summative blog post

after we dissembled cleaned and painted all the parts. it was time to re assemble. the goal was to have the rear suspension attached to the car so that it would be able to roll out of the shop onto a trailer.
this is the plan :
1 plan out procedures and find all the parts
2 get barrings in
3 apply all arm bars (not tight)
4 add oil to differential
5 attach to car

doing research, finding out the procedure was most important to the job. we needed to make sure we had a feel and idea as to were the project was going. getting the barrings in were challenging because of how stiff they were. after that everything was pretty simple and strain forward. we attached the sway arms. applied the drums, and put the oil into the differential.
the hardest part was having to contort and maneuver the car and axle so that all 4 arm bars were in place. this was hard because sometimes one bar would be in place but the other were not. also the car had to be at the right height and the axle had to be raised off the ground far enough. this was definitely the hardest part of the project and it took almost 2 classless to complete. it took the willingness to keep trying to keep your hopes up

I learned that lots of tasks can be challenging but its how you react to them that matters. Tech requires more thinking than people think. you really have to examine all your options and ways you can accomplish a task. lots of patience and resiliency to never give up is also needed because lots of challenging  tasks are upon us. there are all accomplish able, its how you react and treat the challenges that counts.

things that went well were applying the axle to the car, it was challenging but i really felt a good sense of accomplishment after completing the task. i think me and ben really work hand in hand together in holding, resting, and lining up the axle for each other so we could both apply the bolts effectively . we also really used our head because we had to think of the best angles and best height to have all the parts at, so they would fit into place properly.
so that was what went well and what was challenging.
something that was also very challenging was getting the barrings in. it was very hard to keep the bar in place due to the pressure being put on it. also the barring were insanely stiff and stubborn. strength and the willingness to keep trying to what was most important

overall this was an excellent course and had a blast with all the people.

Summative Blog Post

Over the course of the project I have worked on everything from the Engine and powertrain to the electrical to various components of the bodywork.

The first job that I was tasked to take on was the removal of the engine along with the strip down and disassembly along with Riley and Adam. This was a challenging task due to the fact that the nuts and bolts were often rusted and seized on. The first step in removing the engine was to disconnect the engine electrics then followed by the coolant hoses and radiator. For this particular car we needed to remove the radiator in order to pull the engine. We unbolted the engine from its mounting bracket on the front suspension and decided it would be best to remove the engine without the transmission. The transmission bolts were extremely difficult to remove and it took us over an hour to get them all out. With the engine loose it was simple to use the engine crane to lift it out and mount it to the engine block stand. With the engine mounted we could get a good look at the condition of all the various parts for the first time. With a light wash with a brush and cleaner we could start to get a feeling for what all needed to be done in terms of the extent of work that would need doing. Almost all the nuts and bolts on the engine assembly were seized. A can of break away later we managed to remove the manifolds, carburetors, water pump, generator, various coolant hoses and the pulleys and timing covers. With all the parts removed, bagged, and tagged we could move on to the long block disassembly. This includes the cylinder head, pushrods, rocker arm, camshaft, crankshaft, oil sump, engine bearings, and tappets. Once the engine had been completely disassembled and ready for the machine shop I made sure to organize the parts that would not be sent in order to ensure that whoever was to work on it next would not have a nightmare waiting for them.

 Pistons along with connecting rod and big end

 Camshaft (right) and Crankshaft (left)

Engine Block with all components removed -except camshaft

 Engine on block stand

 Removing timing cover

 Engine block showing oil cooler 

With the engine work finished for the time being I moved on to the car electrics with Konrad. Working on the electrics was probably to most daunting task that I took on during the course of the whole project. The Lucas Electrics wiring harness system used in this car, notorious for being extremely unreliable and developing gremlins in old age, was old and tatty and often led to nowhere so when it came to labelling and mapping out he harness it became a bit of a headache. In addition many of the wires were insulated by cloth unlike modern systems, which by now had started to degrade and corrode making the process of removing the harness in one piece very difficult. The process was slow and involved us starting with the gauges in the dash. Carefully removing the gauge, mapping out the wiring contacts and labelling the harness followed by the disconnecting terminals and removing the gauge from the dash. We did this for all the gauges and we ended up having to completely disassemble the steering wheel linkage in order to reach the last gauges. With all the interior wiring disconnected and the rear harness disconnected and pulled through we moved to the engine bay to undo the last few connections and to open up the main grommet so that the whole harness would be able to be pulled through in one piece. With the wiring harness gone we removed the four bolts holding the dash in place, granted it was quite snug we were able to hammer it out carefully. Once the dash had been removed the rubber seals were cut away and glass carefully lifted out on back and front followed by the brake and clutch pedal assembly. The interior and body of the car at this point had now been stripped and ready the body prep for sandblasting.

Steering column showing turn signal wiring

 Dash with steering wheel and electrics removed

 Gauge in dash wiring

Under dash wiring

The next task, and arguably the most tiresome and irritable job that needed doing was scraping off the rubberized stone chip coating that covered the entire underbody of the car. We tackled this by using chisels and scrapers and just slowly going at it. We tried various power tools however they never really seemed to work as well as just plugging away by hand. This took several days but when it was completed to the greatest extent that was reasonable the car body was ready for sandblasting. After the sandblasting was finished the body was ready for bodywork repair to be done.

Chipping and scraping rubberized coating

Throughout the course of the project we were able to paint all of the suspension components along with some of the body with POR 15 protective paint. This is a tough dependable paint that will protect against just about anything. We needed to apply one coat with a following second after 3-4 hours otherwise the paint would not set properly.

My last job of the project was to work on the transmission. This included disassembling the transmission shifter linkage and cleaning the exterior of the gearbox casing along with testing the overdrive. After tearing apart the linkage we discovered that new gaskets were needed. Once we received the new gaskets the transmission went back together fairly simply with new oil seals, gaskets and a new rubber shift boot. Testing the overdrive was fairly simple by hooking up the solenoid to a battery then checking to make sure the solenoid engages forcing on the hydraulic pump. The last job for the transmission was to re-paint it red. We did this with a rattle can and it went very quickly.

Over the course of this project I learned a lot about not only cars but also to expect that things will almost always go wrong when you don't want them too. Meaning in a project like this you just have to go with the flow because plans will most likely change day-to-day. I also learned that helping others is a very important thing when working on a project like this. When nobody works together things will either not happen very fast or not get done at all. Another thing I learned is that its very important to listen to others and hear them out as they might know something that you don't as well as you could learn something new. The biggest thing I learned was to take your time, figure out what you need to do, and work on the task as a team. If everyone is on the same page and works hard then you end up with really good results.

The main skill that I learned was that I learned how to weld along with several other practical techniques that are useful while working on cars. Having some of these techniques under my belt gives me some experience and will be helpful down the road when I am working on my own car. Overall I had a good experience with this project and look forward to working on further projects in the future. Along with the various small projects I got to work on I also got many experiences, tactics, techniques and problem solving skills to go with it which has made this course a very rewarding one.

Summative Blog Post

During the course of this year I have worked on a couple different things on the car. I started off by working on removing the transmission from the car. Then I focused more on body work and welding.


The very first thing I worked on was the Heater box, my job was to remove this so that we could start to work on the electronic parts in the interior of the car, this came with many challenges, from not being able to remove some bolts cause they were in hard to reach areas and labelling wires. After removing the Heater Box, I switched directions and worked on body work and fixing dents in body panels. My big focus though was on welding. My main focus was welding the rusted splash guard panel. This included making a paper prototype and then cutting the metal and getting it the right shape. This project was a huge struggle for me because i wasn't able to get the right shape needed to weld. All in all i learned a ton of things in this course from taking the transmission, to removing the heater box, and welding and shaping the metal.

         

Summative Blog Post

During the course I did a lot of different things ranging from Bodywork to engine disassembly
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.

Summative Post

Throughout taking the car apart, cleaning all the pieces and reassembly, many challenges had to be faced. This challenges included rusted bolts, dirt built up on the car, dented and damaged car parts and the lack of time we had to work with.

The first thing we started working with was the engine and the removal of the engine. This took multiple classes to accomplish. With the removal of the engine we began to clean it and sort out all the pieces including cylinder heads and push rods making sure not to loose the corrects order they are in.                                                      

A picture of the engine removed from Volvo

We began to clean every piece and scrape off, and any rust that was built up on the engine. After this, me and Riley begun to disassemble the front suspension assembly.

The rusted front suspension before its cleaned and painted.

Me and him completely dissembled the front suspension and sent the parts off for professional media blasting.

We began to paint the assembly and put all the pieces together to make for a solid assembly.

Through out these projects various pieces had to be fabricated or rebuilt do to rust eating away at corners and paint. Parts needed to be scraped and pieces needed to be welded in place of the rusted out sections. This served as a challenge when working with these this metal pieces. The pieces require a lot of patients and skill to work with. The thin metal can melt quickly under the intense heat generated by the MIG welder. 

A picture of the rust the team is dealing with. 

Working with these pieces has still proven to be a challenge but I do believe they will turn out well soon. We will continue to work on the car and persevere through these noted challenges. 

Summative Blog Post

What I learned in this course that you can’t finish a full restoration in one semester. I also learned more about my limits. And how to work well with others. And how much of a pain it is to wait for parts to come and when the internet goes out when you need to work on the computer. I learned you can't just start a task without knowing how to do the task like when we did not know how to push in the bushings. We spent a lot of the class trying to figuring out how to push in the bushings. I just wanted to start and figure it out as we went. But we finally found a way of doing it.

What went well  When we started taking the rear axle off of the car that went really well, draining the fluid in the differential else went well, scraping the seal, painting, pushing out the bushings, cleaning the transmission, cleaning and installing the drive shaft and greasing up the bearings and putting in the metal rings.

What did not go well: Pulling off the wheel hubs was a pain because they were stuck on and it took a couple of days to get them off. A lot of heating and then hammering and then pulling the hub. Both of the rear hubs where stuck on the car. When we got the whole rear axle on the car we had to take off all of the bolts and nuts, They were all stuck tight we had to use to whole cars of brake away to get the bolts off. Then we had to take off the rear brake and baking plates and to take out the drive shafts the drive shafts where the worst because they were stuck and took a lot of force to get them out. Next I had to take the universal joints and those where so hard to get apart because the clips were rusted into place that took the better half of a class to take apart. And finial waiting for parts that was the most difficult to do because I count ralley frustrated  waiting for a part you need and then when it was just waiting somewhere to be shipped was so much of a pain because we were stalled until the parts came.

How did I overcome this changes: By asking for help and by waiting.

Distributor Rebuild

The Volvo P1800 that we have came with a Bosch 009 points distributor that came looking pretty sorry for itself. We decided to rebuild our distributor rather than replace it as it about a 500$ USD part. I stripped the distributor body and pulled out the points and condenser unit along with the base plate that is inside the casing. The engine mount for the distributor was jammed on the lower shaft and I had to use a steering wheel puller to carefully pull it off. The roll pin in the lower shaft could not be removed and was jammed so we decided to just clean it with it installed and not bother with removing it as everything was in good shape.Once everything was stripped and washed in the parts washer that was not going to be replaced the distributor body could be repainted with POR 15. I was then able to reinstall all of our new parts (condenser, points) along with the old cleaned parts back on the distributor.

Overdrive Servicing and Transmission Work

Looking at the Laycock Overdrive is a challenging task due to the fact there is not a lot of information about them and that it is a 50 year electronic hydraulic gearbox. The first step I took was checking for continuity in the wiring and solenoid. After confirming that all the electrical systems were working on the overdrive including the 4th gear only switch and reverse switch. Once it was established that the electrics were working properly I moved on to fiddling around with the various plugs and screws on the casing of the overdrive I was able to drain the oil and open the service door for the oil/hydraulic fluid filter. The filter looked fine so I cleaned the gasket, door and screws and reassembled the filter housing. The second service door, for the solenoid switch mechanism that engages the hydraulic pump which kicks the gearbox into overdrive with a planetary gear set, was removed. I hooked the overdrive up to a 12 volt battery and placed the transmission in 4th gear then completed the circuit. The result was the solenoid engaged then you could see the arm move to engage the pump. Good news the overdrive is working properly! All that is left is to refill the overdrive and transmission with fluid and it is ready for business.

The next job on the transmission is the shifter linkage and gaskets along with paint. It is a pretty simple tear down of the linkage and one all the bolts, shrouds, and bearings were removed a quick wash in the parts washer cleaned them all up. The next step is to reassemble to linkage with new gaskets and shifter boot. Compressing the spring and tightening it up was difficult but can be done with two people. The transmission is ready for paint.