Never meet your heroes! '86 Grand National

[~JM~]

Eastwood has a radiator paint

Eastwood Radiator Black Spray Paint Satin Finish 12oz

The right viscosity to spray-paintyour radiator without damage

www.eastwood.com

 

[Jon Early]

Cam sensor is installed and timed.

I had to go a little backwards to reinstall the fuel feed line. I guess I forgot how buried it was. I was able to ID the location of one of the clips, but I can't figure out where the other one goes. I'll have to take a picture and show you all what I mean.

Without a safe harness to power up, I couldn't find a simple way to power my pump. I just went with the tried and true method. Hopefully the new pump comes soon. According to Full Throttle, it should only be another week or two.

The new hoses and clamps from Highway stars look so much nicer than the junk I pulled off. I sure wish the harness was a little cleaner though. Does anybody remember what the cam sensor connector is supposed to clip to? I cant find any open holes nearby.

 

[Jon Early]

Yesterday I made a switch that changes the character of the car a lot more in my opinion than it probably does to others.

No more personalized plate for this car. It's a bitter sweet situation. "QUICK 86" kinda played off "LAME V6" in a cheeky/ironic sort of way, but that was also the issue. This car was never all the quick while I owned it! In my opinion, a plate like that with drag radials better at least run an 11 in the 1/4. This didn't and I don't expect it to do so any time soon. I also despise Indiana's covered bridge plate, so I waited for the state to mail my new one and instead of hanging it on the car, I would hang it on the wall. I bought this old Wander plate with the '87 expiration sticker just for this occasion. It's in pretty good shape, and matches the era of which the car was built. Plus, it's about half the cost to renew a historic plate than a standard vanity plate. Registration for four cars was starting to get pretty expensive, so this is a big plus. Overall, I'm happy with this.

I got tired of dodging the radiator, so I decided to toss it in the car. With the new oil cooler hoses.

I actually bought the new radiator hoses several years ago, and just never installed them. The originals are pretty swelled up. It looks like these Daycos will fit pretty nicely though.

Another thing that most people won't care about but I always found fascinating are factory markings. Part of me hates eliminating that history, but it also looks like crap. In fact it looks like a mark that could have been made at a junk yard. There are a lot of rusty spots on this piece so its time to blast.

I took note of the Caution stick location so I could affix the new one from Highway Stars. I also did a little research on the spot where a sticker was obviously removed. It seems that's where dealer techs acknowledged that the brake switch recall was performed? It would be sort of funny to put one back on with my own initials and the date I installed a vacuum booster, but I'm going to refrain!

I'll have to take more pictures of this tonight because this first coat of paint looks like all orange peel! It's a lot smoother than it looks here, but it will need some light wet sanding to match the core support better.

Here's the satisfying job I decided to take on at work. I don't have any pictures of this thing being super dirty, but this replacement up pipe was pretty ugly when It arrived in the mail. I was actually a little displeased. Luckily a quick minute of brushing in the solvent tank took all the rubber and oil off with ease. Here it is after that.

Shoot, even that looks pretty nice, but rust is bad. Course scotch brite did good on that.

Then a fine scotch brite pad got rid of the added texture.

It's not perfect but it's pretty awesome for just a few minutes! It'll look good on my imperfect resto mod.

Now it's question time. I found that clip I was talking about yesterday. Does anybody know where it goes and what it's supposed to retain?

 

[LANDAU LIMITED]

Holds trans lines. Mounts on a bolt with a stud on it.

 

[Jon Early]

View attachment 392023

Holds trans lines. Mounts on a bolt with a stud on it.

Thank you!! That makes sense!

 

[granitestategn]

Great job and very inspiring. I have my 87 apart in my garage and the engine is on the stand getting some overdue maintenance on it.....timing chain, oil pump, valve springs (again), etc. Pretty much a lot of the same things that you did. I have a bigger turbo to replace my stock one and a Janis rebuild on my transmission with a 3500 stall L/U converter that's been in a box for years. I will be installing alky injection because I don't really want to go E85. I need to get busy so it's back on the road for cruise season. I will copy a lot of the engine bay painting and engine part cleaning and painting tips that you and others have done. I want it looking good and running well before summer gets here!

Did you happen to have the list of fastener sizes you bought from Allen Fastener? I hate making my car looking like a rolling hardware store.

 

[Jon Early]

Great job and very inspiring. I have my 87 apart in my garage and the engine is on the stand getting some overdue maintenance on it.....timing chain, oil pump, valve springs (again), etc. Pretty much a lot of the same things that you did. I have a bigger turbo to replace my stock one and a Janis rebuild on my transmission with a 3500 stall L/U converter that's been in a box for years. I will be installing alky injection because I don't really want to go E85. I need to get busy so it's back on the road for cruise season. I will copy a lot of the engine bay painting and engine part cleaning and painting tips that you and others have done. I want it looking good and running well before summer gets here!

Did you happen to have the list of fastener sizes you bought from Allen Fastener? I hate making my car looking like a rolling hardware store.

I'm glad your enjoying and can make some use out of the thread! I wish you luck.

I'm kicking myself for not starting a list right away, but I have some of them typed down. Let me know which ones you want and I'll see if I can measure them for you. As long as they aren't buried or torqued to spec I don't mind pulling some things back off.

 

[granitestategn]

Not a big deal Jon. If you had them all written down, I'd ask for your list. I can measure as I go.

 

[Jon Early]

Not a big deal Jon. If you had them all written down, I'd ask for your list. I can measure as I go.

Here's my list so far
*M8-1.25 x 12mm (turbo bracket) x5
*M8-1.25 x 20mm (Down Pipe) X3
*M8-1.25 x 20mm STUD (Down Pipe)
*M8-1.25 x 70 (Power Steering pump) x2
*M8-1.25 nuts (turbo bell x2 and dp x1)
*3/8-16 x 1.25 (bell housing) x6
*3/8-16 Nuts (turbo flange to header) x3

 

[Jon Early]

I'm not totally thrilled with how this paint job turned out, but it's better than the rusty and beat up look I had before. I kind of don't even want to put the sticker back on. I'll think about it.

As you can see, the fan and AC lines are back in as well.

This view is great to me. Having everything from the bumper to the fan completed makes the car look a lot less empty and ready to be finished. If I wasn't in the home stretch before, I certainly am now.

I bought a new turbo bell gasket a while back. I can't find it now though. I never bought an oil drain gasket, and I don't feel like making an order just for that. I'll probably be cutting up a beer box so that I can install the turbo very soon! That will feel like a huge milestone.

 

[granitestategn]

Looking good!

 

[Jon Early]

Thanks to some old forum posts, I found that the turbo drain gasket I forgot to buy can be made effectively out of a beer box. I didn't have any but the oil filter box should work just as well. I first traced the flange with crayon.

Then I cut it out and made it my template for cardboard. Yes, that was the for sale sign that sat in my car last summer. It's funny to see how things have changed.

I skimmed some high temp RTV on both sides and left the bolt holes rough. This way, it holds the bolts nice while I'm trying to attach it to the turbo. Notice that I messed up and failed to get the orientation correct when I tightened the block side. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me, but I wasn't exactly interested in taking everything apart to get it right. I just attached it to the turbo and twisted.

Hopefully I didn't crack it. I'm not proud of what I did, but this pipe is a lot stronger and more flexible than I thought!

I'm going to see if I can get the heater hose out of my way and release the tension on it. I don't see this holding up to a bunch of heat cycles. I'm guessing it'll crack if it hasn't already. For now, I'm continuing on because I need to find out everything else I can mess up.

This looks cool. Too bad it's going to function worse than before if I leave it like this. The top two bolts are the only ones holding the elbow on at the moment. I discovered that the bottom nut was missing because it was never possible to install one, and the second from the bottom is stripped out.

Again, I wasn't interested in removing the turbo after compressing the gaskets. I removed the external wastegate block plate, covered the boogered hole from the inside, and made my right angle drill useful again.

Now it's going to have a mismatched bolt, but that's fine. It's a good thing the other bolt holes were not an issue because the casting quality of this BGC elbow is not too good. I do not have room to drill the other holes bigger.

Speaking of crappy casting, this is the lowermost bolt hole.

You certainly can't get a bolt in there, but you can't even spin the nut on a stud. I'll need to grind away some material so that I can install all the fasteners, repaint, and try again. M wife wasn't feeling great though, so I didn't want to make all that noise. Maybe today I'll get to it.

I did decide to put the intercooler fan back on afterall. I thought with a stock crank pulley, the front of the engine just looks incomplete. I blasted and painted the junkiest hub I had, and bolted it to the nicest fan. It's dirty in the picture, but it'll clean up nicely.

 

[Jon Early]

I had always wondered what the the relief in the external wastegate plug was about. I honestly thought it was a mistake. Apparently it doesn't clear the the turbo shield bracket without one. She's tight!

It took me too long to get the paint to adhere correctly to change it now, but I'm not sure why it came out looking blue. It's the same paint I've used on the heads and block. Oh well. It's mostly invisible with the shield on anyway.

Strange....

I didn't want to ruin my accumulator by keeping the AC system open. I finished installing the compressor and drew a vacuum. After a few hours of sitting with the pump off, the needle hasn't budged.

Still trying to keep quiet I moved on to the alternator. It needs to match, and the dirt isn't going to fly anymore.

I was able to blast and paint the front case and fan, but that's it for now. I need to bring my small standard socket set home to get the rear down to a bare case. I haven't decided if I'll like this or not, but the fan was painted in the aluminum color. I'm considering polishing and then clear coating. I just hope I can get clear coat to adhere to a polished surface. I suppose it's pretty easy to remove later if I wanted to redo it though.

More odds and ends in the "paint booth"

I'm getting super excited! I drove my injector donor home from storage yesterday which is a big relief. It's going to be freezing for the next couple days though, so I might wait to install the rail and everything above it until later in the week when its in the 50s again. You know... Midwest stuff.

 

[1986 Buick GX1]

On the Bowling Green Customs wastegate elbow, the nut for the stud needs to be screwed on as the elbow is being installed. The nut can’t be installed after the elbow is tight to the turbo.

 

[Jon Early]

On the Bowling Green Customs wastegate elbow, the nut for the stud needs to be screwed on as the elbow is being installed. The nut can’t be installed after the elbow is tight to the turbo.

I did discover that. However, in this case the casting is so messed up that a nut has no room to spin or fully seat without rounding itself off. You can see in the picture that all the other bolt heads are actually hanging over the edge. The casting for this was pretty low quality.

I fixed it though. There's plenty of room for nut to rest now.

Showing off my shiny new stainless stud and wiz nut.

Here's one of the rare moments where a junkier wrench becomes important. I definitely should have installed the elbow on the turbo then installed the turbo in the header, but this is how we learn. If we didn't have the junky wrench, the turbo would have had to come off!

The nut is still not sitting flat, but I have faith that this serrated nut isn't going anywhere!

Now I have to pull it apart one last time to recoat the elbow. Otherwise, it's good to go!

 

[Jon Early]

I've been neglecting the thread, and now I have to play catch up. Oops. Cleaned up the little heat shield and breather. I can't run the stock breather anymore with the TA49. That's okay though. Also, notice how blue the heat shield bracket is?? I don't know what happened to that can of paint, it it used to be the same black that I sprayed the heads and block with. Goofy. I ended up needing to respray a few parts because of that.

I pulled the Camaro out of storage which meant I could steal its EV1 style 80# injectors.

I came up with what I think is a slick solution for the boost reference line. I found a piece of vaccuum hose that was slightly too big, and slid it over the whole tube.

Then I used a small piece of the correct sized hose to connect it to the tee. Now the reference line is a lot less noticeable!

Back to more alternator work.

I was really sad when I started putting it back together and ended up breaking a brush. My new assembly was under $20, but it put me about a week behind.

 

[1986 Buick GX1]

I did the vac hose over the boost line as well as the copper oil pressure line (mechanical gauge).
It’s a great idea to protect and hide them.

 

[Jon Early]

I also wanted to suck the AC system down a little longer since I never really gave it a chance to boil all the moisture out. I'm glad I did because I suddenly had massive leak. I thought it was very strange considering that I was leak free with all new seals just a few days prior. When I switched from vacuum pump to shop air, the problem was very obvious. I put the wrong sized seals on the compressor. Too skinny.

These fatter ones worked much better.

I had a hell of a time figuring out how to make that dang BGC elbow fit. Even when leaving all the other bolts loose, I managed to gall up a brand new stainless bolt in my newly threaded hole.

That sucker was STUCK. I feel extremely lucky to have gotten it out without breaking the head off. Look how bent it got!

So I breathed a big sigh of relief, and cleaned up the threads in the turbo, but without any effort at all....

At this point I thought my luck had ran out. I thought the header was going to have to come off just so that I could dump the tap fragment out. Once again, I got lucky. I pulled the crossover pipe, shoved an extending magnet in there as far as I could and fished around for a couple minutes. I heard a little tick, and knew it was time to go buy a lottery ticket.

I hope it's finally on for good!

 

[Jon Early]

I started running my return hose! Too bad I still don't have my fuel pump to connect.

Remember me saying I had to repaint a lot of stuff? That included the driver side header. I'm not sure How I missed this but the dark spot on the plug wire heat shield is not a shadow. It's just the only part that got paint! There was still a lot of rust showing on the bottom too which I'm not sure how I missed. I knew it was only going to get uglier, so I pulled it off and resprayed. Yes, I cleaned my AC pressure switch too!

Guess I'm not reusing the gasket. I'll just use a skim of RTV like everyone else.

That's much better.

I guess I'll work on the turbo heat shield while I wait for downpipe paint to dry. It's a little blah but not bad.

It's getting the Scotch Brite treatment just like the up pipe.

Love it!

It's not perfect, but was it ever? lol

Those awesome MSD wires that I bought from a TSA guy at Nats a few years ago had been uglied up by mice. The pee stains wouldn't come out, and I couldn't replace the chewed up boots without breaking the connection. I have since learned how to make wires myself, so I figured I'd dust off my kit.

It figures that I would be about 4 inches short of having enough wire to make all 6. Oh well! Along with some more 8mm Taylor wire, I bought a body bushing kit because well....

 

[Jon Early]

I'm not doing the body bushings until the car is otherwise done. I think I need a cleaner and more open space for that.

More painting fun. This VHT paint loves to run, and pipes aren't easy to paint to begin with.

Once I got it perfect, I scratched the hell out of it during install. lol There wasn't much avoiding it. At least scratches look better than runs!

I about had a heart attack when I couldn't find the downpipe to elbow gasket. Searching old threads here gave me inconclusive results in terms or replacements. I finally found mine buried in a box, but it looks like I should still get a new one. For now, I'm probably going to spray it with copper sealer, but I'll keep looking for that Ford F-700 part number or whatever it's supposed to be.

It felt so wrong connecting my otherwise nicely painted exhaust up to this rusty turd of a cat-back, but I'm running out of money, and I can change that at any time. I at least replaced the much too small hardware for the test pipe with larger 3/8"-16 stuff. Now the pipes actually mate up right.

Plug wires are done!

While I'm waiting for my fuel pump, I'm going to dig into the pillar again. I bought a new pod to replace the one that's screwed in and sporting a useless alky light hole.