebration of this event, though it's been a little more than a clusterfuck the past few days.

I want to get back to work, so I'll just toss some pictures up that will hopefully serve as a good enough summary of where things have been lately.

Basically, I narrowly avoided round two of the engine bay fire in the eagle.  The previous fire had warped the valve cover, which was allowing oil to flow like fuck-you-flavored wine.  This started burning up the valve cover, because AMC decided a plastic cover was the way to go on the 258 in these years.  You know, because consumers care more about the noise from the valve train than they care about shit not catching on fire.

I read that '79 and older covers would bolt on, only to find that the Gremlin's old cover has a scalloped profile in contrast to the straight side of the head in the Eagle's 258. Luckily, the 24hr AutoZone provides. They actually managed to have a replacement cover, so I grudgingly installed a replacement plastic piece of shit.  Oh well; keeps the oil in.

The Wrangler is something I came across in the Safeway parking garage. When I first encountered it, the front was supported by jack stands. The next day, they had been replaced by what you see in the picture.  There's nothing about this scene that I've been able to make sense of.  If anyone has any ideas about why the hell this happened, I'm all ears.

It's almost like it's a skill or something.

The day spent with nothing learned is the only day truly wasted.  I'm pretty sure someone smarter than me said something to that effect and it sounded a lot better, but they're probably dead and I'm probably not.  Now who's bad?

That's right- me.  I learned today that I'm bad. Bad at brazing aluminum.  If you need anything to brighten your day, feast your eyes on the results of my vain and pathetic attempt to direct the form of select elements to my will.

Good god, I suck at this!

It may be due to having the setup pictured below in my work space at the School of Night-time Auto Repair's lab and lecture hall (the sidewalk across the street from a numerically-themed convenience store).

It could have been that I was constantly distracted by the animated two-way conversation that a local (presumably schizophrenic) street dude was having with himself.  It even could've been because it was 03:30 and I was overdue to visit the cat and go to bed, but I'll tell you what I think it actually was:

I've never made an actual, earnest attempt to braze aluminum before in my entire life.  

I mean, I experimented with harbor freight brazing rods like we all do when we're young and finding ourselves, but it was just a short phase that I grew out of.  Turns out I completely failed to account for this lack of actual experience to the degree I likely should have, and ended up screwing around like a monkey jamming a stick into an anthill, but without the snacks or success.

So now it looks like I'll be chipping this mess off and going the JB Weld route, where I have more than enough experience.  If I'm lucky, none of this probably stuck worth a damn.  Hell, I'll be glad if I didn't ruin the carb plate.  The good news, though, is that I can just plug those MPI ports solid with JB while I'm at it, soooooo. . . Net gain!

Oh well; live and learn.

Hush now and settle down. Family plans.

Just a short update to share a picture I forgot I had.  Here's a shot of the Gremlin and Eagle ("hotdog and footlong") together, with the AMX peering out from the shadows of the "garage" on the left.  I think this is actually the first full image of the Gremlin I've posted so far, so enjoy.

Vroom vroom.

Multiple contours, many folds.

This post marks quite a moment in the progress of this multi-year endeavor. What started out with an electrical problem and ended up as a restoration project has finally passed the summit.  No more research. No more engineering. Now it's just putting shit back together. You might ask what the specific tipping point was, and if you did, this is my answer: cutting a hole.

See, as I mentioned in my last post, the manifold I'm using was designed for use with the Chrysler-engineered MPI system, and not for a carburetor, though the Weber kit I purchased included an adapter plate to fix on the riser for the Carter carburetor used by the 258.  Unfortunately, the plate's footprint doesn't match that of the throttle body used by the 242.  Not by a long shot.

First, I need to mark out the spacer, followed by the (striped) section needed to be cut out to allow unobstructed flow from the barrel ports.

And here's the moment of triumph:

The cut has been made.

From here it's a matter of brazing the plate to the manifold.  If I suck at brazing, it'll be JB Welding the plate to the manifold.  Afterwards, I'll be doing the same with 1/2" aluminum plugs in the MPI ports, and lastly, checking thread pitch for any metric-tapped holes and retapping them for standard fasteners (all hardware on the Gremlin is SAE, with the exception of the mounting bolts for the Saginaw steering pump and I intend to keep it that way for the sake of consistency and minimization of tools needed while on the road).

Now you may be asking why I would want to use this instead of the old manifold?

My main reason is because this iteration of the 242 manifold has equal-length runners, so it should provide a much more even distribution of fuel/air mixture to each cylinder than the older designs using runners of unequal length. Following this is the feeling that it wouldn't be worth the effort to retrofit the 258 intake, as there wouldn't be many benefits to doing so.

One thing the 258 manifold has in it's favor is the interior below the carb riser that is designed to keep the fuel from pooling in the bottom of the manifold in certain temperature ranges.  This is easily replicated in the new manifold, especially with the wider opening that's been cut.  Add to this the fact that the 258 manifold is cast iron (and heavy as a really heavy thing), is not as amenable to the installation of headers, and that it has the carb barrels oriented in a way that can add to the uneven fuel distribution issue I mentioned previously.  When all of this is accounted for, the little bit of work needed to modify this manifold provides a lot more benefit than the drawbacks that would accompany fitting the 258 manifold to the 242 head.

Of course, I could just use the other manifold, fuel rails, injectors, and so on that I have sitting on the shop floor and convert to a fuel injected setup, but if I wanted to dick around with computers right now, I would probably still be at my old job.


EDIT: for some reason, I think it's appropriate that this link be reposted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQff4GpvM4w

A good lap on the seat helps when you need to get your head together

Valves are lapped, meaning the head is ready for reassembly.  Gotta get the manifold modified to incorporate a riser for the carb, since the manifold being used was designed for EFI.

I'll be putting up a much more involved post to cover that topic within the next day or so.  To be honest, I'm working with smaller brains than usual, so most of my ability to write anything worth a damn went into the title of this post. Hope you enjoyed it.

Out of office for the day (sick) EOM

.

Auto-save is about as consistent as Amazon's shipping timelines

Yesterday's post got eaten.  Long/short, I'm taking a little extra time while I'm waiting far too long for Amazon to ship my damn engine seal kit (order placed Friday, still not shipped. Don't tell me it's because of Labor Day- unless they suddenly began giving a damn about their shipping and receiving workers, the only way the holiday would have any effect is to give them an excuse to dick people around on shipping timelines).

Speaking of taking far too long, you may be wondering if I was ever going to give a finger update.  Here it is: I still have faint remnants of the glove staining on two fingers.  I have made peace with the idea that this may always be the case.

Today I'll be cleaning up the valves and lapping them as I've been saying I'll do for days now.  There was some extra work involved in cleaning up the ports, due to their being a lot dirtier than previously thought.

Cleaning out 3 pairs reduced my brass wire wheel bit to this:

"I bet your bald-ass would, but the price is five!"

After swapping bits out, I got almost all of the prelim cleaning done before the Dremel battery died.  Sprayed down with cleaner, left to soak, and got back to the hell pit that was the pushrod chamber.  Looking a little better now.

I reckon it should clear up better after drying out overnight.

This was interesting to me. The timing gear is made out of some weird ass resin.  Feels almost like some kind of phenolic.  Pretty impressive that these last 40+ years.

Moving on: finish the head, install tappets, intake & exhaust, then slap the whole shebang on the block.  Afterwards, I hoist the motor out to allow easier installation of sundries and attachment to transmission.