Sherman

After 20 hours of open-hood surgery, Sherman came out of recovery in good shape. He appears to have made a full recovery.

This was my first experience pulling an engine out of an automobile. My father-in-law, who lent his time, tools and experience, had pulled a few engines in his day. He said that it was actually easier to pull my front wheel drive 500 than it was to pull the 455 out of his ‘75 Fire Bird.

We managed not to break any tools, bolts or bones. The flywheel was held to the torque converter with three bolts that had to be removed before the engine could be separated from the bell housing. This meant working under the car in a tight space through the inspection opening. Once the engine was out, there were six screws that held the flywheel to the engine. An impact wrench made short work of the LockTite that was on them. We had the flywheel changed, new LockTite on the bolts and assembled in about ten minues. The rest of the 20+ hours spent on the project were removing parts from the engine in order to get it out and then putting it all back together.

I learned a lot about my car during this process. Being front wheel drive, the drive train is fairly tightly integrated with the engine. So I had to disconnect the passenger side axle and remove the splined train that connected to it. The final drive also had to be disconnected from a bracket on the engine. But after that, there was only one engine mount with two bolts. The hardest part was the time spent lying under the car removing parts. I had sore muscles that I didn’t know I had and grease in places near the bruises.

On the first attempt, the starter made a horrific sound when engaged.
After some quick inspection, it became clear that the terminal wires
were on backwards. A quick re-wire later and Sherman roared to life. I took it for a 20 mile test drive and all systems were go.

Overall, it was probably one of the most satisfying and empowering things I’ve done. After pulling an engine, most of the other projects remaining on the car seem easy. That said, it was definitely a two-person job, minimum. And I have no desire to do it again anytime soon.

Photos of the process are up here:
http://www.echobox.com/sherman/flywheel

Sherman goes under the knife this weekend. The stars have aligned and
my father-in-law and I will both have the time to pull the engine and
replace the flywheel. But first, I’ll have to drive it the two hours up North where the shop is with the appropriate equipment and tools.

I’ve never pulled an engine before, so this is both exciting and horrifying. I’m taking the car, the necessary parts, tools and my camera.

Photos and details will be forthcoming…

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I finally found the time to dismantle, clean and rebuild Sherman’s carb. It was a long process because I chose to start on a practice carb and take an extra super long careful time in this process. It took an hour or two on evenings when I had the time.

Sherman now starts cold, thanks to a functional divorced choke. And it no longer hesitates when taking off. I’m so happy I can’t stand it.

I also took copious photos of the process. Of course, they are online here.

There’s been this nagging sound ever since I bought Sherman. Mostly it was a tick as the starter turned the engine over. The nagging was in the back of my head and the ticking was a time bomb that I knew was the sound of inevitability. And that sound, of course, was a flat spot on the flywheel.

I replaced the starter last fall. Replacing a starter is relatively simple and inexpensive. And the old starter was definitely tired. However, this was not the source of my problem and it haunted me.

Lately, the weather has been quite nice and I’ve taken Sherman out for a couple of drives. Last week, I parked him in the driveway. Today, the weather has turned cold and rainy and there may even be snow tomorrow. So I went to pull the car back into the garage. But instead of the sound of a 500ci engine rolling to life, there was a high-pitched grinding. I knew immediately what it was.

The roulette wheel that is my flywheel had finally landed with the flat spot directly facing the starter gear. This meant that not only was the car not going into the garage - it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I suppose I should be thankful in a way. How often does a car part finally break while in your own driveway?

My replacement rims showed up a couple of weeks ago. And the weather is slowly approaching a tolerable temperature to be working with metal objects. I ended up with three pretty straight/true steel rims. My plan is to get rid of two of my current rims that are so bent and dented I don’t think they are salvageable. This will leave me with a total of five rims. So I’ll finally have a spare tire, which will put me at ease.

All of the rims need to be cleaned, sand blasted and painted. Once I’ve managed that, I’ll finally get a new set of tires for Sherman. At the moment, he still has two Uniroyals and two of something else that are kind of hard and cracked from sitting for years. The car should ride much, much smoother with straight rims and soft tires.

That carburetor rebuild kit is calling my name as well. Having never rebuilt a carb before, I’m not sure yet what I’m getting myself into. But once I start, there’s no going back. And it needs to be done. I really need to setup a dedicated work bench where I can leave things as they lay, undisturbed, if it takes me a few sessions to get everything together. So I’ll probably build something in the garage where I can work regardless of the weather.

No new photos or exciting news at this point. Sherman has mostly been sitting in the garage for the winter, although I have gotten him out a few times to keep the seals from drying out. The snow is gone and we’ve had a couple of really long, heavy rains. So the roads are dry and salt-free again. I feel a lot better about driving him when I know I’m not destroying the steel.

Work has slowed to something slightly below a crawl. It has been consistently well below freezing for the past couple of weeks. So I have just let Sherman sit in the garage while I tend to other things.

I have managed to acquire a rebuild kit for the Quadrajet carburetor. I picked up another book on rebuilding Quadrajets. And I’m talking to a guy a couple of states away who has a set of four rims for a 1970 Eldorado. One of summer’s projects will be to get a set of true, balanced, painted rims on the car with a set of new tires.

I’m still not sure what to do about the interior, but that can really wait as long as it takes. This is a “rolling restoration” that probably won’t ever reach “restored” completely. So at least I can enjoy it without a sense of pressure to get everything perfect.

Summer should also see me trying my hand at painting once again. Particularly on the hood and trunk that were blistered by the California sun.

But, for now, it’s too friggin’ cold to do anything but read and surf eBay for parts.

I finally have, in my actual posession, a divorced choke coil assembly for the 1970 Eldorado. Sadly, it is a salvaged part and has its share of rust. But it matches the the rest of the engine that way. It is functional and I’ll clean it up as best I can.

I believe that I now have all of the bits necessary to actually hook up a functional choke assembly. This would be nice since we are deep into December at this point. Hopefully I’ll have some time this weekend to get around to connecting everything. Somehow, I have the sinking suspicion that this isn’t all I’ll need…

Sherman’s carburetor is missing a handful of parts related to the choke coil. The actual choke coil itself, a tang and a protective bit of metal that covers the tang and linkage. At first, I’d also thought that part of the linkage was missing. But I found it down in the carb body. In the warmth of California, none of this was likely noticed. In December in Michigan, however, it really doesn’t want to start. I’ve gotten around that by just taking a piece of wire and some nuts, as weight, and hanging it on the choke flap to start it. Once it is warm enough to idle, I can take it off and let it warm up. Once it is warm, it runs and drives great. But this is obviously not an optimal way to start a car. So I’m searching for either the missing parts or a complete rebuilt carb.

In order to move forward with either approach, I need to know more than I do about what carb is supposed to be on this particular car. And I’m finding that to be a lot less straight-forward than I’d expected. So far, I know the following:

• The carb that is currently on the car is a rebuild that came from Holly. There is a sticker on the body that tells me this much.
• The number stamped into the carb body is 7040230. I’ve learned how to decode that number and found that it indicates a 1970 carb setup for federal (non-California) emissions, it belongs on a Cadillac with an automatic transmission. That’s the extent of what can be deduced from the number on the body.
• So far, no one I’ve found can find a part number for a 500cid engine in 1970, even though there is obviously a 500cid engine in the 1970 Eldorado. Parts literature all refers to a 472.
• There were three carb body numbers for the 472 engine based on application: 7040231 for limousines, 7040232 for the Eldorado and 7040230 for others. This would tend to make me belive that I have the wrong carb. That said, none of the above are specifically for a 500 engine.
• The GM part number is 7047030. Although similar, the “part number” does not directly correspond to the number stamped into the casting on the carb.

So, at this point, I’ve learned a great deal about carburetors in general. And I’ve learned a lot of specific information relating to Quadrajet carburetors. But I don’t yet feel confident that I know enough to purchase a rebuilt carb and know for sure that it is the right one. Even calling and emailing the “pros” has yielded different numbers. And none of them have been able to find a carb reference for the 500 engine. So either GM simply used the same carb on both the 472 and 500, there is a typo in the literature relating to the 1970 Eldorado, GM recycled the literature from 1969 or I still have some digging to do. Until I know for sure, I’m going with the latter.

My wife and I took Sherman out for a fall drive today. We loaded the dogs into the back seat and headed West, toward the lakeshore. It was about 50 degrees outside and Sherman really didn’t feel like starting. Until he’s warm, the engine just doesn’t want to keep running. But once I got past that, it was smooth sailing.

Sherman is using a lot less gasoline per mile than when I first brought him home. Fixing all of the leaking gas lines probably did the most to help with that. Properly tuning, and possibly rebuilding, the carberator should help as well.

When we got home, there was a package from UPS on the porch. It contained the dust cover (inspection plate) for the flywheel housing. So I get to crawl under the car, take the starter off and put that on in the near future. That should keep snow and gunk away from the flywheel, which will be nice.

While loading the dogs into the car, I found a stub of paper in the passenger seat. The seats were spray painted black at some point. My guess is that this was to hide the numerous cracks and foam showing through. Even parts of the seat belts and windshield have overspray on them. This stub of paper also had overspray on it, indicating that it was in the seat when they were painted. It is a voting ballot stub from the county of Solano in California. And it is dated March 5, 2002. So I now know that the car was still in California in March of 2002 and that the spray painting took place some time after that.

I was able to get a couple solid days in on Sherman this weekend. I replaced the failing starter with a rebuild, replaced the front shocks, put the final mix of coolant in the system for winter, replaced the battery tray, replaced the temp sensor and wired up a temporary switch for the heater blower.

*whew*

Overall, things went really well. There was little blood, no broken tools, bolts or parts and cursing was at a minimum. Replacing the front shocks was much simpler than I thought it would be. Replacing the starter took a lot more effort due to its weight and the close quarters. But the transplant was a success and the patient survived. The one bad bit of news that came out of that project was the discovery that a couple of inspection covers are missing on the flywheel housing. One is a circle, roughly two inches in diameter. The other is a larger plate that fits between the starter motor and the oil pan. Once I took the old starter off, I could clearly see the flywheel. Although no fluids are circulated in the flywheel housing, the cover should be there for the simple reason of keeping dirt and moisture off the flywheel and starter gears. So I now have to try to find a couple of inspection covers. They aren’t carried by common parts stores, so I’m starting with salvage yards and good old eBay. I can’t drive it knowing that I’ll be packing snow, salt and sand into the flywheel housing.

With the addition of the blower switch bypass, I now have enough heat to drive you right out of the car. Even with the window down, I was able to make myself uncomfortably warm with it on “hi”. Defrost, dash and floor all work quite nicely. So I’m ready for the winter months with the exception of decent tires. But I’m holding off on those for a while. Once the Spring comes, and warmth returns, I plan on going through the vacuum system and removing my temporary workarounds. But it will get me through the cold for now.

Of course, photos of the weekend’s exploits are up for the general amusement of all.