Some poking around on the '58, pt. 2

While I was in an adventurous mood, I decided to check the oil. I pulled the dipstick, and the oil was low, suspiciously thin, and it had an odd smell. Time to drain the oil and see what's going on in there. The drain plug must be under that goop somewhere. As I have said before, I would rather see a nice wet oily underside than a crusty rusty underbody (do not think of that sentence in any way other than how it relates to old cars).

There we go, the plug is out and "it" is draining nicely. You can see the oil filter is the older canister style with the replaceable element instead of the one piece spin-on style. The PO said this was a 1964 motor, the oil filter style supports this claim (perhaps the motor and front seat came from the same car). I said "it" instead of oil, because the fluid was not all oil. There was a very strong gasoline smell to it. It was very thin in viscosity, as if it was half gas, half oil. Something is up.

Now the previous owner was all paranoid about what does indeed sound like a sticky lifter tapping in the motor. Not a big deal to me. First of all, it's not a fatal problem, and I could have the motor apart and swap the lifter in a couple of hours if I wanted to.

Anyway, it is possible that he added kerosene, or some other solvent to the oil in an effort to free up the lifter. Which of course did not work anyway.

A second possibility is that the fuel pump is leaking internally into the engine. A pushrod from inside the motor activates the fuel pump, so there is a passage where it could leak. An uncommon malady, but possible. That would explain why there seems to be so much gas in the oil, and it would also explain why the car came with almost a whole new fuel system; the PO was chasing a fuel delivery problem caused by the pump itself, which he had not yet replaced.

Fuel pumps are easy to change, so I'll get a new one just in case that's it.

HERE'S what you use to clean out a motor of unknown previous use, misuse, and abuse. I filled the motor with 4 quarts of new oil, and 1 quart of automatic transmission fluid. Yes, really. I took the photo in mid-pour just to prove it. ATF has a very high detergent component, it will literally scour the inside of an engine clean. Well, cleaner. I have done this on other used cars and it works great. Do this a couple of times, changing the oil early, like at 1000 mile intervals, and you will not believe the gunk and junk that comes out of the pan each time.

DO NOT pour ATF into the intake of the motor as I heard one person insist he does, unless you wish to cause a huge smokescreen in the neighborhood, and actually add to the deposits in the cylinder head. This goes in with the oil, not the gas.

I'm going to get an adapter to change the oil filter over to the later, easier, and more common spin-on style as well. I'll report back on these fixes after I actually get some parts and get fixing.

Some poking around on the '58, pt. 1

I did some poking around on the '58 last weekend. First thing I did was to pull this awful front bench seat out. It is not a '58 seat, it doesn't fit right, it's too low, and it's in just awful condition. Wasn't even bolted down. I now believe it is a 1964 Chevy front seat (there was an ID tag underneath), so that makes it perhaps valuable to someone. If you want it, or know someone that does, come get it by this Saturday. It's loaded in my truck to go to the dump. Do I feel bad about trashing a 34 year old seat? Yeah, I guess, kind of, but I'm not in the mood to bother to sell it, as we know from before, so Hoo-yah, out it goes. Not, as they say, my problem.
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Oh, yeah, if you want it, it's in excellent condition (forget what I was saying before) and it's fifty bucks.

I have loosely installed the seats from my mom's old Geo that we scrapped. At the last moment I took these seats out merely because they were in such good condition, I had no use for them at the time. I wanted to use the plastic racing bucket seats for drag cars, but they are kind of floppy if the backs are not up against a roll bar, and I'm not planning a roll bar, at least yet. These look kind of modern for what I am planning, but with the headrests off, they don't look too out of place. Plus, they are really light, they have the adjustable seat tracks, they kind of match the red outside paint, they are in great shape, and they are my favorite price: free. So be it.

While sitting in the loosely installed new bucket seat, I noticed a big wet spot on the floor where the driver's feet go. This was not alarming, since the car is outside, and most of the weatherstripping is shot. While wiping it out, I noticed that most of the fresh floor paint was coming loose. The liquid had a faint, familiar smell too. Brake fluid. It's not water, it's brake fluid. Brake fluid is notorious for loosening paint, in fact I have used it as a quickie paint stripper. But how was it getting in the car?

Here is the ancient brake master cylinder in the engine compartment. Probably original. All four brakes are fed from the single line exiting in the lower right. This is a single chamber type cylinder. The problem is, if any part of the brake system leaks, all the brakes fail at once, since all the fluid passages are connected, the fluid will all leak out the one hole. Actually, it's more like you will be unable to build any pressure at any other brake, and you need a lot of pressure for any brake to work. Newer (from the mid-'60's on) systems separate the front and rear brake systems, these use dual-chamber master cylinders. So a leak in the front leaves you rear brakes, and vice-versa.
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The spark-plug wire retention method is a nice touch. Hope you didn't put too much time into that mod, bro.
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The previous owner said in his ad, that in his opinion, the entire brake system needs to be rebuilt. So he was basically covering his A. I believe the master cylinder is leaking out the actuating (push) rod in the back, and dripping down the brake pedal, and puddling on the floor. A new master cylinder would cure this, I'll upgrade to a dual-chamber cylinder while I'm at it.

No sense waiting for the rest of the fluid to leak out, so I'm using this hypodermic thingy to suck the remainder of the fluid out. This thing works great. I also have a turkey baster for bigger pools of unwanted fluid. Seriously.

The battery has gone dead, I noticed the PO was leaving it disconnected. Perhaps it has a slow drain. Perhaps it isn't charging. This car has a generator (DC). Oh look, you can just see a little black wire and a little red wire that aren't hooked up to anything. That doesn't seem right. I'll bet they're supposed to go to something. Just a guess. I'll bet if I hooked them up, it might actually charge.
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I'll pull this thing out, and put in a one-wire alternator and be done with it. One-wire alternators work great.
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I'll follow up when I get the parts to fix up this stuff. I also broke "poking around" into a second part, since the simple "check the oil" got so unbelievable I have to give it it's own post.
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I know I do a lot of complaining, and bashing, and sarcastic-talking, when I do these first fix-up things on a vehicle I just got. Maybe that's the "I can't believe what the PO did" factor, but the truth is I really do like doing these fixes, because in just a few weeks, I can get a barely driveable heap into decent shape. Most of it is small stuff; the PO just cheaped out, or didn't want to do the tough work, or just maybe didn't know better. It's almost a fun, detective, archaeologist, Mr. fix-it type of work. And it looks like I have plenty of fun ahead of me with this car.