Front End Tear Down

It's been a while, but I got word from the machinist that I had risen to the top of the list and my engine will be finished in a couple of weeks.  So, its time to tear down the front end and get all the suspension and steering work done, along with cleaning, sanding and painting the engine well before I install the engine.

The engine has been out for a while.  Now it's time to strip everything else.

Pulled the tranny.  After draining it, I just man-handled it onto the floor, jacked up the side of the car and slid it out.  Doing this project in a home garage is at least twice as much work has having a full shop.

 Ok, so this is new.  I knew the blower motor didn't work.  I wasn't to worried.  I figured it was going to be a wiring issue or something.  Well, apparently, the blower had gone bad once before.  I hadn't noticed the quick and easy method of replacement until the wheel well came out.  Instead of removing the wheel well to get to the fan, the prior owner simply cut a hole in the wheel well, large enough to get the old fan out...then just left it open.  Driving in the rain and snow, did a job on it as the water was flung up from the tire.  The replacement was rusted solid.  I'm deciding between getting a new wheel well or fabricating and "door" that can be bolted and sealed in place in case I ever need to get back in there again.

 Getting close.  Everything is off except for the control arms and the front brace.

 I intentionally left the shock inside the spring until I removed the knuckle and wheel.  That way, as you see above, the spring "chunked" down to extend the bad shock and that was it.  I was then able to unbolt the shock and work it out.  By that time the spring had little tension on it and more fell out on the floor than jumped across the garage into my wife's car or something like that.

Next up?  Take off a few brake lines, the front support the control arms, clean sand and paint.  I'll finally be at a point where I can start putting things together instead of tearing them apart.  That will be a good corner to turn.

Engine Paint Prep

The block is at the machine shop.  I should have the Stroker kit in the next few weeks so, I've started to prep engine parts for paint.  My goal is to have it all ready to paint as soon as I get it so I don't have to deal with the rust that will eventually come.

Here's what the oil pan looked like, after hours of degreasing and scraping off burned on oil.

And now, after stripping, grinding and doing a little dent repair.

The Valley Pan is all shined up now and ready for paint as well.

Engine Disassembly

With the engine out, I took it apart so I can send it to the machine shop.  I'm going to have the machine shop bore out the cylinders to 4.155, the amount required by a stroker kit from Butler Performance.  That will take this 400 up to a 461.

So out came the rockers and then the heads.

I was surprised by the size of the valves.

After taking off the valley pan, I removed the push rods and lifters.

The timing gears and chain.  No wear on the teeth and the chain looked good.

After taking off the timing and the cam plate, I took out the cam.  It looked good, but it's getting replaced.

With the windage tray (a Pontiac pan to prevent oil foam at high rpm's) removed I had access to the dipstick tube, connecting rod caps and main caps.  Off they came.

After taking out the pistons, freeze plugs, oil galley plugs (including the hidden one), the crank shaft and crank bearings, it's ready to go to the machine shop.

Out comes the motor

After spending a couple of weeks disassembling, bagging and cataloging all the engine components...

Out popped the engine.  Lots of room.  No problems.  The only tricky part is the way the headers have to come off as the engine comes out.  It will be even more tricky getting them on as it goes back in and lines up with the tranny at the same time.  (Can't wait.)

 

 Big open hole.

 

 Now comes the clean up.  I'm going to; degrease and repaint everything, replace all the brake, transmission, coolant, fuel, and vacuum lines.  First order of business is to degrease and tear down the engine.  Once I get the heads off, I can see what kind of shape the cylinders are in and measure them to see if there has been a previous rebuild.  If it looks good, I'll only replace the gaskets and seals.  If not, I'll have to do a rebuild.  I don't want to take a chance with a catastrophic failure.  These 400's are too hard to come by.

Front End Mock Up

The first thing I wanted to do on this car was repair the upper grill shown in red below and the lower grill inserts.  All 3 had been damaged in a small fender bender that kinked the bumper up a little and cracked all the plastic and composite.


If I couldn't repair those things then I would have to make a GTO clone out of this car, which I didn't want to do.  1970 was the only year with the beautiful chrome bumper that goes all the way to the top of the grill.  All the other years had grill inserts that are slightly different in size and connections as well, because of that bumper.  Also, the upper grill (because of that bumper design) is different than any other year.  So, I needed to know up front (no pun intended) if the front end was reparable.  It was.


I found that the passenger side clearance light had been weathered and broken.  I couldn't find one as easy as I could repair the old one so I took an old ohm meter connection, stripped the copper insert out of it, cut it, bent it and made a little bulb clamp.  I drilled a hole in the back of the connection, ran a wire through it and soldered on the new clamp.

Then it was just a matter of pulling the wire back through the housing and seating the little clamp.  Here you can see the finished product and the type of bulb that it uses.

The difficult part of the front end installation was making the fitment adjustments of the bumper supports.  There are about 10 variables to work with and a place to adjust all of them.  The bumper and grill on this year of Pontiac is kind of complex in the way it all has to go together and of course, I did it the hard way.  As I was nearing the end I could see that original assemblers had put the entire front end together and then bolted it onto the frame instead of putting it together a piece at a time.  When I pull it all off to paint, that's the way I'll do it.

Upper Grill

Bumper with Lower Grill Inserts

Mock Up Installation

The red paint is just some rattle can stuff I put on there to protect the fiberglass and composite from weathering.  When I'm ready to paint, it will have to be stripped, sanded, primed, etc.  But for now, it's nice to look at and imagine just how cool this year of Lemans really is.

Steering Column

I've been going out starting the car on Saturday mornings to keep the battery charged and to keep the engine easy to start.  A couple of months ago, I went out to start it and the key mechanism broke loose.  It wasn't the tumbler, but I was going to change the key switch and door locks anyway.  I also knew I had to replace the turn signal switch because it was broken.  So, off came the steering wheel and this is what I found.

The rest came out in a handful of broken pieces.  Most of the nuts and screws hand long since fallen out.  For those interested, to the right of the sun glare (sorry about that) there's a screw hole.  Attached to that there's a ridge of metal that goes down and to the right.  The slot inside that ridge is where you release the key tumbler mechanism.

Here's a picture showing the junk that came out.

The broken piece was the sector gear that turns to move the race and pull the ignition switch.  One tiny little plastic tooth broke and shut down the whole project.  The hard part was finding a replacement.  There are plenty of replacements for non-tilt steering wheels.  Those only have 5 teeth.  The tilt wheel sector gear has 6.  Here you can see the old broken gear and the new black one that came from a Corvette restoration shop.  All GM cars with tilt from 69-76 use this gear.  You would think they would be more easy to find.

Here's the hole it goes in.  A rod goes through that hole and into the key tumbler.  That's why these cars were so easy to steal.  A thief could pull the key tumbler out with a slide hammer and turn that rod with a pair of pliers and be gone almost as fast as someone with a key.

And here's the column with the gear in place as well as the spring that moves the steering wheel lock post.

After that it was easy to put in the new turn signal switch,

Then the steering wheel lock plate,

and all done.  While I had it out, I stripped off the old green and painted it gloss black and the gear indicator red.  I've decided to go with a black interior with red accents and red exterior with black stripes.