Just some of the things we get up to.
I bought a cheap(ish) smoker on Craigslist and set it up to smoke a Boston Butt. This one runs on charcoal and I tossed plenty of hickory chips into the pan with the charcoal. Turns out maintaining a temperature is harder than it should be with this model. It didn’t help that it was cold and rainy out.
After 9 hours in this smoker I gave up and tossed it into the oven to finish. The smoky flavor is pretty good but I’ve done better with my propane grill.
Driving home I spotted something in the road. Of course I aimed to miss it so it had my attention. When I realized it was a turtle I stopped and picked it up. This little guy swam as hard as he could for the entire drive to my house. So I set him down near the lake and suddenly he got shy. I picked him up again and he popped right out and started swimming again. I set him down just a couple of inches from the water. This time he saw the water and climbed into the lake and swam away. I predict he’ll be pretty happy there. Certainly better than found on road dead.
While doing some work on Nat’s 1968 Camaro I had to take the exhaust manifolds off. While I had them off I used a grinder and some files to clean up the mold flash. Once cleaned up I took them out to be ceramic coated. The coating not only makes them look better but it also keeps heat contained and sends it out the exhaust to the pipes.
This is the passenger side bolted in place.
This is the driver’s side. They don’t stand out except as clean. I like it.
I decided that if I didn’t replace the water pump now I’d be doing it soon after getting the car back on the road. At least now it’s easy to get to. Corrosion in the heater core and radiator along with “mud” coming out of the cooling system convinced me that the coolant had failed in its anti corrosive properties. It would have been nice to flush the motor with the water pump off but there were no exhaust manifolds and no spark plugs then. Don’t want water inside the motor.
The water pump I took off was painted Chevy engine orange to match the engine so I did the same with this one. I looked into switching to a clutch type fan but wasn’t ready to spend the $270 or more it would take. If I decide to make a change in the future I’ll probably hide an electric fan in the fan shroud so it appears more stock.
I wish I’d had this view of things when I replaced the motor mounts. There had been some odd things with launching the car from a stop that I decided were because the motor was torquing on its mounts. The Camaro uses a mechanical belcrank setup between the frame and the block. While the motor mounts were in better shape than I thought they weren’t bolted down properly.
Unfortunately I’ve found another potential culprit in the subframe bushings and/or their mounting points.
The first step in this is to loosen the bolts on all of the mounts. There are four going to the car’s body and two on the radiator support. After they’re all loosened I removed the bolt from the left side by the firewall. This is a picture of my rig to jack the body away from the subframe. It consists of two 8″ scraps of 4×8 post resting on a block of 2×8. I took the extra step of sliding a plate of 1/4″ steel between the body and subframe for the blocks to rest on.
Once there was enough clearance I slid out the remains of the old bushing. That let me get a good look at the mounting point.
Uh oh. That’s rusted through. There should be a 1 1/2″ hole there. Instead it’s almost 2 1/2″ across. The bushing falls through. I have repair parts ordered for that now in addition to the bushings I was ready to put in.
Snowballs in April? How about a snowballing project.
First the motor mounts. Symptoms suggested they were tired and needed to be replaced. Removing them showed that the problem was they weren’t bolted in properly. Okay, one project done.
On the first drive afterwards I noticed antifreeze dripping on the passenger side floormat. Dangit. Heater core. Well, while the dash is apart I can fix the lights on the dash that have been burned out for so long Natalie didn’t even know they existed.
Putting the heater core back in properly took a bit more work that I anticipated. I needed to remove the right side inner fender. Counting bolts, shims, and other issues turned out to be more work than I wanted to tackle but I was kinda stuck.
Hard to believe this was easier than taking one inner fender off.
At the end of it all the exhaust manifolds will have been ceramic coated, new bolts will hold the exhaust together, and there will be a new water pump keeping the cool. Also the radiator is going to have to be cleaned and resoldered because it shows a leak. The heater core will be new and well mounted. Lights in the dash will work and one of the heater controls has been disconnected for some time. Oh and a major vacuum leak will be fixed.
If I get lucky and a parts store employee comes through the car may also get power steering. That’ll help Nat drive her own car.
Snow March 25th is crazy enough but we were outside in SHORTS on the 24th. We ended up with several days of snow that didn’t amount to anything but did coat our deck a few times.
A load of river rock in the bed of my truck. Nat’s been making rock gardens out of our gardens. I told her they won’t grow.
