Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Vetteman61,it,s all your fault! I am so inspired by your efforts the mad cap road trip continues! Maybe next year i'll come to the rod run in Gatlinburg again and get to see the beautiful wagon(and family)in person ! what an amazing job you've done! (and thank you for bringin the whole wagon experience to another generation! KUDOS!!!!!! PONCHO WAGONS FOREVER!!!!!!!!

 

One of the men I sometimes work with has a 1999 Suburban, and when the original G.M. compressor went, he got a high capacity one that has worked very well indeed for the last 7 years. At that time he had the system changed over to the 134a, and he can make ice cubes! I'm thinking that the area to be cooled is even greater in the Burb than the Poncho, so finding those parts may be an easier way to go for upgrading/modernizing your system. Just a possible thought for what may make the system work better and at a more reasonable cost. For the compressor mounting brackets, see if the brackets from a Pontiac 400 cid from the late 70s will fit. All the Pontiac blocks are supposed to be the same, so it may work for the more modern compressor without a lot of fabrication. Good luck!

 

Hey guys. Thanks for the responses. As seems to happen lately I have been ludicrously busy. I have all the components now except for the AC lines. I have them at a shop here in town but he won't be able to get them finished until Tuesday. Then I've got to get everything back together Tuesday night so that I can take the car into work on Wednesday and get the AC system charged with 134 so we can then headout to Shades of the Past on Thursday night after work.

I really hope there's no major setbacks. I'm really hoping to be able to take the wagon this year.

 

Good luck Brandon! Take plenty of pictures!

http://www.shadesofthepast.com/

 

Hey guys. I've been so busy my head is spinning. I finally made time to write an update. Unfortunately I've been in such a rush I haven't had time to take many pictures or keep up consistently with the updates so they aren't as detailed as I'm accustomed but at least it covers the gist of what I've done.It's been a while since I wrote about my progress, but I have been very busy. I was in a mad rush to try to get the car finished in time to make it to the huge car show in Pigeon Forge and between the car and other projects and things which broke and needed fixing I was staying up until around 11 o'clock every night working after I got home from work.


When I went to mount the receiver I found that the top, passenger side condenser mount was interfering.

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I ended up having to remove the condenser, cut the mount and reshape it to give the receiver room to mount where it is supposed to. It was a time consuming process to get the measurements correct.

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In the end there was just enough clearance for everything to fit just right.

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When I went to install the brackets for the last time the rubber insulators finally fell apart. I searched and searched everywhere to find something rubber that could replace the original mounts. After a long search I found the small, rubber discs that mount toilets to the floor as a suitable replacement. I had to buy three packages of them and five of them on top of one another to get the proper distance and firmness.



Then it was time to make all the hoses fit. The new system was a hodgepodge of old, standard size fittings and newer, -AN style fittings. I numbered each hose and labeled each end of that hose and drew up a detailed description, with pictures, so that the hose shop would have no issues when making the new hoses. It took over an hour just to write the diagram and in the end he ended up looking at it and, without even reading it, telling me it would be better if I just made sure I was there when he made them. That caused me to have to take a few days of my lunch break at the hose-making place. There were, of course, complications with parts not being ordered and problems of the sort which made my deadline for making Pigeon Forge very difficult. I ended up working until late at night and going in to the hose-making store early before work.

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Along with the new POA valve which I had rebuilt and recalibrated for 134a, I mounted the new compressor so I could get all the measurements and mock up I needed. Because I eliminated the muffler from the original compressor I had to get adapters for the rear of this compressor and make sure the new hoses matched those fittings. After I had all the hoses made I realized that the original muffler had the high-side service port for the air conditioner system and when I removed it I had also removed the service port. I had no where to attach the high-side hose to charge the air system. After almost an entire night of research I found where I needed to install the service port and happened to remember that the hose-shop had one laying on the shelf. It worked out perfectly and happened to be exactly what I needed.

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Despite my best efforts, we weren't able to make it to Pigeon Forge in The Clam. We were supposed to leave on Thursday after I got off work and I had scheduled the car to have the air system charged at work. While attempting to charge the system we discovered that the air conditioner was causing The Clam to overheat. I couldn't risk overheating and breaking down on the side of the road in 100 degree heat with humidity with April and a baby who isn't used to those type temperatures. After spending a lot of time experimenting with varying amounts of refrigerant I finally threw in the towel and we drove my parents' very non-exciting Chevrolet HHR to Pigeon Forge. Good for gas mileage, bad for memorable vacations, however I must say that having a working air conditioner was worth it because that weekend was very, very hot and humid. Even though we didn't have The Clam, dad did haul the cycles up in his trailer and we managed to get in a good ride.

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Along in all of this fun my mower quit cutting so I had to learn how to diagnose a faulty PTO

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Since I literally left for Pigeon Forge immediately after finding out there was an overheating issue I had to wait until after the vacation to find the problem. The first thing I found was that the fan clutch was not working at full capacity so I replaced it with a new one. This helped, but at idle the car would still overheat and the air temperatures out of the vents was very warm. I have determined it will be necessary to install an electric, pusher style fan in front of the condenser to cool it at idle. This is only necessary on the hottest, most humid days when idling, but I still can't have the car overheating and leaving April and Rose stranded. My plan is to research what type of electric fans work best and have the best quality and go from there. I'll have to wire it up to come on whenever the compressor is on, which will work fine for this application because the compressor doesn't cycle.


April test drove the wagon on a trip to a nearby town to test out the air conditioning and the notorious blower motor quit working again. When she called and told me I knew what to expect, another melted in-line fuse. Sure enough, that's what the problem was. I knew it wasn't the fan motor this time because I had just replaced it so I removed the wire that powers the blower motor entirely from the harness. It's a 10 gauge wire that runs directly from the alternator back to a couple relays. Each blower setting has a separate resistor coil it runs through except for the highest setting, which has it's own relay and proves full voltage to the motor.


In the wiring I found this abomination. Among several other splices there was this one that someone had simply twisted back together and put black tape over.

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I used a voltmeter to check the voltage and ohms of the entire blower motor system. I'm fairly certain that this section of the harness was the main problem. If not, it certainly needed addressing. I made a new section of harness with new 10 gauge wire. I had to special order the in-line fuse with 10 gauge wire. The biggest I could buy locally had 12 gauge wire. Because this wire will carry the full 12 volts of the battery I soldered all the connections together rather than crimping them and used heat shrink tubing to protect everything.

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I removed the original fitting from the harness clip and soldered it onto the end of the new wire so it fits back into the clip as it originally did. If this fixes the problem I can move on to the next projects. The carburetor has a pretty bad hesitation and stumble which I need to get addressed so that I can show the transmission shop how the torque converter is shudder when it shifts out of overdrive. Then I need to find why I still have a driveline vibration. The engine also seems to have a vibration that I want to have an expect look at. Right now I suspect either a bad harmonic balancer or a bad engine/transmission mount. Then I can move on to the small exhaust leak on the driver's side exhaust manifold. I changed the gasket but it didn't fix the problem so I'm probably going to have to remove the manifold and have it milled flat. Then, after all that, I can return to trying to get the rear window to seal properly. For now we have two buckets in the rear that catch all of the water that makes its way in, which at this point has been limited to a small amount.

 

I see your problem, it's green and has a deer on it...

 

The poncho harmonic balancers I do believe had a habit of "spinning" on the rubber.


Maybe your hesitation has something to do with your bad vibe?


Get the fel-pro header type thick soft exaust gaskets and I bet that will solve the prob. the flat factory style are a bit thin

 

Haha. My old mower was on its last leg so I bought this one from my neighbor across the street. Rebuilt the steering and it lasted for a season. Now this. I have never owned a mower with a functional brake. I can't imagine what that's like.

Thanks for the tip about the gaskets, I'll look into that.

 

I managed to get the old harmonic balancer off today. I have been trying to get this done for the last 7 days and unfortunately have been getting in around 9 or 10 or so, unless it's just me jumping on real quick to check email before I have to take a shower and leave again.

I'm hoping with the new balancer on (which I have painted and drying now) the engine vibration will go away. I've also continued to have blower motor problems, but more on that later.

 

Found this today and it made me think of you...

 

Hey Orthmann, that's an awesome ad. That sunroof option was definitely rare.

It's been a long time since I've been able to do much work and even longer since I've written about it.
It has been exceptionally busy for the last long while, and with winter now upon us and the days being very short and very cold, combined with the fact I now have to work every other Saturday, I practically have no time to devote to fixing things on The Clam.


The blower motor fan continued to melt the in-line fuse. After doing some research and talking to a couple guys that used to work in the dealerships when these were new I found that this was a known problem for some of these cars, but not all of them. There were even some service bulletins from General Motors about the issue. Several solutions were offered. So far, my first alternative seems to be working, but I'm not yet convinced it will be a permanent fix. I installed a blade style fuse. According to some opinions, the spring loaded, glass style fuse holders did not give enough contact area to deliver the full 12 volts of the battery which caused resistance, which caused heat, which caused melting. A blade style fuse is supposed to give an adequate connection. So far, there don't seem to be any problems. If this does not work the other option recommended and what some of the guys said they used to do back in the day is to put a breaker in the system. If my first solution fails that is the direction I will go next.


Here is the style fuse I soldered into place. This style is called an ATC fuse, or blade fuse. The glass style fuse that was originally in place is called an AGC fuse.

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Before next summer, I am going to need to install an electric fan in front of the condenser. The car never overheats except for very hot and humid days while it is sitting still in traffic with the air conditioner on. This could very likely be caused by having a 455 bored .60 over. Wiring the fan to the fan clutch so that it turns on whenever the clutch is engaged should remedy the problem.


It took a very long time to get The Caprice into the body shop. It also took a very long time and a lot of effort to find a passenger side taillight and trim. I finally found one online in a junkyard, but I couldn't tell you where. I looked at so many and called so many junkyards to find one that was in useable condition my head was swimming with taillights.


Also, since the car was going to be painted anyway, I sanded down a little toy Caprice a friend had given me and had the painter shoot it to match.

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The engine also had a vibration at a certain RPM. I found that it was the harmonic balancer. General Motors still makes the part number so dad helped me replace it. These balancers are a cone shaped fit, which means they do not require a puller to remove or install and I was able to leave the radiator in the car to remove this. Once the pulleys and belts were out of the way it came off with a few gentle taps from the hammer. It actually took longer to get the belts and accessories loosened than to replace the part.

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Several years ago I met a man named Jerry on an internet forum about stovebolt GM 6 cylinder engines. He has a vast amount of knowledge about these old machines and also used to teach a shop class at a high school in Nashville. He now lives about 5 miles from Alabama. Several years ago I replaced the original transmission in my '57 with an original 1957 overdrive. Shortly after I installed it, the overdrive transmission began slipping out of 3rd gear. In this particular type of transmission, 3rd gear and the 3rd gear synchros are made together and are not reproduced which means I would need to find an original in good shape.


Borg Warner made overdrive transmissions for all major automobile companies in the 50s and 60s. Essentially they would take a stock transmission and mount a planetary overdrive system in place of the tailshaft. The non-overdrive transmission for the '57 was a Muncie SM-318. They used this same transmission from about 1955 to 1968, give or take a few years. The only difference between the overdrive and non-overdrive transmission is one hold drilled in the case for the reverse lockout for the overdrive. Jerry happened to have a non-overdrive SM-318 attached to an old 283 he had that had sitting for a long time so he sold it to me and we took the internals out of it and used them to fix mine, along with the small parts kit I was able to purchase on the internet. His transmission also had the beefier input shaft, so we used that since it was already apart and in good condition.


Dad and I took a Saturday and drove down to Jerry's house where we spent all day working on the transmission in Jerry's very crowded shop.

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We recently went to eat at a restaurant about an hour away for Mom and Jacob's birthdays. There were 9 people total and we were going to have to take two vehicles, except that The Clam holds exactly 9 people, so we all loaded up and went together. People on the interstate were actually taking pictures of us.

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Thanks for the interesting updates and the photos. Keep at it.
Nine people climbing out of a station wagon would be like watching a circus clown car.

 

Haha, it was kinda funny how many people got out when I let everyone out in front of the place.

 

Guy almost totalled The Clam

An update and a story from today:

Today we were leaving Church and going to a restaurant. A light turned yellow in front of us and we stopped. About half a second before I came to a complete stop I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a Dodge Dakota coming at us full speed which was on a road with a speed limit of 55 mph. No one else was around in any lane so I jerked the wheel left and floored it right as he slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel right. He just missed us and slid into a ditch taking out several street signs. He was, of course, in shock and very agitated, but actually blamed me for trying to turn left from the right lane. I stayed just in case he decided to try to blame me and when the officer showed up he sent me on my way. Later that night when we left the Christmas play we looked at the black marks and saw that they went through where out car would have been. Thankfully the Lord was watching out for us.

Since we live about an hour away from Church our pastor's family invites us to stay at their house when we have a function later in the day to stay for. I borrowed April's Ipad and got a pretty neat picture. Sorry, the screen couldn't be moved, but at least I finally got it out of focus.



There are a few immediate plans for The Clam. I had the old Quadrajet rebuilt by a professional and it still has issues. I plan on replacing it with a new carburetor. The rear end still has a bearing noise and I also plan to get a lower ring gear to match the new overdrive. Also, the car STILL has a driveline vibration that I just, want, gone. I'm sick of it and I'm looking for shops in the Nashville area that will just take the car and bring it home when the driveline is correct. Also, as mentioned on another thread on this forum, I found a company in California (www.rubbertherightway.com) and contacted the owner. He is in San Diego and another member on the forum here graciously offered to take his Clamshell to this company so that they can see it and attempt to come up with a solution for the weatherstripping on the rear window and tailgate.

 

rear end bearing noise and your vibe are probably related?