Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Oh, OK, I see. Well, I can't say that some how I'm not mistaken, but when I installed the converter it took about 60 seconds because it wouldn't fully seat. I continued to rotate it until it finally fell into place. I believe it was as far back as it could go. I certainly hope so. I once swapped the transmission in my Blazer with another truck and that is when I learned the VERY important lesson of "put the converter on the transmission, not the engine" when installing it. Haha.

Brandon

 

after all that work i didn't want you to break the pump! You have the same engine in there i have in my buick man you are gonna LOVE it! I used to eat hemi dodge trucks on the one 4 lane around here with my poncho with that engine in it i love mine!

 

I am looking forward to seeing what the engine is going to feel like. I don't expect it to be super fast or anything, but with as much torque as it has I suspect it will be a bit punchier than April's old Toyota Yaris, hehe. There's a local dragstrip in Nashville, an 1/8th mile track. After the car has about 1000 miles on it I'm going to take it down and do a couple passes just out of sheer curiosity.

I hauled The Clam to the guy's house that is going to redo the front suspension. On the way I swung by the parts house and picked up everything I had ordered. Their inventory was off so they were short one ball joint. I hope to have The Clam back within two weeks and then I can hook everything up and it will be ready to try to start. After the front end is finished I can hopefully drop it off at the muffler shop and have the exhaust put on. I plan to go with duel exhaust and I may have them install an X pipe. I've been doing some research and it seems that an X pipe can increase gas mileage. I think after the car is running I'm going to slowly begin working on efficiency and see if I can ever get it to 20 mpg or beyond. After it is mechanically sound I can take it to have the woodgrain installed and then the headliner installed. After the headliner I can reinstall the interior panels. Hopefully before too long I can come across a good set of used 5x5 pontiac rallies and a speedometer with the gauges.

Brandon

 

HAAHAHA... I love it! I am so OCD when I let myself be that once spent 8 months on just detailing an engine bay on a 71 Dodge truck that I was building once!

 

Sounds great, Brandon. You are right, the X-crossover will increase fuel efficiency as well as full throttle performance. Compared to a single, you should see about 5 or 6 mpg better, and probably 25 or 30 horsepower at a minimum. The trick is not to go too big with the pipes. Probably 2 1/2 or 2 3/4. Talk to the muffler shop about scavenging. Too big is as bad as too small. Eventually, a good over-drive transmission will make a big improvement in the gas consumption, too.

 

20 MPG oh boy are you in for a suprise!

let me know as i haven't had my Q-jet rebuilt yet but i know damn well i am no where NEAR 20.

what rear does it have? 3.23? my olds and poncho had 3.23's and were better then this 2.90 something i have in there now. I also don't do much on the hi-way either so that accounts for hoggin the fuel too

Hey brandon do you have the rocker panel mouldings that also have the louveres in em like the tailgate? I have seen these 1 time and they are cool i should of kept the ones i had on that car as i had never seen em before the louveres are on the front bottom of front fender area

 

Yeah, an overdrive transmission will definitely be in the future plans. Most likely a 700R. They have a lower first gear, which helps around town, along with the obvious overdrive part.

I am figuring the mileage to be around 8-10 mpg at first, so I'll be starting there. I upgraded to electronic ignition and with that I'm looking forward to researching out timing curves and really trying to reach my goal. I'm not sure if it will happen, but with 3:08 gears I think 20mpg highway could be theoretically possible.

I've never seen the rocker panel moldings like you mentioned. I can't really picture what they would look like. Mine are just standard smooth aluminum.

Brandon

 

You'll need an adapter to run the 700-R4 with the 455. They only made them with the Chevy bellhousing pattern. The BOP's used the 2004R.

 

Non Wagon Post

Since I'm essentially transposing this entire build from my online build blog, I'm just going to go ahead and add this non-wagon related post that I threw in the middle while I was waiting on The Clam to come back from having some work done. I suppose if anyone doesn't want to read about non-wagon related whatnots they can just skip this post:

While The Clam has been away getting it's ball joints and bushings replaced I had the task of finishing my new computer. I hate getting new computers, but my old one was 8 years old and other than being, at times, unusably slow, it also began to die periodically and then it wouldn't restart. It ended up dying 3 days before I finished the new one so now I'm having to order a special cable that will allow me to take the hard drives out of my old computer and hook them to my new computer and get the files transferred.

The encasement I had to build ended up being a bit more complicated than I had hoped. It wouldn't have been as bad but I began having some serious problems with my welder. I had to redo numerous welds and despite the fact I had it turned to its hottest setting (fairly hot for such a large welder) it still wouldn't fully penetrate at times. Here are some of the photos from the build:

I purchased a stainless steel shaft locally and then ordered a bushing online to my exact specifications. My plan is to have the button on the front of the radio turn the computer on and off with a spring loaded shaft.

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Most of the welds on this build were pretty lousy. I had a very hard time getting the machine to cooperate.

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My neighbor Craig used his lathe to turn the end of the shaft to fit the original buttons. There is a larger button behind the smaller button on the front.

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I had to build an encasement for the on/off switch that would allow access to the pins on the back.

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I planned to mount the original faceplate to my encasement and have the up/down and back/forward movements adjustable. I achieved this by welding metal together to make slotted plates that the faceplate mount would bolt onto.

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After a lot of measuring and cutting I also created the mounts for the hard drives, motherboard and optical drive up top. This picture was taken was after using a round steel brush bit with the drill to clean the metal after all the welding was finished.

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Here you can also see the flat piece of metal I added that will block the large hole in the upper middle of the old faceplate. The original radio had a large light that filled this hole but I will not be using the hole so this flat metal will block the empty space. After getting the metal covered in primer I used rubber to insulate the LED lights as well as to help mount them in their nut-housings. This will allow me to slide them in or out as needed for the correct fitment.

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I also cut some rubber to insulate the inside of the nuts I used as mounting holes to protect against accidental metal to metal contact.

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Here you can see how I mounted the original dial that sits in front of the faceplate. I found a bolt with the right diameter that allows me to screw the original dial onto the end. After screwing the dial onto the bolt I can then screw or unscrew the bolt itself to move the dial in or out until I achieve the spacing I need. I have always loved orange lights so I studied and with the help of some savvy friends learned how to wire up LEDs. LEDs are not like light bulbs in that you cannot simply wire up however many you want. There is a formula to indicate how to wire them and how many to use in a series and what kind of resistors to use depending on how many LEDs you want to use, what their voltage drop and tolerances are and if you want to use them in series or wire them in parallel. I decided to wire mine in series because I was only using two and because it only requires one resistor for my particular application. In this picture I have the resistor covered in shrink wrap. I then wired the exposed wires into an internal USB cable that plugs into the motherboard. I used a multi-meter to determine which wires on the cable were the 5v source and the ground, then I cut the wire, taped off the ones I didn't use, and wired the rest into the LEDs.

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Here is a mockup sitting on the floor.

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Because I don't know very much at all about how to build a computer Nick helped me order all the parts I would need and then when it was time to put them into the encasement he came over and helped me wire everything together, and it was a good thing he did because I would have been lost.

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In the end you cannot tell the old radio is actually a computer in disguise.

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There are still a few things to work out. I need to take the fans back out and change their direction. I need to resolve some issues with getting the computer to work with my computer speakers as well as play movies on my television while using the surround sound. The biggest disappointment was the orange LEDs. It turns out they weren't nearly bright enough. Unfortunately this isn't as easy as simply swapping in brighter ones, but it's close. I'll have to remove the faceplate and find new LEDs that are more powerful and determine what kind of resistors to use to make the change. All in all, I think it was a success with just a few bugs to work out. The button on the front works great and pretty soon the entire project will be completely finished.

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Also, on Saturday, Jacob went with me to take the '57 up to Kentucky to a guy that is going to try to stop the perpetual oil leak. When we got back I showed him how to do his first donut, which is definitely a picture worthy event.

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The Pipes The Pipes

Having dropped The Clam off a week or so ago at Robert's house, despite inclemate weather attempting to delay progress to infinity, last Saturday her vacation was over and it was time to come home. Jacob and I went to get her. Fortunately Robert had a car battery and a large battery charger that allowed us, albeit slowly and with frequent rests, to winch The Clam into the trailer with Jacob at the helm, because he was the only one that could exit the car once it was inside the trailer.

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Until we got The Clam right up to the rear door Jacob manned the camera. I think he's getting pretty good with the automotive camera angles.

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Saturday before last, when Jacob went with me to take The '57 to Kentucky, we were sad to see that Garrett's Grocery had closed. Though this is not the same grocery, this is the same name of the grocery store that my grandfather, Jacob's great grandfather, had owned and operated in the 50's and 60's. We planned to eat lunch here but later found out that the old lady had died and the store was closed. Not to be beaten we continued on and found another locally owned meat-and-three diner where "Granny" actually did the cooking. Last Saturday we were glad to see that the country store near where we picked up The Clam was still open, so that's where we had lunch.

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Since I wasn't able to drop The Clam off at the exhaust shop on Saturday because it needed to be pushed out of the trailer and onto the rack by an army of men, it stayed in the trailer until today when I took it down to the muffler shop to have the exhaust pipes and mufflers installed.

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I have crawled under the car, but this is the first time I have been able to stand under it and really get a good look. I was amazed at how solid and rust free the underside of this car really is. I had the shop install an X-pipe. They also made everything in front of the mufflers able to be unbolted to facilitate the installation of an overdrive transmission in the future. It is my goal to try, just as personal goal, to see how many miles per gallon I can get from a 455 cubic inch, 4 barrel Pontiac engine.

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I know the owner of the shop and they always do great work. Because of the layout in the rear of the car, with the tailgate storage and the spare tire well, there is little room to run a dual exhaust setup. Some people run both pipes out the driver's side, while some run them out both sides with one under the spare tire well, which makes one lower than the other and I personally think looks bad. Another option I don't care for is running them out the back. He came up with a great idea that looks awesome. Because I plan to eventually tow things with the car, as well as the aesthetic reason, I didn't want pipes out the rear, so he ran them out the back on both sides, but cut them off and turned them down before the pipe would go under the tire well. This way the pipes are not visibly sticking out of the sides of the car and they are tucked up nicely underneath. These cars came with the pipes run under the axle housings, which is somewhat of a strange set up. The guy welding the pipes said it's the first one he has ever seen this way.

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For a brief while, The Clam shared the stalls with a fellow Poncho, a GTO. I think I caught her looking jealously at The Goat's Rally II wheels. I told her that though they looked the same, she has the big 5x5 bolt pattern and The Goats had the smaller 4.75 bolt pattern.

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When the guys at the shop pushed the car, with me in it, back into the trailer there was absolutely no room for me to get out. I had to borrow a pair of vise-grips and manually roll up the back window to crawl out. When I got home I stopped by Jacob's house to see if he would ride his 4-wheeler over to my place and help me pull The Clam up next to my garage.

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It was a tight fit.

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Jacob's 4-wheeler doesn't have a hitch on the rear so that meant I had to chain it high up on the rear of the rack. The meant that when we started to pull The Clam up the driveway the forces exerted tried to pull the back of the 4-wheeler down, lifting up on the front. I was on the 4-wheeler and Jacob was steering the car. Our first two attempts up the driveway didn't work because the 4-wheeler would spin its tires and then try to flip over backwards.

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On the third attempt we rolled back across the street and got a running start. I had to lean forward on the front of the 4-wheeler to try to keep the front end down. The tires were off the ground and I couldn't steer, but I didn't let up off the throttle until The Clam was fully up next to the garage. Unfortunately, that meant I had to disregard a few bricks and bushes.

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All the outsourced mechanical work is finally finished so now I can begin reassembling The Clam.

 

That old radio looks awesome as your new computer! That is really neat.
Thanks for sharing all of the latest pictures of the Clam's restoration. That young man looks happy in every one of the photos he is in. This will be something he never forgets. Well done. Keep up the good work.

 

That car is going to be gorgeous as I have often stated here, vette.
AND...you sure are a handy guy...I am WAY impressed with the work you did installing the puter into the old Zenith! I used to lay in front of a similar old Zenith but ours was a little fancier. Might have been a later model. Ours had a rounded top and piller like things that stuck out in front on each side. The eye and the rest of the lights in the face were green. I see that your eye isn't working...will it when it's complete?
Nice work, by the way. Real nice.

 

Can you put up a better pic of that rear exaust? Like just lay on a creeper or some cardboard and get a pic?

 

Easy to make a make shift engine stand with 4x4's or even 2x4s.. or you could use a moving dolly. I don't use typical engine stands anymore.. prefer making my own. Looking forward to the progress.. that is one nice wagon!