Power Steering Cylinder

My friend took the control arm to work so he could prepare it for reinstal. While waiting I decided to take a look at the power steering cylinder. It was leaking some oil so I bought a repair kit for it. But first it had to come off the car. This proved to be more difficult than expected. The ball joint was badly stuck and I had to go and buy a pickle fork. Finally that worked even though there was not much room for hammering under the car.

While working with the cylinder, I noticed some corrosion in the rod. Most likely it had been sitting in one position for some time and water had gotten between the seals. I could only hope it wouldn't start leaking again even with new seals. Finally I repainted the parts, filled the ball joint with fresh lubricant and reinstalled the cylinder. It has not leaked since.

Lower Control Arm

As the brake hoses were in so bad shape, I ordered new, better ones.

To make changing them easier, we also removed some small parts ;)

We began the lower control arm overhauling from the driver side. It took us one evening to get it off and we managed to do it without spring compressors. We used our cheap hydraulic jack to support the control arm, removed the spindle and shock absorber and then slowly lowered the arm to unload the spring. Then it was simple to remove the inner bolts from the frame and the control arm was free.

Predictably the control arm was really dirty but luckily there was no rust. It just needed some cleaning and paint before new bushings and joint could be installed.

Rear Overhaul Done

When I received all the parts, I gave them to a friend from Finnshark.com so he could measure the correct shims needed for making the spindle/bearing package tight enough. Then the bearings were pressed to the spindle and support. And naturally the parts were cleaned and painted. Finally after couple of nights, the 'Vette had rear wheels again.

While working with the spindles, we also installed the new parking brake system. I found pretty good instructions for it but they were still really fiddly. After some cursing they finally admitted defeat, got installed and the rear overhaul was done!

Next on the list was taking the front lower control arms out and changing their bushings and joints. And while at it, I planned to fix the leaking power steering cylinder, leaking brake caliper and looking why the steering was so loose. I hoped it would be fixed by just adjusting the steering box...

Rear Wiring Harness

While waiting for parts, I decided to check the rear wiring harness. Lights were working however and whenever they wanted and the car was burning fuses faster than we could change them. I looked under the car and saw a bunch of loose wires that were cut and reconnected here and there. Everything looked so hazardous that I removed the whole harness and took it home.

It didn't take long to see that the best thing to do was to replace the whole harness. I guess I had too much free time as I decided to use the old connectors and build a new harness myself. I searched around to find as correct wire colors as possible and spend a few night with a soldering iron. Then I taped the harness and connected it back to the car.

After this we got rid of some electrical gremlins, but not all. All rear lights worked but one went dark again later. This was caused by broken lamp socket. I replaced it with a new part and everything worked again. Light fuses also stopped burning so at least something was fixed. I also noticed that the alarm horn was in pretty bad shape. I didn't even connect it yet as I was pretty sure it wouldn't work anyway. The horn was in quite difficult place so it would have to be replaced after I figured out how.

New Year

After christmas and new year, we continued our Corvette project. Luckily the apartment had a large underground garage where we could store the car and work. There was no heating but it had a door so temperatures were not much below freezing even during winter. You did need a lot of clothing and had to work hard to keep warm though.

Now I could also do stuff by myself so I started going through the smaller problems. I tested the electrical stuff and found that most of the original relays were not working. I had to get new power window relay, alarm relay, heater relay and, as previously noted, indicator flasher. I also took the targa pieces home, cleaned them and changed their weatherstrips.

During epiphany holiday we disassembled the rear of the car again to replace the bearings. This was quite easy because there were no rusted bolts and pretty much everything was already new. We got both spindle supports out during one evening.

Even with snow and ice on the floor, we got the spindles out.

My friend had to take the parts to his job where he could press the bearings out. After this was done, he also confirmed what we had feared earlier. You could remove the passenger side bearings from the spindle by hand and driver side needed a press. After checking the spindle, he said that someone had used an angle grinder on it to make is smaller. I guess that someone did not have a press and had made changing the bearings easier. Luckily driver side spindle was in good condition so I only had to order one new...

Corvette Moves Home!

Final thing left to fix in the garage was the floors. Most of the driver side had to be replaced and the passanger side also needed new sheetmetal in the seatbelt retractor pit. We started by cutting the driver floor out.

This way we got a nice Flintstones model :) The picture also shows a section of the wonderfully crafted exhaust pipe. We made plans to change the first part of the exhaust when the car would be running again.

My friend started working with the passanger side when I noticed that the missing floor worked as an excellent access hatch for the steering column wiring. As the turn signals were not working, I checked the connector. The main wiring harness and column harness connector was held together with cable tie and after I removed it, I noticed that they didn't fit together at all. None of the wires made contact. No wonder the turn signals were not working.

I figured that most likely someone had changed the steering column from some other model year and the connectors had changed. After wondering for a while, I had to cut all the wires and build a new connector. I was a bit disappointed as the turn signals still weren't working. Most likely the flasher had broke so I ordered a new one. One new working thing though was the braking lights! Unfortunately there also was a new safety feature: front brake lights!? When the brake pedal was pressed, both front turning signal lights lit up. Must be some innovative American invention. But as they weren't exactly legal in Finland, they would have to be removed later.

While my friend was welding, I also cleaned the seats a bit. Their brackets were stuck and the seats couldn't be moved. After adding some penetrating oil and hammering them a bit, they worked perfectly.

After a few busy nights of welding, my friend had fixed the passanger floor:

Build a sledge:

And used it to fix most of the driver side floor:

Now only the seatbelt pit on the driver side had holes. Unfortunately we didn't have time to fix it so it would have to be done later. Then we just set the wheel alignments correctly and started driving home!

We had to drive about 10 kilometer to get the car home. Luckily it was not snowing even though temperature was below freezing point. The Corvette seemed to run pretty well even though some electrical gremlins did appear. Headlights worked but the rear lights turned off after 5km. I would have to check the rear wiring harness later.

Without other problems, we got the car home for the first time in 22. December 2009!

Christmas Rush

In December 2009 we started preparing to drive the Corvette back home. We had been fixing the car at my friends working place and they had started asking how long the car was going to stay there. So it was time to leave...

But we still had a long list of things to do so we worked hard for a couple of weeks. First my friend removed the passenger side trailing arm and changed the bushings. It went much faster this time as we now knew how to do it. Again we also cleaned and painted the parts before installing them back to the car. I have to say that the workmanship in the trailing arm was horrible. The welding looked like crap and someone had made a hole in the metal while welding the parking brake cable bracket. It was "fixed" by filling the hole with a bunch of welding rod pieces. B-E-A-Utiful... One worrying thing also was that you could pull the spindle out by hand. The other side needed a press. This had to be checked when changing the bearings.

At the same time I changed the seals in the driver side headlight actuator. I found pretty good instructions for the job. One of seals had broken so I hoped this would fix the slowly opening lights. I also noticed that one of the springs that helped the actuator to open the door was missing. I had to place an order for it because the lights still opened too slowly when we tested them later.

We were progressing faster than expected so we also changed the rear leaf spring. We had noticed earlier that the old one had broken leaves and needed replacing. Luckily I found an used one that was in good condition and only needed some cleaning.

And while the rear suspension was in pieces anyway, we also replaces some U joints from the axles. The old needle bearings had turned to dust. Now the rear wheels were not making strange noises when driving any more. Oh, and naturally we cleaned and painted the axles as they were off the car.

Finally we changed the differential oil. The old oil didn't seem to be in too bad condition so possibly someone had actually changed it during the last decade...

Transmission Troubles

My car had a basic Turbo-Hydramatic 350 3-speed automatic transmission. It seemed to work and shift normally based on the short test drives that we had done but it was leaking a bit of oil. In further examinations we found that the transmission fluid was leaking from the kick down cable hole. Someone had already tried to stop the leak by applying a big ball of silicone around the cable. With poor results. Simple gasket change, thought we! I guess we had not learned yet that nothing is that easy with this car.

We drained the oil, removed the cable and tried to put it back with a new seal. Only the bolt that held the cable to the transmission case didn't go in more than a few threads. We checked again and found that there was a broken bolt inside the hole!

We tested a lot of ways to get the bolt out but they all failed. And it didn't help that the hole was pretty hard to reach while the transmission was under the car. After hours of frustration the only way left to fix it was to drill the old bolt out, make new threads and use a different size bolt. This worked and finally we put the transmission back together with a new filter, new oil, new gasget and new oil pan.

There has been no more leaks from the transmission :)

Corvette Has Nuts!

While I fixed the door, my friend had removed both front upper control arms and changed their bushings and joints. We also cleaned and painted the parts now that it was easy. They had accumulated quite a lot of mud, oil and other sludge during their life... Lower control arms would have to wait until later because their removal is a bigger job and would leave the car unmovable for at least a week. We couldn't do that in the garage as the car needed to be moved out after weekends and evenings.

We also started the rear overhaul by removing the driver side trailing arm. And holy shit was it hard! We had to heat the bolts red hot and burn the old bushings to get it out. When we finally got them off the car, we cleaned and painted the parts, installed new bushings and used new bolts to put the car back together. Changing the bearings was not possible at the time as I had forgot to order shims.

We also tested and installed some of the new electrical parts. After installing the headlight switch, it seemed that all the lights worked. Some bulbs were broken but at least we seemed to have working wiring. Boy were we over optimistic...

I also installed new vacuum relays for the lights and some new vacuum hoses. After this, the lights did raise but quite slowly. Especially on the driver side. Possibly the actuator there was leaking so I ordered a new sealing kit for it.

Oh, and we also noticed that the locking mechanism in passenger door was not working. If you closed the door, it was really hard to get it open again. I took the lock home and seemed that someone had had the same problem. The locking mechanism was bent so I straightened it. On its own it seemed to work fine but when put back in the car, it still didn't work no matter how I tuned the mechanism rods. Eventually I had to buy another used mechanism to get the door open normally.

Oh, and the nuts. While I was going through the "trunk" of the car, I looked through the rear wiring harness hole and saw something. I started digging with a wire and found these:

Seems that some American Chip 'n' Dale had used the car as a nest :) Luckily they had not chewed through the wiring...

Driver Door Fiberglass Fix

A small part of the "lip" in the driver side door opening had broken off. While my friend started changing the bushings in the front upper control arms, I started fixing the fiberglass. As there was a 90 degree turn in the part, I cut and bended a small piece of sheet metal for support and used rivets to attach it to the body.

Now that there was a good support for the fiberglass, I put on my rubber gloves and breathing mask and started applying the epoxy. This was my first time using the stuff but it proved to be pretty easy. Oh, and the smell was really horrible! At times I hoped I had a better breathing mask...

The epoxy remained usable for about 30 minutes and then I left it to harden for couple of days. After this I cut and sanded the extra fiberglass off and smoothed the surface.

The result was pretty good in my opinion at least :) I still need to apply some bondo, sand it smooth and paint.

Christmas In October

Finally my order from Corvette Central arrived in October.

It contained a lot of stuff and it would take a long time to get them all installed in the car. But I was happy I finally had new parts to use :)

Center Console

As another small project at home I cleaned the center console. It was pretty dirty and chrome was pitted. First I cleaned and painted the AC controls.

Before

After

Unfortunately someone had dropped a cigarette on the plastic screen and it had melted a bit. I would have changed it but didn't have a spare part at the moment and didn't dare to pry the metal clips that held it in place. I they would break, I would have to replace the whole controller. Later I also found out that the grooves in the chrome should be painted black. It covered most of the bad chrome.

The console itself was also dirty, pitted and rusty. Also the wood veneer was peeling in places. I sanded the rust, cleaned the chrome with Autosol Metal Polish, glued the veneer and painted the parts again.

The console was also missing the engine data plate so it needs to be ordered later. Otherwise the parts were perfectly usable again.