and welding.
The very first thing I did in the course was focus on removing the engine from the body. I worked on this with Adam and Jakob. The first step to getting the engine out was labelling and disconnecting all the wires and hoses and removing the radiator. Once it was all disconnected we had to wait a bit before we could proceed because there was other components in the engine bay that had to be removed before the engine could be removed. When all the other stuff was removed we got to work separating the transmission from the engine so it could be lifted out. The transmission bolts proved to be a challenge because there were so many of them, they were all very tight and in hard to reach spots.
Frontal view of the car with the engine still in
The engine hanging from the hoist outside of the car
Empty engine bay, you can see where we disconnected the engine from the transmission and the engine mounts on the front of the crossmember
The next thing I worked on was removing external components off of the engine and taking the cylinder head off. This was a difficult job because its fairly high risk since a lot of the engine components are fairly expensive to replace and if we damaged something it would be costly. So we had to be very careful. Some of the first things we removed were the fan and fan belts, alternator, generator, water pump etc. Some of these things were hard to remove because the bolts were fairly tight and were also rusted. Once we got all the small external components off we started working on the cylinder head, exhaust manifold and carburetors. The exhaust manifold was pretty hard to get off because it was very rusted and the bolts were in strange places. After the exhaust manifold we started taking the carbs off, they were pretty easy because they came off in one big piece and only had a few bolts holding them on. The cylinder head was also pretty easy, the only struggle was getting the bolts off because they were super tight. The last thing to take off was the oil pan. We emptied the oil and dumped it out then took the pan off. At this point me and Adam split off from Jakob and he took over the process of taking the internals of the engine apart and me and Adam started working on the front crossmember which Ben and Avery removed for us.
Photo of us removing the front gear cover
Photo of the engine with the carbs and exhaust manifold removed
After me and Adam split off from the engine work we started on the front crossmember. The front crossmember was a fairly straightforward in terms of how we take it apart. First we removed the steering components which were still attached. There were two steering linkages which were still attached, they were hard to remove because the bolts were very tight. The next thing we removed was the anti-sway bar. Removing the anti-sway bar was probably the hardest part of the whole front crossmember. The nuts connecting it were so severely rusted they were pretty much fused to the bolt. We had to heat the bolts multiple times then dumping water on them to get the bolts to separate and still in the end one of them just ended up breaking off. The next step was to remove the brake calipers and rotors. They were fairly easy to remove, the one hard part was removing the brake hose from the clip on the back of the rotor shield. After brakes we removed the brake shield and the caliper mounting plate behind it, the steering arm came off with those two things. Now that everything else was removed we had to find a way to compress the spring to be able to undo the bottom ball joint bolt without the spring breaking free and going flying. We ended up using the car lift to compress the spring, we just raised the lift and lowered it back down on top of the spring to compress it. Amazingly this worked perfectly and we were able to take the bolt off without anything going wrong. After that we removed the top and bottom A-arms which were both surprisingly easy to remove. Now that the whole Front crossmember was disassembled we cleaned everything to remove clumps of dirt and grease to get it ready for sandblasting.
The front crossmember right after it was removed from the car
Photo the right brake caliper being removed
Photo of the sway bar bolt that broke
Photo of the rotor shield, caliper plate and steering arm during removal
Photo of the brake shield and caliper plate removed
Photo of the crossmember with only A-arms and spring left
Photo right after we used the lift to compress the spring and remove ball join bolt
After I finished my work on the front suspension I started just helping everyone out with whatever they were doing and we put the rotisserie together.
Once the car was completely stripped and mounted in the rotisserie we got everything sandblasted and ready to be painted.
The next step was painting, we learned that this process of painting took a lot of planning because we need a clean spot to put the painted parts and be able to hang them to dry as well. The paint also needed to be applied in two coats in the same day within 4 hours of each other. This was hard to accommodate since we were doing the painting at school during school hours. So we ended up having to go and apply the first coat during out first period class and then come back 4 hours later during our actual class to do the second coat.
The paint was really easy to apply, it spread out very well and went a long way. The one thing we had to watch out for was to not use too much paint or else the finish would look terrible.
After all the painting was done we had a long time to wait for parts to arrive to be able to re-assemble some of the components. During this time I helped Jakob with some transmission work, I leaned how to weld and ended up doing a repair to the crossmember on the top where the shock absorber attaches.
Me and Jakob worked on cutting and shaping the plate for the top of the crossmember on both sides. This is a pic of after it was tacked to the top.
This is a picture after I finished welding and grinding, it was painted black after
After I finished that repair on the crossmember some parts started coming in especially ball joints and bushings, this meant we were able to start putting stuff back together. Me and Adam got straight to work on putting the front crossmember back together with all new bushings, balljoints and some new nuts and bolts. This was an extremely satisfying thing to do because it was finally starting to feel like our hard work had payed off. We first put everything together loosely to make sure it all fit together. Once we knew we were all good we tightened everything down and are now left with one big piece that can be bolted to the car once its ready.
The finished crossmember (front view)
(top view)
During this project I learned a lot. I learned to expect the unexpected when your working on an old car because you never know whats going to happen next or if what your doing will work or if your even doing anything right. I also learned that helping others is a very important thing when working on a big project like this. Because if nobody works together you wont get anything done. Another thing I learned is that its very important to listen to others and value their ideas because they might know more than you and you should listen to them because you could learn something new. The biggest thing I learned was to take your time, learn, don't rush and do good work on everything you do and if everyone does good work you will end up with really good results.
The main skill I learned was welding and fabrication/finishing work. These skills came in handy when I was working on the top plates for the front crossmember. When fabricating a part its very important to take your time and make sure everything is measured properly because if you make one mistake you might end up having to re build the whole part that you were working on. Some other stuff I worked on was my group work skills. I tried to be cooperative while working with others and always willing to help out other is they needed help. Another thing that was important was listening skills, if we ran into a problem we had to work together to come up with a solution and during that process its important to listen to others ideas. Problem solving was a big part of this project. Almost every class we ran into a new issue that we would all have to think on the spot to come up with a solution in a quick manner. I also continued to develop skills with all of the tools in the shop and learning ways to use tools that I haven't done before. I also became pretty good at guessing what size bolts are just by looking at them.
Overall I enjoyed this project a lot. Everyday was a new challenge and a new experience for everyone which is something that not many people have to opportunity to experience on a daily basis.
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