Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

I'm not sure about the vibration yet. I'll have to do some test drives and learn some more about it. I'm very ready to have The Clam ready. It's a huge pain to put Rose's stroller in and out of The Caprice.

 

Not much progress. I've been on the road most of this week and I've had a cold this week. The Clam has been at the upholstery shop. After he took the seat apart I took the seat frame and completely reworked the 6 way power seat system. I want to get it back to him as soon as possible but I felt pretty lame today so I worked on it with intermittent coming in to lay down for a bit. I'll post a few pictures later on.

April and I are hoping to get it done in time to go to Rod Run in Pigeon Forge.

 

Get to feeling better soon, Brandon!

David

 

Thanks Wix. I ended up finally getting a fever and I'm finally getting over it. I lost some of the nicest days I could have been working on the wagon.

 

Once I determined how the TV cable worked I was able to install it and triple check all of my line pressures again, but I still did not have overdrive and on top of that the transmission would freewheel in 3rd gear when coasting if you had the shifter in the "Overdrive" position, but would act normal if kept in the "3rd Gear" position. I called the transmission shop and had an appointment made but continued doing my own research on the internet. Given the amount of money that is at stake with a transmission I didn't want to take any chances with breaking it. I found many examples of people, from many different sources, retelling tales of 4th gear problems with rebuilt 700r4 transmissions. It was suggested with great concord across the internet that taking the car to speeds in excess of 80 mph would induce the first shift into 4th gear and from then on the car would operate as intended. Some recommended doing this with the car on jackstands, but that seemed like the beginnings of a large insurance claim, so I took The Clam out to the bypass and between 80 and 90 mph it shifted with a thud and since then the transmission has operated flawlessly. I still want to check the driveline angle because I believe I have a vibration. After this I was finally able to take the car to the upholstery shop.

If you remember, the first man who was supposed to have ordered the interior for The Clam ended up dying suddenly. As it turns out all he was going to do is farm the work out to the guy I got to do it this time, so it ended up better for me, especially considering that I found out the guy who died had been lying to me about various things with the work he was supposedly ordering material for. The car ended up staying at the upholstery shop longer than I had hoped due to the fact that the owner had to have outpatient surgery and then the material for the seat repair that was ordered ended up not matching so he called me in to pick out another color. I brought April so she could help pick out the closest color and then it was reordered.

I used the downtime to get a few things done that I hadn't had time for and I was fortunate to have more than my usual amount of runs which kept me on the road quite a bit. I had found previously that the voltmeter in the '57 was wired incorrectly causing it to have a constant draw on the battery. I rewired that and then fixed the overheating issue with The Blazer, which ended up being a bad radiator cap that made the leak very difficult to find and I also bought a new battery for it. It is now ready for winter, which I fear for some reason may be a bad one so I want to have the truck ready. I also fixed the new-to-me mower I bought from the neighbor, no thanks to a very unhelpful John Deere store which tried to tell me the job was very difficult and would cost almost as much as I paid for the entire mower but ended up being very simple and cost $12 when I did it myself.

The power seat did not work on The Clam so I asked Al, the upholstery guy, to give me a call when we had it out of the car. He gave it to me before he went to have his surgery. I found that because the car had leaked in the past the seat frame was quite rusty. I am still surprised that the seat frame was as rusty as it was, as well as the seat switch, but the floorpans were still as perfect as they were. I brought the assembly home and hooked it to a car battery to begin testing so I could find the problem.

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I spent a while testing the switch and figuring out the wiring. I was fortunate that I later found someone in Canada that had already done a complete restoration on a system identical to mine and had also documented and explained every step in great detail. It made it much easier to understand what I was getting into ahead of time rather than figure it out as I went. In the picture below the electric seat motor is on the right and the transmission is on the left. The switch sends power to the transmission and engages one or two of the gears depending on what part of the seat you want to move and then the motor turns, after the transmission in engaged, and actually turns the gears, moving one or more of the 6 seat motors. Below the motor is a relay that distributes the electricity as needed.

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I knew the switch had to be at least part of the problem because a few of the directions had lost their tension and there was no resistance against the controls in those directions.

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I took the switch apart and found the exact same problem I had found with the rear window/tailgate switch. There were copper contacts and corrosion around their base had caused them to loose their tension. Having already fought this battle I knew there was no way to fix this problem.

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The way that the switch works is that when you press a button it pushes the copper tab down, which first makes contact with the U-shaped prong. This first contact is what engages the transmission. When the tabs then go further to make contact with the bottom base it then engages the motor, which is good because you want the transmission gears engaged before they beginning spinning so they do not strip out.

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No new switches could be found, of course, and the cheapest used switches I could find on the internet, when I could find them, were between $50-$90 after shipping. I found this to be ridiculous and a ripoff so I went to Pull-A-Part and took my switch with me. I remember from my youth that these GM switches had a tendency to stop working so I took every switch I could find that had prongs on the rear that matched mind, which ended up being only three switches in the entire yard because the older stuff, which is now considered cars from the '80s, is becoming scare. I took them apart and found that the first switch that I swapped the needed part from didn't work. When I swapped in the part from the second switch it worked. As you can see in the picture my original switch is in the top left, under the pliers. It has mounting taps for the screws on the middle of the left and right sides. All of the newer switches, which mostly came from early to mid 80's Cadillacs, had the mounting taps on the upper and lower corner of the sides. Also, of the three switches I found, one had a metal encasement like my original switch and the other two were plastic. While I was at the yard I also got a dust cover from a '90s Buick Roadmaster for the transmission and also picked up one for a turbo 350 transmission that dad needed for his '57 Chevrolet. While gathering my switches I noticed, for a second time, a huge storm was moving my direction. I began to hurry as quickly as possible and right as I removed the last dust cover it began to storm. In my rush to leave I left two tools under the Buick Roadmaster. I went back right as they opened the next day and found that the tools were still there.

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I found another build sheet. The first one I found had been under the driver side middle seat. It was difficult, but I was able to salvage it. This second one was too far gone to even gain one piece of information. I was able to see just enough to determine it was definitely a build sheet. The oxidation of the frame had bonded the frame and paper together so that absolutely nothing was salvageable. I'm curious if the two buildsheets were the same or if this one had contained new and different information. I'll never know.

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Each side of the seat contained a base and a scissor lift assembly with three motors in between them.

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I read how the old grease inside the motors can cause them to seize or not function properly. It would be wise to go ahead and clean them now, so I disassembled each of the six motors, cleaned, greased and reassembled them, which was not difficult but it was time consuming.

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I then moved on to the transmission. In this picture the parts are not necessarily in the order in which they function but rather in the order I removed them from the casing. The part on the very right is what I called the plunger and it is what is activated to slide the shafts into place.

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All of the gears on the transmission turn all of the time. They spin freely on their respective shafts. When a particular shaft or shafts are desired the plungers cause the small plates shown here just to left of the springs to be pushed to the right, compressing the spring and engaging the teeth on the gear. This locks them together and causes the gear to turn the shaft. When the plunger is disengaged the spring pushes the plate with the teeth back away from the gear and the gear may once again spin freely on the shaft. The old, hardened grease has a tendency to cause these parts to bind and improper operation often results.

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The seat frame and components were in such sad shape I found it best to have them sand blasted. I took them to the powder coaters and had them to do the blasting and got them back a few days later. I then primered each piece and painted it in a cast gray color. Though the track and lift mechanisms are themselves not entirely complicated or difficult to understand you must pay very careful attention to how they are assembled. They must go back exactly as they came apart and for reasons that are too complicated and timely to explain without having the part physically in front of you they must also be put together in the correct sequence or it is necessary to remove all the parts and start again. I took many reference photos but still had to learn by trail and error when reassembling the first side. The second assembly went much quicker after having learned when and how to assemble each part. It is also important to ensure that the pushrod for each motor is set at the same distance as its corresponding motor on the other side, otherwise the seat assembly would be in a bind and would lock up.

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Here is the seat frame after it had been repainted and reassembled.

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The headliner fabric was able to be matched perfect and was completely replaced. There was not an exact match for the fabric for the seats. We had to chose between one that was slightly darker and slightly lighter. April and I both chose the one we thought was closest. The entire bottom and half of the back of the front seat was replaced. Though in this picture, before it was installed, the difference seems very drastic, in reality it is not as noticeable and I predict that the vast majority of people will never even notice or pay attention.

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Fortunately while The Clam wasn't in the building at the upholstery shop it was able to stay under this carport, which is where it has been for the last two weeks. I got The Clam back two days ago. I hadn't been feeling well for the last week or so and the day I got the car back I ended up having a temperature of 102. I desperately wanted to work on The Clam to try to get the rest of the interior installed and the air working so that April and I could drive it to the Rod Run car show this year but due to my sickness it looks like I won't be able to get it done in time. It's also very frustrating because this week has had the nicest, mildest temperatures we've had in several weeks.

Here's a link to the guy's forum where he goes into detail explaining the restoration of a GM 6 way power seat. A lot of what he explains can be carried over to models that may vary a slight bit. He did such a great job I didn't bother going into too much detail.

http://canadianponcho.activeboard.c...-60s-vintage-gm-6-way-power-seat-unit/?page=1


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That Blows

I really, really wanted to get The Clam finished so we could take it on our vacation to Pigeon Forge to the Rod Run, a car show that floods Pigeon Forge each year with literally thousands of cars lining the strip. Unfortunately my run down feeling for the past two weeks had turned into a fever which kept me from making any progress the entire week before we left. I was sick the first few days we were there but eventually got better and well enough to take a bike ride with dad through the mountains.

We got to see a kayaker get swept away in the rapids and float down river.

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And then some kind of animal, which may have been a caribou, tried to make us an endangered species by taking the right of way. They definitely weren't deer and they had collars around their neck with electronic tags.

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And Rose got to experience her first trip to The Smokies and her first massive car show. Unfortunately we had to pull over and stop when she had a "massive blowout" of her own. Seriously, it was terrible.

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And she got to smile for mom and dad for the first time.

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But, enough of why I haven't been working on the The Clam and onto what I have finally been able to get finished.


The high blow on the fan does not work on The Clam. The fan motor has two separate systems for speed. On this particular year car there is no off position for the fan. It blows continuously on low anytime the key is on as part of a ventilation system GM had designed. The first three settings of the fan blower speed run off of resistors and the high blow setting has its own relay. Using the manual I located the master relay and high blow relay but have not yet checked the relay to determine if it is the problem, which I suspect it is because I have checked all of the fuses.

The heat and air system on The Clam was a complete mess. These cars from the 70's have always intimidated me with their endless labyrinth of vacuum lines and interwoven wiring, most of which is so brittle that little more than a touch causes them to crumble away. When we bought The Clam the entire lower ducting system was in the back of the car and the switches on the dash didn't work. I have been dreading when the time came to deal with them, but it eventually came anyway.

I didn't bother documenting the process of removing the system because whoever had installed it, if you could even call it "installed," had everything so messed up it was pathetic.

This is the front and back of the heater core core case. You can see that the vents are covered in rust and had some kind of flaky material that wanted to go everywhere so I vacuumed the entire case and cleaned it all before reinstalling.

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The two round silver objects and one black on the right are diaphragms. When suction is applied to them via vacuum lines they open flaps which are connected to them via rods. The top diaphragm controls an upper flap on the front of the case and the lower diaphragm controls a flap on the bottom of the front of the case. The on on the right controls the defroster vent flap.

One of the many things wrong was that someone had hooked all of the vacuum lines into the wrong diaphragms. What tipped me off is when I began searching behind the encasement, before I removed it, I found the red line unattached and it didn't appear to have enough length to reach any of the locations it should fit.

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The shop manual was very useful for a change. The information was scattered over about 80 pages, with other models also thrown in the mix, but if you read through the entire chapter you would find certain key pages that if you connect the information would allow you to deduce what you needed to know. This vacuum diagram indicated the previous mechanic's stupid mistake. The line labeled "Tan" is in reality a "Brown" line.

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The way that this system works is that air enters from the cowl and goes through the firewall at the top right of this picture. The diaphragm that you can barely see in the top right will open on the "Max" setting, which is also the "Recirculate" setting, blocking off most outside air and allowing inside air back into the system. Under all other settings, the door closes and allows air from outside the car to enter the cabin and then goes through passages and comes out though this vertical, "D" shaped hole in the firewall.

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Then the air enters the encasement through the opening on the left, seen here. The door in this picture is closed, which directs the air through the heater core, which warms the air, and then it continues out of the front of the encasement through the upper or lower flap, depending on how you have positioned your selector.

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When the flap is moved to this position the heater core is blocked off and the air bypasses it, going straight through to the front of the encasement and out the upper or lower flap.

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Here is a picture without the heater core to show where the air goes after it has passed through, and been warmed by, the heater core.

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The hot/cold selector on the dash controls this main flap via a cable that connects to the top of the encasement. I found that this cable was not even connected.

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The hardware store didn't have anything that would work to keep the cable from sliding off its pin so I had to modify a pushnut to hold it in place.

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This is the defrosted vent flap, which can be seen on the left side of the first picture I have of the case. If desired, doors inside the encasement can be opened or closed in such a way as to direct the air to this flap on the top of the encasement and then to the defroster vents. When I removed the encasement I found that this bolt had somehow been wedged between the flap and the encasement, preventing proper function.

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Almost all of the hardware was missing and it took me half of the morning to determine what size and how many of each screw I would need to complete the task. This is almost $10 worth of stainless steel hardware.

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After taking the heater core to a local radiator shop and having it tested for leaks I reinstalled it in the case. I hooked the vacuum lines back to their proper location. Here you can see the upper and lower flaps on the front of the case. These flaps direct air into the main lower ducting.

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Out on the firewall you can see the three screws that hold the case in place. These three screws are on the top left, top right and bottom right of this picture.

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Another issues was that when we got the car the case was not properly seated against the defroster vents. The tab where my finger is pointing in this picture was completely inside the opening on the case, of course with no screw holding it in place.

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After finishing the case I moved on to installing the upper vent ducts I had removed.

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One day while test driving the car the radio began to play. It lasted for several minutes then quit. The AM/FM selector was loose and I thought that perhaps it may be the issue. I took the radio apart and manually put the radio in the FM position, but unfortunately it did not fix the problem.

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The back of the radio has a lot of connections going to it.

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When I took the radio out I found this tag which gave information about what speedometer and cluster were in the car. I found it pretty interesting.

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I reinstalled the radio and bottom ducting but found I had to remove them again to get access to the screws that connected the upper ducting to the lower ducting. Unfortunate and time consuming, but at least I know it's done right, unlike the last person who halfway hacked it all together.

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When I was testing the heater core flap I noticed it did not line up correctly when pushed to full cold or full hot. I found that this item I'm pointing to was an adjustment. I had turned it when removing everything because I thought it might be a disconnect for the cable. Turns out it was an adjustment for cable length and I had gotten the line out of adjustment. A little playing with it and I was able to get it set correctly once again.

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After a good cleaning I reinstalled the bottom ducting, which of course didn't go in any easier the second time I put it in. It's all a very tight fit. Another reason I had to remove it was that I didn't realize the bottom heat distribution duct, a smaller piece of black plastic not seen in this picture that would sit right on top of the transmission hump, cannot be installed after the main lower ducting in in place and must be installed first.

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Then I put the crossover ducting that goes under the steering column and connects the upper driver side vent to the main ducting. It also connects the driver's awesome crotch vent. April and I both love these vents, driver and passenger, on our 70's cars and we can't understand why they stopped putting them on cars.

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Then I reinstalled the ashtray support. Both top screws were missing and only the bottom, horizontal screw was holding it in place. This explains why the ashtray was loose and had a lot of play in it. The entire bottom part of the dash was also loose due to many missing screws.

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And finally I reinstalled the smaller things like the beloved crotch vents. Seriously, why did they ever decide to stop making these.

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I can't stress what a pathetic job someone did on this system. I can't tell if they were lazy or just stupid. I hope the older lady that originally had the car didn't pay someone for this work. I suspect, though I have no proof, it was probably the guy who had the car before me. From the way he talked and the little I saw of his work it seems to fit.

In the end the air finally blew out of all the right places when it was supposed to except for one. The only issue is that this car has two settings for the defroster vents. One is called Defog and the other is called DeIce. The defroster vents work for DeIce, but they do not work for Defog. Since ultimately there is very little difference between the two I do not feel it is worth completely tearing down the entire system and replacing parts until I fix it when these two features, for the way we would use them, are practically redundant.

The car also has a "Max" setting that is unique and I have not encountered on another car. Typically a car has a Max setting which can be selected and this recirculates the inside cabin air. This is why sometimes a car will have "Recirc" instead of Max, because they are the same. Typically Max is an independent feature and you can select it on and off at any time, but on this car Max is selected by moving the temp selector all the way to the farthest cold setting. At the end is an extra "click" and when that is selected the car goes to Max and the fan speed is overridden to be on the highest setting regardless of where you put the fan speed selector. I won't know if this feature is working properly until I get the compressor charged and blowing cold air. I sincerely hope it works because from what I have seen trying to break down and understand the wiring of this process would be something I would truly hope to not get myself involved in.

 

Brandon: Fantastic job on getting that heater system to work. Also, as always, great job on the pictures. G.M. did the 'Max A/C' that way on a lot of cars back then, and the recirculation only worked on the coldest setting. I never did like that system much, either, as it means that if you are going through an area of pollution or smoke from a fire you cannot close the outside vent without going to full cold. On most cars from that era, choosing Max does over ride the fan switch and full fan kicks in. There is a reason for the 2 positions for the window vents, too. De-ice does NOT engage the a/c compressor, to allow for more heat faster to melt ice. De-fog DOES engage the a/c compressor to allow for the dehumidification of the air to clear the windows faster. You may find the de-fog position works once the air conditioning is functioning again. I believe it is all wired up through the low pressure switch so if the compressor does not kick in, that part of the system doesn't work. Keep up the great work. It is nearing completion now!

 

I'm with you, Mike, I don't care for the "Max" setup for the very same reason. Another thing I found out while reading the shop manual 50 times is that various other body styles (F-bodies and things) had the typical Bi-level setting. On the big body cars (B-bodies) the Vent is the Bi-level, so there is no Vent setting that will blow the air just out of the top vents (not defroster, but just the top dash vents). This to me isn't as good because when you divide the air between the top and bottom it always has less pressure and won't blow as hard, which I don't find preferable.

I installed my high blow switch on dad's Catalina and found the relay was the problem. I ordered a new one from Napa but, again, the part is wrong despite showing correct in their system. The relay they show has 4 terminals but the plug on the harness only has 3 relay terminals so it won't even plug up. I just got online and checked various other stores' inventory and found that places like Auto Zone have the correct part.

So, for anyone that might be affected (effected? I can never keep that straight) the high blow relay part# AR367 won't work in your cars, unless you want to also purchase their replacement harness connector and wire it in. I'm just going to order the correct part from the horrid Auto Zone.

 

...you take the best pics B

(i dont even know where my camera is) LOL

 

Thanks Rev. One day I'll be able to get a camera that I can actually focus on what I want rather than that garbage auto focus and I can manually adjust the shutter speed.

I got the horn working yesterday. It turned out to be some gunk on one of the terminals of the horn/buzzer relay. I got the first round of attempting to seal the rear tailgate. There is still some seepage so I have some more work to do. Water is coming in on both passenger doors. though it isn't much. I'm going to attempt to adjust the striker in and see if that will tighten up the door seal. The front door is coming in right at the top of the A-pillar.

 

Remarkable restoration and amazing photos and explanation documenting your progress. Super helpful to those facing similar challenges. Congratulations on all your good work!

 

I was just about to ask if anyone had heard from Brandon! Great write up on the HVAC system(the land of many :confused:,lol)!

 

Hey Thanks Mike. Slow goings on progress here lately. Though it isn't finished April and I managed to take The Clam to the cruise in this weekend, only the 2nd time I've been able to go this year.

 

That's good Brandon. I bet baby Rose's first word's going to be "wagon". lol