Jeff and I took a week long hiatus from the Corvair project, mostly to spiff up the '95 Suburban I just bought. Last night we got back to work, starting with replacement of the rocker panel moldings. The new reproduction pieces I bought are not pitted and scratched like the old ones, but the ends aren't formed quite as nicely as the factory pieces. The screw holes did not line up with the factory ones, so we had to drill new holes, but the trim is on the car, is straight and clean, and I am happy with it.

After fussing with trim, we went to work on removing the strut rods from the control arms. We broke the camber adjusting bolts on the outside, so it was "just" a matter of driving the bolts. We soaked them down with WD40 and then drove them out with a long punch and a maul. Finally the bolts came out and the strut rods went into the parts washer so that we wouldn't have to contend with a mountain of gook while removing the differential brackets from the strut rods.

That was it for doing work on the car last night, but we did a little more planning. Although I have the parts to put new bushings in the control arms, my current thought right now is just to replace the strut rods with the rebuilt units I have, rebuild the stabilizer links, put new U-joints in, and call it good. From a visual inspection, the torque arm busings seem decent to me, and pulling them out means removing springs, messing with brake lines, and introducing a whole new potential realm of alignment issues. I guess I am not in the mood to look for trouble.

Tonight we continued dismantling the rear suspension. We started by removing the strut rod brackets from the strut rods. As you can see, the inner bushings were toast:

Interestingly enough, the bolts were virtually rust free.

Next, we pulled the axle halves. With the exception of a U-joint cap that fell off and hit me in the head, these were no problem. Once they were out, we went to work on the stabilizer links. The left link broke on the outside where it had rusted thin, so I am going to order new links to go with all the new hardware I already have.

We also put in another session of scrubbing the transaxle with brass brushes. They were doing a flashback of the year 1978 on WMMQ so for a little while the transaxle turned into a drum set and we set it to rhythm.

I had to decide today whether to take my Firebird racing on October 19, or to join the Western Michigan chapter on its color tour from Hastings to Lansing. I've decided to opt for the color tour this year, which gives me a goal to shoot for. I talked to Pat Delaney today and he assured me that he could have my motor finished by the 10th, which will give me nine days to get the motor back in the car and running correctly. My friend Jim Neal, who has a '64 Monza vert, wanted to go along for the color tour, but is planning on going to the Michigan State homecoming that weekend, so he offered me the use of his car that day. I plan on taking him up on it so that both Jeff and I can have a Vair. At any rate, I am serious about having this car back on the ground and running by October 19th.

The next step is getting the blast cabinet up and running so that we can clean and paint some suspension parts.

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All images and text copyright Norman C. Witte 2002.