Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

I'm using the JC Whitney woodgrain.

Yeah, seriously. Pulling the windshield and fixing it wouldn't have cost much more than what they spent on sealer to not fix the problem.

 

Thanks! My woodgrain is still pretty good to my amazement. It will whiten over time, but if I put on a nice coat of Pledge, it will look nice for a long time. I do have some rust bubbling up under the woodgrain on the left rear quarter pane, so I know it will have to come off eventually.

This stuff looks pretty close though, is this what you are using?

http://www.jcwhitney.com/wood-grain-customizing-kit/p2006573.jcwx?filterid=c2130d267y1972g581u0j1

 

Yeah, that's what I got. A warning about that stuff, I called technical support two times and got someone who could barely speak english. They said that they don't carry the smaller sizes, so I had to order 3 full rolls of the stuff, one for each side and one just for the tailgate area. I suppose it'll be good to have some spare pieces in case of a tear or fender bender.

The stuff is very dark and it is textured to look like real wood.


Brandon

 

Looks like some good progress there Brandon. I hope your nice shiny alternator doesn't say "Remanufactured in China" like the one I got as a replacement for our Trooper after only getting 18k miles out of the last one. Side note: the original Isuzu alternator was still working after 175k miles. I'm not a fan of parts from China obviously!


rating continues for the fine fotos in this thread. Thanks for sharing!

 

Thanks! Yeah, I was thinking at those sizes that it may take 3 rolls for these cars and left plenty left from roll #3 for future use.

I thought it looked a lot like the color on mine. I am not sure if GM used the same pattern of woodgrain on all of the wagons from that era and the difference in color was the "hue" of color that blended in through the translucent woodgrain.

Here is a closeup pic of mine and it appears darker since the car is golden brown...





and here is a pic of another '72 Kingswood Estate like mine that has the sun shining on it...




Here is a link that someone had posted on another thread about woodgrain. This one also has a dark appearance and it looks $!

http://www.woodgrain4wagons.com/colors.html

Here are a couple of factory photos of a '71 Grand Safari and a '71 Kingswood Estate. I have never been close enough to a 71-73 Pontiac wagon with woodgrain to see if the pattern of the grain is the same or not, but they look close.

 

The Clam Runs

I got quite a bit accomplished over the last couple days, though it shouldn't have taken as long as it did. Once again, heavy, long lasting rain storms and a stubborn car have slowed progress. I have had great difficulty finding the woodgrain moldings for this wagon. Actually, I shouldn't say I have had trouble finding them, but rather I have had trouble finding people who act with any kind of dignity. I seem to find quite a few wagons around the country, and I talk to people that say they have parts for sale, then they will continue to lie about "getting them next week," or even worse, they will just stop answering e-mails or calls. I finally found someone who said they had some for sale and actually sold them to me.
I started out one morning by gathering all my original moldings and laying them out accordingly beside the car. Then I got the new moldings and laid them beside the original moldings. Unfortunately these moldings were to a '74 Safari so the only interchangeable pieces turned out to be the front and rear doors and the one bottom piece on the rear of the front fender. I suppose we'll have to drive the car for a while with the missing pieces until I can find replacements. I am going to take them and have them powder coated because it is impossible to find a wrapping that matches the original woodgrain vinyl and I also don't want to paint them myself.

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Then I moved on to sorting through the spaghetti that was the wiring harness as well as installing any related hardware such as the starter, relays, wiper motor, etc. It took quite some time to get everything hooked up, organized and to replace any broken connectors. The shop manual does not do a super great job of making this an easy process.

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Next I moved on to wiring the new electronic ignition. It is generally accepted that HEI is more reliable and more efficient than the older, points style ignition. Since this will be April's primary car I wanted to make it as reliable as possible. Through a lot of research I determined what I considered to be the best way to power the HEI. Because the old distributor did not require a full 12 volts, it had a resistor wire built into the harness. The HEI does require a full 12 volts to operate correctly so I wired it directly to the battery using a relay activated by the old ignition wires. I mounted the relay back on the firewall, behind the distributor, beside a vacuum canister.

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This is how the ignition is wired. I talked to several people that used 14 gauge wire, yet others said that 14 was not thick enough. Yet others said that it was enough as long as the engine is not a high RPM race engine. If the 14 gauge proves problematic, I will probably change it to 10 or 12 gauge. If not, I will still probably change it in the future just for the peace of mind.

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I installed an inline fuse on the wire running to the battery. I ran the line following the existing wiring harness, making it almost unnoticeable unless someone knew to look for it.

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Though the old distributor did not use a full 12 volts, it did use 12 full volts during cranking. This was accomplished by having a separate wire that was used when the ignition was in the cranking position. I used both wires, spliced together, to activate the relay.

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The entire goal of this car has been to build a good quality driver and I have made a conscious effort to not get lost spend hours on small details. I did, however, decide that using heat shrink tubing on all my wiring was a good investment of time to protect the wires from the elements.

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Next I moved on to the horns. After looking at my father's car I feared that the horn mounts I had fabricated earlier would interfere with the front header panel. I sat it in place and was very relieved to find that they just fit with about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of room to spare.

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I used a relay for the 4 horns much like I did with the ignition system. The relay is activated by the original horn wire and is tucked inside the driver fender, away from the elements, mounted on the back of the core support using a preexisting ground wire bolt.

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It took a couple hours to get the horns completely wired with heat shrink and grounded correctly. This is the drivers side and there are two more on the passenger side.

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Next it was time to tackle the dreaded pipe plug. This is where the sending unit for the gauge would be if this car had one. Since I am installing gauges in the car this is where I need to put it. This plug was original and over the course of heating and cooling hundreds of times over the last 40 years it had become, essentially, welded into place. I attempted soaking it with PB Blaster to help break it loose.

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After realizing that a 3/8 drive extension wasn't going to work and after going all over town trying to find a pipe plug socket I finally had to end up making my own by taking a grade 8 bolt and grinding it down to fit. I then welded the two nuts on the end.

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I used a breaker bar with an extension so that I could be more precise with the pressure. In the end, it didn't do any good. I don't have a torch, or I would have heated the manifold to help loosen it.

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I decided I had to drill out the plug. After my drill did all the damage it could I had to go get dad's large drill to hold a bit big enough to extract the plug. Despite the damage to my manly credibility, I admit to being intimidated by this drill. It has enough torque to actually hurt you if it catches a snag.

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After about half the morning was gone I ended up with a hole, minus the pipe plug.

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This is all that remained of the once mighty pipe plug. Once I had drilled most of the center away I used a series of chisels to remove the remaining threads. Once fully removed I used magnets to retrieve the metal shards and shavings from inside the manifold.

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I then went to the parts store to buy a 1/2 pipe thread tap. I was stunned to find that they wanted $20 for just this one tap. I ended up going to several different places before calling a friend of the family that does various home repairs. Once he had returned home I went to his house and he let me borrow his tap. After I tapped the hole I cleaned and repainted this area of the engine. It had taken a bit of a beating from all of the mounts, hoses, wires and drilling.

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I mounted the gauges inside the car and ran the lines for the oil and temperature gauge through the firewall using the car's original grommet. Typically I would never use the cheap plastic line provide with the gauges for the oil pressure switch but these gauges are going to be temporary. There was a factory option for this car that offered gauges rather than warning lights. In '71 it was more rare than the warning lights so finding one is going to take some time. I just missed buying one and I found another but the man wants to try to rip me off to a laughable extent, so I'll wait until I come across another. Running these through the firewall was somewhat of a chore. In this picture, I have already removed a relay to give some extra room. When I went to reinstall the relay I dropped one of the screws down in the fender and spent what seemed like an eternity searching all down inside and under the car until I found it.

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April was home at this point and she wanted to be present when I fired the engine for the first time. I tied up a few loose ends, reinstalled the alternator, hoses, etc. April filled the radiator with the garden hose to test for leaks so we don't waste any of the $12 a gallon anti-freeze. Before we tried to start the car April noticed water seeping from around the thermostat housing. An attempt at tightening the bolts didn't help. I would have to deal with this later. I cranked the car and the engine turned over. That was a good sign. Then I went to crank it again and nothing happened. I checked all the fuses and connections and nothing indicated that there should be a problem. I sat in the seat and remembered that the one time we drove this car almost 10 months ago it didn't want to start. After searching around that day I found the neutral safety switch, the switch on the steering column that is supposed to only let the car start when it is in Park or Neutral, was acting up. Remembering this I reached down and played with the switch and got the car to crank again. I poured a small amount of gas in the front two barrels of the carb and she fired right up. I had handed April a towel just in case a backfire set the under hood insulation on fire I could have something handy to grab to put it out. I had previously advanced the distributor just a small amount to get a decent start for the engine. It sounded very healthy and in fact I think the turbo mufflers are going to be a bit too loud. I went to turn the engine off and nothing happened. The car didn't diesel, but rather just kept running as though the key was still turned on. I had to smother the engine by putting a towel over the carb. I tried the car a second time and it fired up immediately, though the key still would not kill the engine. April noticed gas pouring from under the rear of the car. Closer inspection revealed one of the rubber gas hoses from the tank had split. I remembered that it was dripping when we drove the car last, but the last few months have turned it into a steady leak. I'll have to address this issue as well before the engine runs again. I will need to address these two issues and bleed the brakes, then I can load the car up and take it to have the woodgrain installed. Because the woodgrain wraps around the front of the fender, I must wait until it is installed before I can put on the front pieces of the body. Then I will have it aligned.

I was playing with the rear window and tailgate a couple nights ago and found that the rear switch doesn't work at all. It did work some the day we bought the car. I used a jumper wire in the harness and got the tailgate and window to open and close so I knew the problem had to be in the switch and not the harness or motors. The switch also did not have tension to return the key to the neutral position when turned to the left or right.

The yellow plastic is held in the encasement by these four areas that have been bent inwards. I used a punch to flatten them, allowing me to remove the innards.

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These are the parts that came out.

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It seemed that the way the switch worked was that the plastic piece here in the foreground had tabs that would raise the prongs, breaking contact. When turned left or right, the indentions in the plastic would allow one or two specific tabs to make contact with a metal base and allow electricity to flow between the corresponding plugs on the back.

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The problem is that the tabs have lost all their tension. They are supposed to push against the metal tabs so that when the plastic spins they will close when an indention comes around.

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I have tried various different methods of bending the tabs so they will once again press against the contacts. Each time the tension only lasts a little while. Any time they are pushed back, that is where they stay. It appears that the oxidation that was present before I cleaned the tabs has left the metal very weak. I have reassembled the switch several times, but at some point at least one of the functions stops making contact. I have yet to come up with a solution short of drilling out the rivets and custom making an entire new ring of tabs but I have a few ideas I want to think about before getting too far into the fabrication of new parts.

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The solution to the tension on the turning key turned out to be simple, but it was not simple to figure out. Someone has apparently had this switch apart and when they reinstalled it they did so incorrectly. When I took the insides out of the switch the spring was loose inside and fell out. Because I had nothing to go by I spent quite a while determining if the spring had lost its tension or if had been installed incorrectly. I eventually came to the conclusion that once the spring is fully inserted into the this plastic piece, the bottom tab of the spring must be installed in the bottom slot to the right. Then the top tab of the spring must be tensioned and pulled backwards, approaching 360 degrees, and snapped into a grove in the upper slot. This allows an opposite force to be applied in either direction when the key is inserted into the tumblers, which are held in the middle of the plastic piece shown, and turned one direction or the other.

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if ya don't get that switch figured out and working right lemmie know.also make sure the contacts where you plug the harness are good and clean and use some dielecrtic grease on em.(these are common probs i have had with mine)


i think i told ya bout those fuel lines do all of em they arn't to bad once you remove the acess panel. Don't forget the one inside the frame on the drivers side rear near wheel too appx 4-6 inches i belive.

 

Woodgrain Applied

After a lot of cleaning and organization I'm almost completely finished with the engine compartment, except for two or three small things here and there. When I first started the engine I had an issue of it not turning off when the key was turned off. I quickly found out how to fix this problem but it took a while longer to determine why this issue happens. It turns out that the warning light for the alternator is supplied by 12 volts from the alternator as well as the ignition system. If the alternator fails then 12 volts flow through the bulb in the warning light, causing it to burn and warn there has been a failure. When the car was run by the coil and the key was cut off, this flow of electricity through the warning light was no where near enough to keep the coil powered, so the car would cut off. Now, the coil is powered by the battery, but is activated by a relay which is given power by the old ignition wire. It takes very little power to activate a relay and the voltage that flows through the warning light when the key is turned off is more than enough to backfeed to the relay, keeping it open, which causes the engine to remain running even when the key is shut off. After some research I fixed the problem by installed a 2v, 200amp diode in the wire coming off of the alternator that goes to the warning light.

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A couple weeks ago I was working on the The Clam and I had a small pain in my left arm for part of the day. This is somewhat typical because when you work on cars you get small cuts and tend to scoot around on concrete where sharp things lie around, so I didn't think much of it. Eventually, my left arm started to go numb from my shoulder to my elbow. I took notice and found that a bristle from a steel brush was sticking out of the back of my arm. I came in and had April pull it out. When she did it turned out to be about 1/2" in my muscle. Having had this experience in my mind, I finally finished the switch for the rear window and tailgate. While I was lying in the rear of the car attempting to hook the switch back up I reached to plug the wires back in and felt a pain in the back of my arm much as I had before. I assumed something in the carpet was sticking me so I searched and couldn't find anything. Again I began installing the switch and it began to stick me again. I searched and found nothing. It happened again so I began searching in my shirt, in the carpet of the car and in my arm. Nothing. This went on for about 10 minutes and I grew more and more frustrated each time. I finally came to the realization that my attempt to fix the switch had resulted in the casing of the switch making contact with its electrical prongs, causing the electricity to flow through my arm and out to a small chrome strip my arm was lying on.

I finally fixed the switch. It took several iterations to find a setup that worked correctly. This was one of the earlier attempts. The spring was too large in diameter as well as it allowed the outside of the encasement to become electrified.

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In my final iteration I used RTV to insulate the bottom of the switch.

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I also used some rubber, cut to perfectly fit inside the encasement which would insulate it from any bicep-electrifying shocks.

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I also got a smaller spring and used wire to create the right length which gave the right amount of tension on the spring. This final design worked perfectly. Unfortunately, as I was taking the pieces into town one day a small dowel with a spring on the end, which is part of another piece not pictured, was lost. This piece is impossible to find so I have accepted that it is gone forever. Fortunately the lost piece does not effect operation. It only gave some tension to the turning of the key, allowing the operator to feel 6 different positions. As the switch is now, you cannot feel a definitive click in each position, but the operation of the window or tailgate can be observed to know which position the key is in. This is not the same spring I previously pictured that gave the resistance to the key when turned. It is still in place and operational.

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After the car ran April had noticed a decent sized gas leak in the rear. It turned out to be these old gas lines coming from the gas tank. The gas tank in this car is housed inside the rear, driver side quarter panel. The rear of the wheel well is an access panel so it made it much easier to access the lines.

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The three hoses all connected right next to one another. I labeled both ends of each hose to make sure I did not mix them up, then made a chart to explain which color corresponded to which size and where to install the new hoses.

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Since the plan is to eventually paint the underside of the car I went ahead and cleaned and painted this panel while it was out. Here it is reinstalled.

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I had needed to bleed the brakes for several days but I was having trouble finding anyone to pump the pedal. Fortunately, Nick stopped by one day while he had a few hours to kill and offered to help.

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When we finished we took the car for a first test drive around the block. As we were backing from the driveway we heard some strange noises, but decided it must be the springs resettling from being jacked up for so long. As we turned a corner we heard glass shattering. I looked under the car and saw brake fluid all over the ground. We headed back, thinking the brakes had a catastrophic failure, and then I heard metal hit the ground and more glass. The metal turned out to be a wrench. What had happened was this: I drained the fluid from each wheel into a mason jar. We had such trouble with the final wheel, the front driver's side, I forgot to remove the wrench and mason jar, which was resting on the lower A-arm. When we turned the corner there was enough flex in the suspension to crush the jar. Fortunately, there was no problems with the breaks, though I did have to go clean up some glass in the road. Most of it had fallen into the car's suspension.

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I prepared to reinstall the rear bumper. I finally determined this piece was installed as shown in the picture. It guides the wire for the license plate wire, which I ran after I fixed and rewired.

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The rear bumper had quite a bit of surface rust, all of which was removed using steel wool, chrome polish and a lot of rubbing.

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After helping me install the rear bumper, I was finally able to show April the now fully functional rear window and tailgate. She made use of the seating area.

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Then at the end of the day she took her very first drive when she moved it from the end of the driveway.

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I had three parts left over and I could not determine what they were or where they went. After posting pictures of them on a Pontiac forum on the internet I found out that one was a brace for the starter. I have yet to determine with complete certainty what the others are, though some have guessed that they are spark plug holders.

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The car spent an entire week having the woodgrain applied. I went today to pick it up.

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Robert, who installed the front suspension components, works at the Chrysler dealership. I scheduled an appointment before I went to pick up The Clam so I was able to stop by on the way back from getting the woodgain applied and he aligned it.

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The alignment machine works by having these wings attached to the wheels, which detects light beams that come from arms mounted in front of the lift, as shown here in this picture.

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I can now install all of the remaining components, including the front end, emblems, door handles and remaining trim. The woodgrain molding is still being powder coated and won't be available for another couple weeks. The guy who applied the woodgrain was unsure exactly how the moldings would be shaped in the corners so he left some extra material for me to trim away once I hold them up as a template. Better to have too much material than too little.

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Brandon those arn't spark plug holders, if i remember correctly those are heat shields for the motor mounts.They bolt on and run above the motor mount and under the exaust manifold

 

starting to look SWEET too BTW! lol now that mine was custom painted by some nieghbor kids with spray paint i am jealous!

 

Wow Brandon, It's looking amazing! Aparently I haven't been paying attention lately because there has been a lot of progress made since I last checked in. The wood grain looks great.
You're on the home streatch now. Keep up the good work.

 

Looking great, Brandon!

 

Looking great!!!

Remember when you get done with that one, my '72 Kingswood Estate is waiting for the same treatments. LOL.