Muddy Grease

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

It's an exciting time in the garage!  I got started on some cleaning that needs to be done before I can start the disassembly of the driveline.  This is necessary because of the design on the enclosed driveshaft.  Unlike modern trucks, the driveshaft of the older trucks is enclosed in what's called a torque tube.  All that means is that the driveshaft is inside of a protective pipe.  In order to split the universal joint, you first have to unbolt a protective cover (called the universal ball) and slide it and the retaining collar backwards on the torque tube.  Before you can slide them backwards, you need to make sure that the tube is relatively free of debris, as there isn't much clearance on the tube.  Just to give you an idea of what my situation looked like, I took a few pics before starting the cleaning...

(rear of the universal ball / torque tube)

(universal ball with collar)

(side view of transmission rear and universal joint ball collar)

(transmission crossmember / universal ball and collar)

The pics pretty much speak for themselves!  Or do they?  Yes, that's a ton of oily crud.  However, it's not just oil.  There is more dirt/clay than oil.  It's actually really interesting, in that the oily mud is still "wet" under the exterior dried film.  Once I broke through the dried part, the rest came off with much less effort required.  The process here is all physical labor with a small putty knife.  The end result was a pile of oily mud on my drop cloth.  After about 2 hours of sliding around under the Gray Ghost, the pile of debris looked like this:

It's hard to get an appreciation for just how much crud is in the pile.  When I picked up the drop cloth, I'd estimate it weighed about 1.5 - 2.0 lbs!

After just scraping, everything looked like this:

Visible in the last pic is the transmission mount.  After cleaning, I decided to take it off, as it needs to be removed before I can slide the collar back.  Once I got it off of the truck, I realized that it was no longer serviceable.  So, I'll either have to rebuild it or replace it.  This is how it looked when I got it off of the truck:

Good Googly Moogly!  That is a lot of crap!  I'll clean it up (hello Super Clean!) and then make the call on rebuild or replace.  Essentially, what's wrong is that there are supposed to be two rubber pieces between the plate and the bracket and both are completely gone!  That means the transmission could move up and down, while still bolted to the mount.  I'm sure that will mean a thorough inspection of the transmission bearings and seals is now required....

I know it's been a while since I last posted and I have a good reason for taking so long.  I've been working on a woodworking project for some of my grandkids.  It's almost done, but yesterday wasn't a good day to be doing woodworking, so into the garage I went.  The project?  They needed a dresser,  Here it is after construction and before staining:

It's purpose built to fit a specific space.  No plans, just worked backwards from the space requirements.  Currently, the drawers are stained and done.  Now the case needs to be stained.  Hopefully, I'll get it finished soon and into service!

That's all for now.  More to come as I continue to disassemble the driveline and get ready for the engine swap!

Smokey Water or is it Watery Smoke?

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

Actually, neither.  Maybe.  I think?

So, I had some time last weekend and decided it was high time to fire up that 235 cu in beast that's going to be transplanted into the Gray Ghost.  As you may recall (The Gray Ghost Goes Tinkle in a bad Sort of Way), I had a water pump issue to deal with some time ago.  I got that fixed (Water Pump Turns Into A Can Of Worms) sort of... (As The Water Pump Turns)...but not really (Buttoning Up The Cooling System), finally!  After all of those trials and tribulations, I basically ran out of time and good weather.  Time passes...the summer heat is finally gone and its time to work on the truck again.

I finally got the old radiator out of the Gray Ghost and decided to give it a try while the engine was on the test stand.  Boy am I thankful that I did that!

But first, it was time to test a potential upgrade that I've been thinking about adding to the Gray Ghost.  To test it, I added it to the engine test stand.  That upgrade?  An electric fuel pump!  I also took the opportunity to re-route the fuel line from the mechanical fuel pump to the carb.  When I replaced the old fuel pump, I found that the new one had the fuel outlet in a different position.  So, I had to re-route the lines back then.  It worked ok, but was too close to the return water pump hose.  When I replaced the water pump, it got worse.  So, I moved the glass bowl fuel filter, re-did the lines.  I also made the upgrade to the test stand and plumbed in an electric fuel pump and fuel filter.  (Full disclosure:  I did not think this up myself!  I followed the suggestions of one of my fellow truck forum members).  On the test stand, it looked like this:

So, I hooked up the battery and flipped the fuel pump switch...and it started pumping gas!  Now, I can get fuel from the tank to the carb with little drain on the battery.  In the past, I had to crank the engine to make the mechanical pump do it and it could literally drain the battery!  I think that this upgrade is a keeper!  I'll replicate it on the actual truck in the near future!

With the carb bowl full of gas, it was pretty easy to get the old engine to fire once again.  But Holy Cow did it shake and shimmy!  It took me a couple of minutes to figure it out and it was pretty disappointing when I did....  First, a little reminder of how great it looked when the water pump replacement was finished:

New water pump and new fan.  Like so many repops, the fan was not without issues when I got it.  Specifically, when they punched the hole that went over the pulley, there was excess material left over and the fan wouldn't fit.  So, some quick, judicious grinding and I thought things were done.  It looked like this:

(showing excess material) 

(another view of excess material) 

(material ground away) 

(backside of fan repainted)

Well, either I made the fan become unbalanced with my grinding/painting or it came that way from the factory.  Either way, it had to go!  Once the fan was off of the water pump pulley, the engine ran as smooth as ever.  Things were looking up!  Not so much....  Did I mention that I finally got the old radiator out of the Gray Ghost?  Yup, and installed it on the engine on the test stand.  Why not test it, too?  It looked like this:

Well, about the time that I was feeling pretty good about things, I noticed that the old radiator was leaking.  I found four different spots where it was leaking.  Sigh.  Time to wrap things up in the garage and head to the computer to buy a new radiator.  Oh well, that's why we test.

In the meantime, I managed to get the stomp starter linkage off of the old engine.  It was pretty gnarly!  I didn't take a specific picture of it in the old truck, nor did I take any showing how gnarly it was.  But I did take a pic while it was soaking in the Super Clean (I love that stuff!).  It showed the original color of the linkage:

BLUE?!  Chevy truck engines were supposed to be gray!  Why is my linkage blue?  It does match the color of the old engine in the truck, but we already knew that was not the original engine.  The problem is that the starter linkage is the right linkage for my truck.  Maybe it got painted to match?  Who knows.  In the pic, you can also see just how much crud was on the linkage.  Following my normal process, I cleaned it in the Super Clean, got the rust off with the Evap-O-Rust, did a quick sanding with the Dremel wheel, primed and painted.  After all of that, I mounted it onto the bell housing to see how it looked.  Frankly, I was impressed:

In the side shot, you can see a good view of the starter linkage.  That is the original spring and odd shaped washer/spring attachment point!  New ground strap where it will eventually go and rear motor mount bolts in their place.  In the top pic, you can see the stomp button.  I had removed that a couple of months ago and restored it then.  Clearly, I did not go with matching paint.  I really like the way it looks, though and am glad I went with the satin black.

Last but not least, I did manage to get the shift linkage pivot point.  I found someone online that was willing to sell me the rod, without the bellhousing.  He even sandblasted it for me!  When I got it, it looked like this:

The gnurled end goes into the bellhousing.  The ring at the other end holds the C clip.

(showing where it fits into the bellhousing) 

(primed) 

(Painted that beautiful Chevy Blue)

The shift linkage pivot rod is currently in the basement, so the paint can cure all the way.

So, a bunch of odds and ends, again.  My new radiator is due in by the end of the week and I'm off on Friday....  With any luck, it'll come in on time.  If it does, I'll flush the cooling system with the old radiator in place.  Then, swap out the old radiator for the new one. 

That's all for now, but there's sure to be more soon.  It is the prime season for working on my truck!

Oh yeah, what about the title?  Well, about a week before I got out in the garage to fire up that engine, I removed the valve cover and gave the valve guides a good soaking in Kroil.  When the engine was last running, it kind of "chuffed".  I'm not sure how to really describe it, but periodically, it would puff out a bit of smoke and make a sound.  So, in an effort to loosen anything that was stuck, I hit it with the Kroil and let it sit for a week.  Then, when I fired it up, all that Kroil had to burn off!  Kinda smokey for a while.  The smoke combined with the normal exhaust, which I think has some steam in it (head gasket leak?!?) to make the smokey water or watery smoke.  One issue at a time, is about all that I can handle!  Stay tuned!!

Cleaning the Air

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

Well, here we are at the end of yet another summer.  Life has kept me busy at my usual pace.  That, of course, means that I only got a little on the Gray Ghost during the hot summer months.  To be honest, when the heat kicked in, it was too much for me to handle.  So doing other things was ok.  At the moment, I'm working on a woodworking project.  That has kept me busy for a while (I work slowly on those, too).  Now we're getting rain from the outer rain bands of hurricane Florence.  No big deal for us, thankfully, but it keeps me from the woodworking and doing anything really big on the truck.  I did, however, manage to get a small project done.  Here's the story:

When originally built, the truck had both a manual choke and throttle.  The dash had knobs for both and they look like this:

The choke knob is on top and the throttle knob is on bottom.  When I repainted the dash I did not remove the old knobs.  So...they got painted over!  Not to worry, they will be replaced!  Also at that time, I was thinking about using a newer carb with an automatic choke.  Fast forward some and I've gone back to the thought of using the original style carb and keeping the manual choke and throttle.  In that regard, I managed to find a very reasonably priced replacement carb from Carter.  It is the 2100S and is a drop on replacement.  It looks like this:

It is the same style as the original Rochester brand, but is supposed to be better performing.  The brackets for the choke and throttle cables are clearly visible on the left side of the carb.  Using this carb allows me to reuse the original "pancake" style air cleaner.  The air cleaner is one of the very first things that I restored.  A quick synopsis, through photos follows:

Quite a transformation from when I got it to where it was when I got done.  Way back then, I decided that I wasn't going to try to hide the blemishes (pitting) on the air cleaner housing.  To me, they are survivor badges of honor.  In the last pic, you can see that I actually have two of them.  The second one I got in the junkyard!  That is the one that I'll be using.  In the first photo, you can tell that something is sticking out from the bottom of the original air cleaner.  It is a small piece of copper tubing that was braised on to the housing around a small hole that was cut into the housing.  My guess about the purpose of the tube is PCV.  Just after my truck was built, Chevy started incorporating PCV into its vehicles.  The PCV system was better for the engines than the old road draft tube, so some people bought the kits and retrofitted them into their trucks.  I'm thinking that a previous owner of the air filter had done that and that sometime afterward, that air cleaner ended up on my truck.  For now, I don't want that tube potentially interfering with the operation of the truck.

The original air filter material was an oil wetted copper mesh.  That mesh sat between two steel pieces of mesh that held the copper in place.  From the last pic, you can see that the opening is not very tall and you can see the steel mesh (no copper).  Because the opening wasn't very tall, the screw that held the lid in place was not very long.  The modern replacement paper air filters are taller than the mesh and that meant that the screw was about 3/8" too short!  So, to make it all work together, I had to cut off the old screw and then drill out the welded on piece to accept a #10-32 x 2" screw.  I could have used a #10-24 x 2" screw, but wanted to use a wing nut on top and those were 32 tpi so that's what type of screw I used.

Drilling it out was straightforward and so was installing the screw.  To ensure that the screw never falls into the carb, I used a nylon ring lock nut on top of the bracket.  After that, it was just assembling it all together.  The pics look like this:

Assembled onto the carb, it looks like this:

In case you were wondering, this is how it attaches to the carb:

The inner ring is a compressible sleeve that slides over the throat of the carb.  There is a screw and nut that are attached to a metal band around the sleeve.  Tightening the screw tightens the band and friction does the rest.

That's all for now.  Not much, I know, but hopefully the coming weeks will see more progress.  Thanks for reading.  Comments are always welcome, either here or in response to the Facebook notification.

3-D Thinking Isn't Just for Star Trek Chess Matches

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

I'm back with another "hot and humid" update on the restoration adventure.  Much has happened since I took that bite out of the bear!  In reality, I've had two garage sessions since we last spoke.  The first was so frustrating, that I decided to not even write about it.  But before we begin, let me set the stage....

Original gas tank w/corrosion

That came from here, behind the bench seat

There are a couple of things to note about this last pic.  There is a foam doughnut/gasket that seals the cab where the fuel line exits, there are two straps that hold down the tank, there is a ground wire on the rear cab brace and the gas gauge sending unit wire (or what's left of the original) is clipped to the seat riser.

As you may recall from the last post, that I had to wrangle (read that as modify) the gas gauge sending unit to fit on the new gas tank.  With that work done, I moved on to installing the tank in the cab and running the fuel line from the tank to underneath the cab.  The goal here is to get the fuel line to the same place as Chevy originally had it, but to come from the top of the tank (as they did from 1954 onward) instead of from the bottom of the tank (as they did from 1953 backward).

The first step in the process was to set the tank in place and mark where the "anti-squeak" pads needed to go.  After that, I installed the pads and then set the tank in place.  That looked like this:

Next, it was time to install the new straps.  The old ones were a disaster!  Years of mouse pee had corroded then horribly and they were beyond saving.  With the straps in place, I decided to install the gas filler neck and connecting hoses.  I decided to have a little fun while I was doing that and also put on the shiny new locking gas cap.  It looked like this:

Sorry that the pic is kinda washed out, but you get the idea.  From the inside, it looked like this:

Now, I'm showing you this for a reason...a reason that it would take me several hours of fighting with my truck and a week of pondering to realize what was wrong.  I know what you're thinking.  Gray Ghost, it looks pretty good!  What's wrong?  Well, you are right.  It does look pretty good.  It was simply done out of order.  How does this matter?  When I went to secure the new strap to the tank support, it wouldn't fit.  Here's the Chevy drawing on how it should look:

Inside the circles that I added is the trouble area.  You can see that the straps have a bolt (with one end flattened and riveted to the strap) which is supposed to go through the lower strap assembly and a nut is then threaded on, thereby securing the tank to the cab of the truck.  No matter how I tried, I could not get the bolt to reach far enough to go through the lower strap assembly.  I reached out to the truck forum that I belong to and several members gave me suggestions on how to make it work.

So today, after thinking it over for a week and discussing it on the forum, I headed back out to the garage for another try.  One thing that I realized over the course of the week, was that I needed to run the fuel line before I could strap down the tank.  Since the line would exit under the tank, that had to be in place first.  That epiphany meant disconnecting the gas tank filler neck hoses, so that I could move the tank up and down.

Let me just say, that even though the drawing makes it look really easy, it was not!  First off, in 1954, they moved the opening in the cab floor forward of the tank.  You can see that in the drawing.  If you look back at the before pic, you see that the opening for my 1953 is directly underneath the tank.  That meant that I had to form the fuel line to come down the side of the tank, sneak past the seat riser, go under the tank and then exit the cab through the original hole.  That's where the 3-D thinking came into play.

Now you know that I tell it like it is and this time will be no different!  I suck at thinking this way!!!  I destroyed multiple pieces of fuel line getting it close to right.  Never mind perfect!!  Here's a shot of the wrecked attempts, moving in time from left to right:

Clearly, there was some trial and error going on and you can kind of see an evolution in the thought process.  In fact, the only thing wrong with the far right attempt was that I somehow got the length measurement wrong and it ended up being an inch too short.  However, you can see how the line needed to exit the fuel tank fitting and make a 90 degree bend downward.  After running down the side of the tank it makes a 45 degree bend and then another bend to get past the bottom of the tank.  Then almost a 90 degree bend to exit the floor of the cab.

After many trips to the FLAPS, I finally got it right and installed it onto the tank and snaked it through the bottom of the truck!  After all of that, I decided to strap the tank down and then attach the filler neck hoses.

This time around, the straps were EASY to attach!  What the heck?!?  Seems as though having the filler neck hoses attached before strapping the tank down prevented me from settling the tank into it's proper location.  With the hoses disconnected, it was a breeze.  Good Grief!  After that, it was simply a matter of wiggling the filler neck/hose assembly into position, attaching the connecting hoses and retightening the hose clamps.  OY!  Then, it was a simple matter to connect the new ground wire to the rear of the cab (after a light sanding of the metal to ensure a good ground connection, of course) and the new sending unit wire to the sending unit.

When all was said and done, it looked like this:

Here it is with the seat frame reinstalled:

The fuel line does protrude into the seat frame's space a bit, so I had to move it forward a notch or two.  Since it's likely that I will be the only driver of the truck, for the near future, the seat won't get moved again and hitting the fuel line isn't going to be an issue.

Now, it is time to move under the truck and start prepping for engine removal.  First on the list will be disconnection/securing the torque tube so that I can remove the transmission.  Once the transmission is out, there will be a bunch of items that will need to be disconnected.  Then it will be engine removal time!  Getting closer!

That's all for now.  Don't forget to click a box below!  It's anonymous!

Man Bites Bear...News at 11...

...or whatever time you read this post!

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

Just a quick update to my last post about the gas tank.  Following my game plan outlined last time, I used the rubber gasket supplied with the gas tank as a template for the mounting holes on the "universal" sending unit.  I held them in place with some small screws and used a fine tip marker to show where I needed to grind away some of the material.  It looked like this:

and this:

That's how much it takes to make the whole thing unworkable.  In other words, not much.  Seeing how it was off, I think it is a manufacturing tolerance issue.  Somebody needs some ISO training...just saying!

Originally, my thought was to drill out the areas, but I quickly realized that wouldn't work.  So, with a rat tail file in hand, I set to work.  All in all, it wasn't too bad and I was inside!  Once I got the marked areas filed down, I took it outside to the tank and did a quick (upside down) trial fitting and found out that I had made it fit.  My proof looked like this:

Then I trimmed the cork gasket using the file and it was time to actually install it!

Of course, it took some fiddling around with the clocking of the rheostat and mounting bracket both in relation to the holes and sides of the gas tank.  After a couple of tries, it fit!!!  Holy Guacamole, installed, it looks like this:

The brass screw/nut at the top of the sending unit is the attachment point for the wire that goes to the gas gauge.  The ground wire is visible at the 1:00 position and will attach to the cab brace when I install the tank into the truck.  The whole reason that I went down this path is visible at the 5:30 position...the gas pickup tube that comes out of the top of the tank.  From here, I'll have to bend some steel fuel line to go over and down the side of the tank and out the bottom of the cab.  But that is for another day.

So, Bob's your uncle!  I got there, but not without a bunch of fiddling and fussing.  I'm guessing that if I ever had to do it again, it would be a little easier.  I am learning this as I go along.  So, I guess I won't be too hard on myself.  Of course, I still don't know if it works.  And I won't know until I install it, hook it to the gauge and actually put some gas into the tank!  That is likely months off, so for now, it's a win.

See you next time!