While the car is in the air, I will have new WWW tires mounted with the correct size and whitewall width. I also have the rear end and torque tube painted ready to reinstall. I moved the parts car into position to have the rear end ripped out...so hopefully the red car will be back on the ground this weekend sometime.
After nearly a full day of shopping (sigh), I tackled the parts car and went as far as I could go before having to clean up and get ready to go out this evening. I was able to remove the rear end/tube, extract propeller shaft, reinstall other shaft, and reinstall the rear in the car. I will tighten everything back up tomorrow when I have some time and daylight, since I am working outside in the driveway for this. So, the prop shaft that came out of the parts car is in great shape. Splines are greased really well and u-joint has zero slop. They look slightly different, as seen in photos. I believe the one in the "good" car has been replaced at one point. Hmmm...although the bad shaft did seem to lock into the parts car rear ok. I made sure it was all the way in so it would reach as much of the spline surface area as possible. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to drive this car around the yard as much as I need to. I'll try to get the good car back together and the new tires mounted. I got them back from the shop today and they were fighting them all day yesterday. I figured they would, with how they were packed. He said they left them in the sun and a heater blowing on them all day. $60 to mount them, though...can't complain. It looks like tomorrow or Monday will be the only good days to wash that blue crap off, with the temperature dropping like a rock this week.
I got the car back together this evening, and the transmission is runs through the gears and engages like it should, but I don't have PARK. Hoping I can access the parking pawl without removing the transmission. Here's a shot before I wrestled the rear back in...
I made a feeble attempt to clean off the blue stuff from the tires today in the shop, but it will have to wait until I can get it outside with the hose and some comet. But I did wipe the crap off the car that's been collecting on it for who knows how long...cleans up nice! On another note, I have been in contact with the previous owner (before the French billionaire), and he verified the mileage is correct at 46k, and sent me a massive pile of receipts from his ownership AND the previous owner to him. This car has been well-loved and it shows. I did find out that he named the car Jackie. So, that is what its name is now.
Thanks Bob! The 57’s have grown on me as well in the last several years. They are a bit more elegant than the 58. This is one of very few cars I’ve looked at that really spoke to me. I didn’t sleep for several nights after I saw the car.
I played musical cars this afternoon so I could get Lance's car into the shop, and mine OUT so I can (hopefully) get it to the exhaust guy sometime in the next week. This required me to move the parts car into the grass area between the garage and shop, move my 57 out of the shop, slide the orange 72 out of the way, move Lance's car into the shop, move my car back into the house garage, and the orange 72 back in front of the shop. While it was still light out, I shot a couple photos. The brakes were pretty terrible, so I assumed I just didn't bleed them enough when I reconnected the rear end. So, before I tucked in everyone else's cars, I rolled it back into the shop and put it on jacks. Not too long ago, I bought a pressure bleeder so I don't have to mess with that crappy mity-vac that I really don't trust to bleed brakes. Upon bleeding the rears, everything appeared to be great...no air came out that I could see. I pushed a bunch of fluid through there, too. The left front seemed fine when bled. Right front had no fluid. Crap. Off came the tire and drum. Yanked off the cylinder and pulled it apart. I found some awesome stuff in there. Cleaned it out and reassembled, installed, and bled all 4 corners again. I think I used about a quart of fluid to make sure it was all bled. Brakes still suck. Power assist is there, but the pedal damn near goes to the floor. I also adjusted all of the brakes while it was in the air. I'm not sure where I am missing out. The only thing I can think that is wrong is the master cylinder. Wrong size displacement piston maybe? Carburetor is not a happy camper, either. There is plenty of work to do before this thing is road-worthy.
