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.
It seemed like a good time to install the front seats in the car. These are used seats from a car I scrapped. They are only temporary; they're in great condition, but are too modern for this car. They are also free.
I could only get one bolt out of four through the floor and into a clear area underneath. The other three will need nuts welded into the floor. Drill clearance holes through the floor where they will go. I welded nuts onto thick plates that also have holes in them. I had a couple of welds that were not good. They looked like fat blobs just laying on the metal. I ground them off and turned up the heat. Now they are nice and melty looking. You want welds to look melty, because that's what they are; melted (and fused) metal. A small bracket like this will go bright red hot from the heat!
How hot do you want your welds? Here's a bolt I was using to hold the nut to the plate while welding, and I carelessly tossed it onto my garbage can lid. It melted into the lid and is stuck there. Yes, I use the top of my garbage can as an impromptu workbench.
I welded the plates over the clearance holes in the floor. This much will do. Incidentally the seat was in and out a dozen times getting and checking the fit. All part of custom fabrication.
Here's one seat bracket secured, using a small cutoff of round tubing as a vertical spacer.
One seat in, one to go. It's functional and comfy, and good enough for now. Doing just one seat probably took me 2-3 hours total. There's a lot of fussy fab work, and each corner is different, so they must be fit individually.
The car did not come with a gas pedal. The stock style is available, but to add a racy flavor, I used this competition style pedal from Moon. It's a beautiful piece, and a pretty easy install. It really is necessary, as it is one of the signature pieces of the car. Tell me that is not totally cool. See, you can't.
Believe it or not, there was a time before cars came with 100 airbags in them. And before that, there was a time when cars came without seat belts. Really. Of course that was 50 years ago. Since I wanted to add some seat belts to the '58, I furthered the race car vibe with these competition style lap belts. If you're going to add seat belts, make sure you have thick, wide washers installed beneath the floor to resist the bolts from pulling through the comparitively thin floor skin in an accident. I actually welded small washers over much larger washers to achieve this.
One last thing. I have my excellent wiper arms here, and some brand new reproduction wiper blade assemblies. Well, for what I saved on the arms, I spent to get the blade assemblies; they were $40. They are stainless steel, and what can I say, you just can't go to your local auto parts store for these babies. At least they should last a long time, since I don't plan on abusing the car in bad weather.
Snap, snap, click, click, and they are done. Simple and neat. Good looking too.
