The seal problem

I'll go into a little more detail about the front disc brake inner bearing seal problem. I have not been able to contact the kit manufacturer; I assume they are having problems from Hurricane Sandy down in NC.

First we'll take a quick measurement of the seal OD. It's 2.634 (all dims in inches). Note the engraving on the dial caliper, I'll get to that later.

Here is the rotor area where the seal goes. It measures 2.400.

 Subtraction shows the seal to be too big by a monster .234. This is almost 1/4", no way this is the correct seal. I didn't need to measure with a dial caliper to see the interference, but there's a reason I did.

Here's the inner part of the spindle where the seal goes. 1.874. Write all these numbers down for future reference. I mean I did, you don't have to there at home. 

 There's a little thumbscrew on the dial caliper that can fix the jaws. You can just see it upper right in the photo. I used it here.

I can then insert the fixed caliper into the ID of the seal. The seal is hard rubber here, so measuring it accurately is difficult. The caliper jaws are used as a go/no-go gauge to see if the ID is near correct. The caliper slides into the seal with just a little drag, so we know the seal would wipe on the spindle correctly. If it fit the rotor.

Here is a side shot of the seal. This metal outer ring must sit down flush into the machined area of the rotor. I had it jammed in behind the rotor, and it caused major mechanical binding, as you can imagine. I am not familiar with a seal that has a protuding lip like this either. I just don't get this. 

What I did get is an accurate set of numbers. Now when I get in touch with the manufacturer, I can speak about the problem in concrete terms, not just guesses or vague statements. I can tell them exactly what I have, and exactly what I need, down to the thousandth of an inch. Thinking about this, I am going to go back and measure the seal width, and the seal seat in the rotor, so I have those too.

If I have to, I can now troubleshoot this myself. I can bring my caliper to the auto parts store, and physically measure seals right there, until I find the correct one. Only need the correct ID, OD, and width. This is part of swapping non-stock parts.

 

Here is my dial caliper cleaned and resting in its case (the cigar is not part of the story. It's really not part of any story, it just "is". Try to ignore it).

I inherited the caliper from my late father, and it is one of my most prized and cherished possessions. It measures to the thousandth of an inch (finer with some interpolation). Not everything needs to be measured with this accuracy, but many times close enough is not good enough. I am reminded of my dad whenever I use it, since it has "EF" engraved on it. It is on extended loan from a once-prominent manufacturing company in East Fishkill where he used to work.

Even if you had one and didn't know how to read it right, you could write down some numbers from it and bring them to someone that could figure things out. Now digital calipers are available for as little $10 (!) from Harbor Freight Tools, and being digital, you have the number right in front of you, no adding up the different scales.

Finally, like I alluded to, having real and accurate numbers gives you authority when you visit a parts store. You tend to be taken more seriously when you declare your needs to the thousandth of an inch, and are ready to verify part measurements right at the counter.

Stay tuned for more on the seal story.

Disc Brakes!!! It's a big one.

While everybody else is watching news coverage of Hurricane Sandy, I'm in the garage, getting something done:

I put the new brake master cylinder in (see previous post) to support this; the new front disc brake conversion!

There is nothing wrong with drum brakes, per se, except that it is weird to acutally see front drum brakes at all. Most manufacturers were changing over to front discs by about 1970, some 40+ years ago.

After removing the actual drum part, I saw just how worn out these brakes are. Total, total junk. I almost think this car sat in a lake for some time. All of this has to be removed down to the spindle.

I'll save the old parts in my garage, likely until my death, despite the fact that I will have no use for them, and they are readily and cheaply available, in far better condition, to anyone that might need them. This is what it means to be a car guy.

I'll disconnect the brake hose. Oh look, it's our friend, Mr. Vertical-Brake-Line-Loop again. How predictable. I believe we met your brother on the last post.

Most of the removal went ok. One big stubborn bolt required some, shall we say, persuasion. It's a monster 5/8" fine thread. I gave it a nice soaking with the acetylene torch. Then it came right off. Good ol' Mr. Torchy.

Finally we're down to the bare spindle.

 

Here is the new front disc brake conversion kit. The stock front brakes would need a total rebuild. And I have already determined that I'd need all new bearings too, since the passenger side wheel is so loose it is almost falling off the car. The cost of all new drum brakes plus bearings is nearly as much as the db conversion.
Here are all of our new parts laid out for inspection:

Oh, one more thing: The '58 has ball bearings in a race. Since they needed replacement, I wanted to do a conversion to tapered roller bearings too. They're better at handling side loading and have been the standard configuration since about 1960 until today. The cost of that upgrade made the db changeover a no-brainer; the db's come with tapered rollers standard.






This made Crispy cat very interested:

The stock spindle must be modified. There's always a bit of trepidation when you have to irreperably modify the stock parts, even for me. The new inner bearing ID is smaller than the spindle OD. A quick measuring confirmed a .004" interference. The kit instructions say to sand the spindle down. I used an emery cloth strip and sanded the spindle using a shoe-shine motion, until the bearing achieved a nice slip-fit.

Four thousands of an inch isn't much (unless there's interference, as we have here. Then it's a ton). The sanding goes quickly, and you have to be judicious. To get the correct slip-fit is important, so you want to sneak up on it, really. I hate to say it, but you have to have some experience to know when this is correct. I'm talking about getting this right to 1/1000 of an inch. If it's too tight, the bearing will get stuck on the spindle. If you remove too much material, you'll have a sloppy bearing fit. Your bearings will wear prematurely, and it will never be right. You'll have to find another 1958 spindle, and hope you don't ruin it too. No pressure.


I have the caliper brackets mounted. Pretty simple so far. The big scalloped part with 2 holes is where the new calipers will mount. You can see I have the inner bearing on there, all greased up nicey-nice. Pack your new bearings with as much grease as you can.

Here is the new rotor in place. At first I couldn't get the outer washer (shown) to fit right.

Here is the caliper mounted. Unfortunately, there is some major binding. The outer brake pad is way too tight, and the rotor will not spin freely. Something is not right.

A little troubleshooting found that the inner bearing seal doesn't fit right, causing the rotor to sit too far outward. To be honest, I have never seen this type of seal, so I don't know what to do. I removed the inner seal and the interference was gone; the rotor spins freely and correctly, and there is now room for the outer washer. I'll call the manufacturer tomorrow and get some help with this. I have confidence it will be a simple fix, since everything else fit very well. I'll paint the caliper and rotor nose with some primer and satin black paint later (no bright red calipers for me, thanks, I'll leave that to the kids).



Overall, I am very satisfied and optimistic with this disc brake conversion. I like the bearing upgrade. I look forward to great braking performance. Perhaps the instructions could have been more clear, and that's considering I think I know a lot about brakes. It is also a cool functional upgrade that doesn't announce itself. Nobody will detect this unless they go to great trouble to look under the car.



I feel for someone with less experience, and certainly less tool resources. This conversion might be tough for them. Just knowing to heat the 5/8 bolt with an acetylene torch, and having said torch at hand, would make the difference between just an extra step or a major stumbling block. Also, you need big sockets, which I have. Nothing else would really work.

I'll get an extra set of brake pads, and put them in the spares box I plan to carry in the trunk of the car. The rest of the brake parts are more modern by about 30 years, so sourcing them in the future will be easier as well. The conversion is also cost-effective. It would have cost about as much to have just done a rebuild to stock.
I am totally psyched about these new front disc brakes!

Crispy cat approves.

Brake master cylinder install

Sorry no post last week, but I'll try to make up for it with this one. This is the original brake master cylinder. When you push on the brake pedal, it pushes the aptly named pushrod into the rear of the master cylinder, displacing brake fluid through the lines to the wheel brakes. This original style mc is the single chamber style, meaning that all four brakes are supplied by one common chamber simultaneously. You can see the single outlet tube that eventually splits, then each splits again for four wheels. Very simple.

This mc was adequate for the four wheel drum brakes this car came with. The only possible problem is that if any part of the system developed a leak, the entirety of the fluid could leak out in just a few pumps, leaving you literally without any brakes at all. Very scary, but usually leaks develop slowly, not where like a whole line is severed completely at once. If the whole system is rebuilt and fresh, there shouldn't be any problems. In fact I did rebuild this one and have every confidence in it.

Below is our upgrade.  A dual chamber master cylinder, identifiable by the dual hump cover and the two outlet ports. The immediate improvement is that one chamber feeds the front wheels, and the other chamber feeds the rear wheels independently. Losing pressure in one circuit would still leave the other intact. This improvement came standard around 1966-ish. The mc pictured is an even later one, for front disc/ rear drum Camaros circa 1980. I'm going to change the front brakes completely over to discs, hopefully next week. Thus the need for this new mc.

 I took this reverse angle shot of the brake line from the mc. If you'll notice, the brake line makes a vertical loop, likely done to absorb excess line length of a poorly-executed universal replacement line install . A cars' whole brake system is dependent on hydraulic pressure; simply fluid being pressurized, and moving through tubes. Brake systems must not have any air in them, as air will compress (fluid will not) and cause poor pedal feel and braking action. The vertical loop is likely to trap air in it during the bleeding process, since bleeding is done from the mc out and downward to each wheel. My point is this: the loop should have been done (if at all) on the horizontal instead, sweeping downward. Envision how simply rotating the loop 90* clockwise would have fixed this. A custom correct length line is the best solution of course.

Very fortunately, the new mc bolt holes align perfectly with the existing mounting studs on the car.  I'm stunned that this dimension was kept uniform for at least 20+ years. Unfortunately, the existing pushrod was way too long to accomplish an easy bolt on. Some careful measuring and calculation revealed that the pushrod will have to be shortened 15/16". It's kind of hard to see below, but the pushrod is threaded into the clevis to allow some adjustment.  I'll free this up, but still cut off the offending amount to get the length close. FYI, the clevis on the right attaches to the pedal arm, the other end pushes into the mc.

Here at last is the new mc in place, freshly primed and painted semi-gloss black for the factory look I like. The old line is still in place, we'll run two new lines to replace it. I reused the bulky original nuts, of course! I have an extremely strong preference for reusing original hardware whenever possible. New hardware store hardware never looks authentic, and although I'm not going for restoration quality authenticity (obviously) too many new parts add up (even cheap nuts and bolts) and kill the '60's style build theme I'm going for. If I had painted the mc bright silver, and used bright new plated nuts, the first thing anyone would notice is the new, out-of-period mc.

Below is a wider shot of the install. I really dig how the new mc's squared-off shape even mimics the boxy look of the original mc. What can I say, this sort of stuff matters to me. Excuse the grungy underhood area, we're going for function right now. Also excuse the horrific bright yellow spark plug wires, but they came with the car and they work.

When I was 18, I thought yellow spark plug wires were the coolest thing. Now, sometime (ahem) later, I could not hate them more.

Finishing the body patch

We're finishing the body patch we started last weekend.  Continue to tack weld the seam of the patch.  You cannot do continuous welds! Too much heat will warp the metal.  The only way to do this is to do a million tack welds until the whole thing is done. Here I have started the tack welding.

Here it is almost all done.

Grind the welds down to get a look at the progress.  Now we can find all the spots we missed.  Go back and do those.  Regrind. What you want to get to is a continuous flat metal surface.  Go over the whole area with some 80 grit sandpaper to give the metal some tooth.  Clean the whole thing off with some wax-and-grease remover.

We're going to use body filler to smooth out our panel. Mix up some filler according to directions and lay it over the whole area with a plastic spreader. Don't be too fussy, most of it will come back off anyway. You should have something like this.

I just love love love the smell of body filler. Now we're going to knock the filler down with a "cheese grater" file. I use just the blade part.

You have to wait about 10-15 minutes for the filler to get semi-hard.  Don't start filing too soon, you'll just clog the grater and pull too much filler out.  Start filing, and the filler will come off in strings, like this. I like to flex the blade a bit with two hands, and I usually work in diagonal strokes in both directions, sort of a cross-hatch pattern. Work on the filler, flattening it until it is close to the contour of the panel.

When you're done with the grating, it should look something like this. I have removed probably 1/3 of the filler doing this step.

Now I use some 80-grit sandpaper on a simple rubber sanding block. More long, diagonal strokes. Get the filler nice and flat, and feather the edges out nice and thin. You can see bare metal showing, these are the high areas.  There's also some unsanded areas in the middle of the filler, these are obviously the low areas. Apply more filler in the low areas, and resand.  Eventually you will have a dead flat panel, with the filler even and blended into the surrounding areas. Sanding should remove at least another 1/3 of material.

Add filler and sand as many times as needed. Use your hand to check the panel.  Just looking at it is good, but you have to feel the panel to find any uneven areas. Yes, there's a bit of an art to this, but it is developed from experience. You should end up with a thin coat of filler that basically brings the low areas level with the high areas.  Filler should not exceed 1/16" thick; any more and your metal work is just too low. Now sand again with 200 grit.  Nice and flat, isn't it?  Feels nice, doesn't it? Spray the area with auto body primer, the spray can kind is fine for now.  We will go over this whole area again with 400-grit before paint.  Here is where you should be (yes, this is the other side of the car, done previously).

So that is the crash-course time-compressed version of panel repair. I have a ton more tips and tricks I don't have room for here. I have to warn you, this is a lot of work. Just this rocker repair and panel patch on one side took me about 10 hours. That's assuming you have the tools to do it properly. I like doing this, it's part science, and part art, and it's nice to have a sturdy repair that will last a long time, where before we literally had nothing.

Other stuff:  I will spray the inside of the repair with paint, and a couple of coats of undercoating.  I can do this from the inside since I still have to repair the inner rocker panel. Sealing the backside is important to the longevity of the repair. Wear a mask when sanding filler, it's probably bad for your lungs. Don't expose bare primer to moisture too much, it is porous and moisture will go right through it.  Body filler contains a lot of the mineral talc, and if this soaks in too much moisture, it will expand and ruin your nice flat panels.  So keep this dry as much as possible.

There it is, how to fix a rusty panel.  It's not rocket science, but it does take a little skill and a bunch of patience; both of which you can learn. And no matter how much you mess up, it's fixable.  At the worst, you will have to cut it all out and start again, and you will have more experience than before.