AdmiNirvana

I haven’t mentioned our project car in a while, so time for an update!

As some may know, we have a project 1968 Camaro that I’ve spent time restoring over the past few years. The initial job was pulling the entire interior and restoring it to like-new condition. That’s just about done.

The second job was to pull the engine and transmission, and rebuild it back up the way we’d like it. Well, that started last weekend. I made a trip up with my mom to Crescent City, where most of the work is done on our car. After about four hour’s worth of work, we had the engine and trans pulled, and ripped most of the way down to the short block.

Not only were there a bunch of mismatched bolts (and some just plain missing!), finger tight-only bolts (like the entire intake manifold!), and sloppy gasket installs, after removing the oil pan we discovered that the oil pump had a considerable amount of old gasket material stuffed up in it. No wonder she was running hot! Luckily we haven’t put much mileage on the car at all, so damage from low oil pressure was kept to a minimum and only consisted of some lightly scored journal bearings.

Much to our luck, we found from the serial number stamping that the 454 was originally a crate motor of ’80s vintage! Awesome! Sure enough, the cylinder walls look good, the pistons are of the forged type–good for horsepower–and the rest of the engine looks clean. Unfortunate that the sloppy original assembly sapped so much power from it.

But that’ll change soon! After we finish pricing out some top-end parts for the block, we’ll put it back together and give another update. Ballpark figures with the Edelbrock parts we’ve chosen are around 500HP peak. Vroom, indeed…

I spent some time up in Crescent City again this weekend, preparing for the imminent rebuild of the 1970 Olds 4-4-2 and the 1969 Mustang I had mentioned tearing down previously.

The nice thing about working up there is having all the tools and equipment to do the job right. The Mustang will be a “nice looking” car, but the 442 will be close to a Conours one. Having the body on the rotisserie makes things easy to examine and work on.

Anyway, I’m looking for the “Interior Assembly Manual” for 1969 Mustang model year. Apparently not many places even stock it (though 68 and 70 are everywhere). I’m just not sure if Ford didn’t produce one that year, or if it’s just that rare.

If you know where to get one, let me know!

Well, someone decided to have a little fun at our expense last night.

The Tundra, common name “super-ultra-truck”, or also occasionally known as “The Silver Bullet”, was found dead by a tow-truck guy on the side of Airport Road early this morning.

Apparently someone managed to break into it–right in our driveway–and then take it out and have a little fun. They ended that fun by doing some jousting with a tree. The tree won.

The Van also suffered a minor molesting, but nothing horrible: just some change thrown on the floor.

We haven’t been able to see it yet as it is the weekend and the tow-truck guy is “out of service”, but according to the office personnel we won’t be driving it any time soon.

Truck: You were a good truck, a bit underpowered at times, but a good tow vehicle nonetheless. But I’m still sorry I blew a couple hundred bucks in new brakes for you a month ago.

UPDATE:

We just heard back from the insurance company:

Last night I began the tear-down of the ‘69 Mustang. While Ethan was asleep, I worked in the garage while Phaedrah got most of the Christmas decorations put away.

Being this is my first “Ford project”, I’m having fun noting the differences from General Motors stuff. In some ways, it’s much easier to take apart.