project 1951 Pontiac Chieftain

[purplebargeken]

Nice work, now I'd be giving all of the nuts, bolts and screws a good going over with a few cans worth of Plusgas or Duck oil. Good protection and it would help with any future removal or adjustment.

[PhilA]

So far I've been lucky, very few stuck nuts and bolts. Most have undone as easily as they went in, some look like they'd not been undone since the day they were installed...

 

Phil

[purplebargeken]

How different from most of what we have to contend with over here. Was it from a reasonably dry State?

[shedenvy]

Serious want for your pressure washer.

 

It looks purposeful!

[PhilA]

How different from most of what we have to contend with over here. Was it from a reasonably dry State?

Built in Atlanta, GA and I was told it's been a Louisiana and Mississippi car all its life. Not particularly dry states no, but not cold ones either. Down here the roads never get salted. The sun shines enough to fully heat the vehicle up so all the moisture dries out.

 

The pressure washer is a little 5hp Briggs engine, makes 4400psi. It cleans quite well but needs new tires and an oil change.

 

Phil

[busmansholiday]

Had a good go at it with the pressure washer, then put my leaf blower on it to dry it down.

You learn something new every day. Never thought of that. Top tip, thanks.

[PhilA]

Yeah, my leaf blower can shift a decent volume of air at full chat, and has a fairly long nozzle. It's also quite good at chasing water droplets off the car. I used the logic that's what an automatic car wash does so the leaf blower should work too.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

 

This afternoon I pulled the filler plug out of the steering box. It was filthy so I cleaned it up.

 

 

That there does not look good. Though, honestly, it's about as good as I expected it to be.

 

 

I employed a glorious assistant (she's a menace on the highway though) to wobble the steering from side to side. I observed a very unpleasant quantity of lateral movement in the output shaft. So the Pitman arm bearing has collapsed (I tweaked the bearing adjustment to no avail).

 

 

I put it all back together and am going to go read the service manual to see how that all comes apart.

 

Phil

[anonymous user]

This is such a lovely car

[STUNO]

Liking this a lot. I had a Ford Falcon many years ago with a huge amount of sloppyness in the steering box. I took it into the Ford dealer to see what they new. Out came one of their older mechanics and he was able to adjust all the slop out. If I remember correctly there was close to 1/2 a turn of the wheel of free play. My memory of the Chrysler side valve engines is that they were almost silent when the tappet adjustment was right. They were a lot newer then too!

[PhilA]

This one does have adjustment but all the oil has gone missing and tweaking the endfloat adjustment down makes it better but still horribly sloppy.

 

Honestly, it's done 103000 miles, I'll let it be slightly broken.

 

And yes, adjusted correctly these engines are very very quiet.

 

I still need to redo the tappets running with a go/no-go set of feelers. The whole lot's gotta come out so it might as well be done then.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

It is late, but morbid curiosity got the better of me.

 

 

Shall I? Shall I? G'wan then.

 

 

That's not so bad. Definitely seen worse. The bronze bushing is actually in pretty good shape.

 

 

Argh. I hate it when people fill steering gear boxes with chassis grease. It doesn't flow and "channels" away from the moving parts if the gears aren't designed for it. This type of steering gear box calls for "self leveling" grease, which has the consistency of slow molasses. Doesn't really leak too badly but gloops back down into the bearing surfaces after it's been pushed out of the way.

 

On the flip side it's not full of water or emulsified earwax looking crap or rust so that's very promising.

 

 

Cleaned the bolts up.

 

 

Put the lid back on. I'm amused that it looks like that could have just been bolted into the car a couple weeks ago, not in the fifties.

 

Phil

[purplebargeken]

Doing the little bits like that is rather satisfying as well as totally practical. 

[PhilA]

Just found the exploded diagram of the steering box in the factory service manual (it's under gasoline tank and exhaust muffler, obviously).

 

The pitman arm rod is supported on both ends by bronze bushings. The top one is in good shape, that's easy to examine. The bottom one being that slack is worrisome now- I thought it was a roller bearing which would allow for a lot of slop if it broke up. A plain bushing much less so.

 

Further examination ensues.

 

Phil

[Rocket88]

When I had the same issue with the 88, every single bush had a little play in it........by the time the information got from steering wheel to road wheels....."little play" became "bloody terrifying" !

[somewhatfoolish]

At least a bushing is easy to replace if the part isn't available off the shelf; imperial needle bearings probably aren't.

[PhilA]

Colc, that is one inherent problem with steering box systems. There's a lot of joints, some of which only need fractions of an inch lash to multiply the slack terribly.

 

The only real looseness appears to be in the pitman arm shaft, so hopefully it's not gone all the way through the bushing and started to gnaw it's way through the housing...

 

Phil

[DodgeRover]

If it had the steering would be truely awful, we got asked to sort out a tractor that had been run with a loader on that had done exactly what was described above

[PhilA]

Excessive steering force could cause the bearing to collapse yes. There's a huge amount of pressure on those bushings due to the mechanical (dis)advantage the shaft has.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Source: http://pontiac.oldcarmanualproject.com/manuals/1949/1949%20Pontiac%20Shop%20Manual/index.html

 

Part 6.786 is suspect at this time. I need to clean all the grease out and see if I can get to see down in the bottom- likely not, so it'll probably be a case of trying to get the pitman arm off the splines (that'll be fun, the nut is bigger than any tool I have, by quite a margin).

 

Phil

[tooSavvy]

"..nut is bigger than any tool I have, by quite a margin.."

 

Carry on, undaunted m8

[Zelandeth]

First step would be to get it cleaned up and get the proper grease/oil in there.

 

The difference in the steering box in the Lada just dry Vs liked is startling.

 

Hopefully this is more interested in retaining the lubricant. Incontinent steering boxes are a standard feature on most Ladas...

[PhilA]

No, there is significantly more wiggle in the twist than there should be.

 

 

It'll all leak out

 

 

Phil

[PhilA]

I'm going to leave the steering box until I have the engine out, the access will be significantly better.

 

Between times I learned that the only part of the brake hydraulic system that can be disturbed without having to bleed it is the brake light switch. Nice.

 

I guess if I have time I'll do that and test it this weekend. I need to buy some reels of wire also.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

I'd had the screw bar that holds the air filter together soaking in ascorbic acid for a couple days. Tonight I gave it a quick cleaning.

 

 

Then, because it was clean, it went into the Professional Spray Booth (next room) and got a coat of primer.

 

 

No second coat tonight, unlike usual here. It's too cold! I don't often get to say that.

 

 

I cleaned the top of the carb. It said "oil under screws", so I pulled the lid off. Complicated mechanism, intriguing to look at. Throttle pump.

 

 

Oiled it and the throttle linkage. Not that I'm going to be using it but it needs to be kept lubricated.

 

Cars need more flat surfaces like this to rest tools on, too. (Mostly so they can be left and forgotten and dropped, in true correct in-the-garage fashion).

 

 

Phil

[hairnet]

Washington correspondent calling LA dweller

 

Same time zone sadly no time

 

Hopefully tomorrow won't be all town cars and hondas

[somewhatfoolish]

Most excellent tinkering threads; if I find myself doing car maintenance in a shirt it means a puncture or FTP and associated roadside shenanigans. Perhaps I should dye my boilersuit purple.

[PhilA]

I'm just happy to have an indoor space to do these things, after 30+ years of having to store and work on cars outside.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

I'm also still waiting for my connectors to arrive from China (being as any order from Amazon obfuscates the origin of the item until you've paid for it).

 

I may just give up and order some locally.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Alrighty. It's beginning to be the time to pick colors for wiring.

 

I have the choices:

 

16ga

Green

Black

Red

Brown

Pink

Orange

White

Blue

Purple

Gray

 

12ga, 10ga.

Red

Black

Yellow

Blue

 

 

There's a few circuits I want to differentiate.

Interior dash lighting (dimmable)

Parking light circuit (off with headlights)

Sidelights + tail lights + chief

Headlights

Main beam

Interior dome light

Front left indicator (+ feed to the back for towing and telltale)

Front right indicator (+ rear feed, telltale)

Brake light switch (+ rear feed)

Rear left brake/turn

Rear right brake/turn

Reverse lights

Heater fan

Radio

Clock

Ashtray light (comes on w/ sidelights)

 

Then the alternator feed, battery feed, Ignition feed.

 

I think I should be able to do those. Headlights and such 12ga, alternator 10ga. Pretty much everything else 16ga.

 

Phil