Your air conditioning is working.

This past week was very hot and humid. We had a lot of people come into the shop complaining that their car air conditioning was not working, or was not working well.

It takes a while for the air conditioning to cool a car down. It isnt immediate. We had one guy that said his AC wasnt working well. First I discovered all of his windows were open about an inch. I hope he wasnt expecting the AC to work well with the windows open. So I closed the windows, and put the AC on. I left a thermometer in the car, and after 15 minutes, it was 50* in the car. I dont know how much better the AC in an 8 year old car is supposed to work, but 50 is pretty cool.

The reason it seems the AC doesnt get really cold on sweltering days is because AC has a tough time cooling when its hot and humid, much like humans do. AC works by (this is simplified) removing the heat from the air in the car and sending it outside. Stand next to the outside part of a working home AC and you will feel that its very hot. The problem is when the AC is trying to put hot air into the outside air that is already very hot and humid.

You know how much hotter you feel when its very humid? You sweat and sweat but you dont feel any cooler? Humid air is air that has a lot of water in it. Your body cools when your sweat evaporates from your skin into the air. But humid air cannot accept the water from your sweat because it is already holding so much water. In hot but dry air your sweat can evaporate easily and this cools you (I saw this explanation on the weather channel).

Your AC works in a similar way (again very simplified). It has a hard time getting rid of heat into heat. So it doesnt work as well.

Theres another factor, and that is the heat of the car. Your car feels the heat too, and the engine radiator is working like crazy trying to get rid of motor heat into hot outside air. The engine compartment is hot like an oven, and unfortunately, the AC heat exchanger is under the hood, RIGHT NEXT TO the blazing hot engine radiator. This is a result of packaging constraints; the AC components need to be located somewhere near the motor. But it doesnt help.

So in summary, its hot. You put on the AC, but ironically, it works less well at the very time you need it to work best. This is probably better explained by the laws of thermodynamics, or the conservation of matter and energy, or something complicated. But your AC is probably really working, even if it seems like it is not.

68 Firebird part 1

New project, a 68 Pontiac Firebird owned by a friend. Oh, this is not it. This is our inspiration photo.

This is the car we will be doing. It looks real straight at first. Just a couple of rust holes and dents.

A little body work and then paint. This is going to be easy.

First thing to do is remove the rear bumper and wheel trim. It was going well until I got to one unyielding bumper bolt inside the trunk. Cant just torch it since its near the gas tank. Finally got it out after about an hour, but I had to cut part of the brace out to do it (we'll fix that later).

I started here. A little rust bubbling, how bad could it be?

I banged on it with my fist, this much came out.

With just a little metal cutting, the hole got this big. Wow.

Here I am pointing to the filler I had to grind out. This car has had work before. No matter, but the filler was at least 3/8" thick! Waaaay too much.

I had to cut out this much to get to firm metal.

Heres the edge of the rear pan. Total junky bodywork. We'll have to fix this later.

I got bitchin' patch panels already. To trim them I use this pneumatic shear. Theres no way these will cut with any hand snips.

Heres another look at the rear pan area. Yes the filler was this thick. To his credit, the previous bodyman did have this all shaped to look like a decent 68 Firebird. He was a real sculpting artist. I figure the entire car will be 3/8" smaller in all directions when I get done with it!

Here is the panel clamped in place. Fitting panels is very fussy and takes a long time to get right. The sheetmetal screws are just temporary. They will be removed and the holes welded up. Time to weld it in.

Here we are after filler (sorry for the fuzzy photo). Nowhere on this panel is the filler more than 1/16". If you do your metal work right, you only need a thin coat of filler. It does usually take a couple of coats of filler though, to get a panel dead straight. This is the correct way.

Top tip: To sand convex surfaces, I use pieces of rubber car tubing with the paper wrapped around it. This gives you a curved surface, and the rubber hose is squishy; it confirms as you sand.

Quick quiz: How much filler do you sand off? Thats right class, almost all of it! There should only be enough filler to smooth over the transitions and fill gentle low spots. If you need more than 1/16", your metal work sucks. Go back and fix it, sanding filler takes just as long as fixing panels, so there no time saving in slopping on the filler.

So here it is: one replacement panel, rust removed, primed, with a minimum of filler. Nice.

So what did I learn?

Specifically, what did I learn from my ownership of the 58 Biscayne? Maybe some was learned, and some was just confirmation of things I knew, but ignored in the face of buying a car I had really wanted for a long time. My first car was a 64 Biscayne, and my favorite car is a 58 Impala, so I got a 58 Biscayne (58 Impalas were too expensive).

Some of what I learned:

                                    

Never buy a car with a cracked windshield. You cant see it in the photo above, but the 58s windshield is cracked. The windshield replacement was like a huge weight hanging over me, since I didn't trust myself to do it, and I knew it would cost around $500 to have it done. It never got done.

Never cut out the rear wheelwells. The rear wheel lip areas in the body of this car were rusted out, and so while repairing them I reshaped them to have more clearance for wider tires. If you look at the photo above, the original rear wheelwell edge would be down to about the top of the rim top edge. I raised them about 5", and I tried to mimic the front wheelwell shape. I think I did a great job. But for some reason, I was never completely happy with this modification.

Never sell an unpainted car. I concentrated on mechanical issues, so I never got new paint on the 58. If I had finished the body and paint, I could have probably made a lot more on the sale of the car. The paint looks good here, but I had to take pics in the rain one morning, so its just wet.

Never buy a car with an unfinished interior. This didnt bother me when I bought the car, since it would be a chance to do the interior a little custom and cool. But this would have to be farmed out to an upholstery shop, and it would likely cost thousands. The dash was all hacked up in the radio area, and I would have to fix that. Just detailling the interior trim parts and installing all of it (it came in a bundle in the trunk) was a daunting task I wasnt looking forward to.

Even things that 'will be easy' will take time, effort, and some money. Detailing the engine bay is an example. Easy. Also way down a long list of things that just never got done. Youre lucky I dont have any pics of the trunk, it was a disaster. Again, a very fixable disaster, given time, but a disaster nonetheless.

In short, I bought a car that needed too much work. It was all work I could have accomplished if I had more time and/or money. I just dont have as much of either as I used to. Just dont get into a project if you dont have the finances and/or time to see it through. I woefully underestimated (WILLFULLY IGNORED would be more correct) my own finances, time, and patience.

If I work a full week, its 55 hours (!) for about 1/4 of what I used to make. Thats on my feet for 10 hours, doing very physical work. I get home from work and Im dead tired. I have a family, and my young daughter has activities I do not want to miss. Plus it stinks waiting months to spend just a hundred dollars for parts; which I then feel bad about since I make so little. I did not take into account how mentally draining these factors would be over time. Instead of realizing how far I had progressed, all I could think about was how far I had to go. It would be years, and thousands of dollars, and I just got fed up.
This is not the first project I have abandoned, but I do feel like I have given up on a big dream of mine, and thats tough. Of course, I have found that part of growing older is realizing and accepting that some of your dreams will not be realized; and thats just the way it is. Like I said, maybe I will own another 58, and maybe not.

So OF COURSE, just a day or so after the 58 left, Im looking at a hot rod message board I frequent, and somebody posts this:

58 Impala, factory Aztec Bronze color, all jacked up, front bumper removed, ridiculously wide mags and tires...the closest I have ever seen to the original 'Devils Haven' from the Wappingers area, the same car that I was just totally captivated with as a young boy (the acutal DH was way more tasteless, but way cooler to me).

Anyway, a bit of a kick in the nuts there. I not finish my 58; it would never be the 'more mature' version of my inspiration that I had planned. Dang, it hurts, but getting into a decent 58 Impala is $20,000 now, bad economy or not. I hope I know what I am doing.