Water Pump

I took the car to a local body shop in February. The bottoms of the doors were rusted out, there was some rust on the trunk lid, on the fenders, rocker panels, and a couple other places. I found some replacement doors from the T-bird center in Ohio. I ordered some new fender skirts, since the original ones disappeared somewhere between Italy and England. I also ordered all of the weatherstripping and gaskets needed.

During the body work, the shop found out that the new drivers-side door was somewhat warped, and did not fit the body well. Since these doors are scarce, I had them work it as best as they could.

I have never liked the original color of this car. In 1956, Ford offered T-birds in Fiesta Red, which has too much orange in it for my tastes, so for the new paint I chose Torch Red, which was offered in 1955. It's a much deeper red, less orange. Also, since the interior of the 1955 is quite similar to the 1956 (only the pattern on the seat was different), I can get interior vinyl and paint in the correct color to match the body.

So, I finally got the car out of the shop about a month ago (pictures coming soon). On the drive home, I noticed a new (not good) sound. At first I thought it was the transmission, but I eventually tracked it down to the fan. The bearings in the water pump broke, and the water pump was throwing grease on the underside of my newly clean and painted hood.
So, I got to work tearing down the cooling system. I bought a new high output water pump, new thermostat, new hoses, new gaskets, new clamps, and various other fun things.
When re-installing the thermostat housing with the new thermostat, one of the bolts broke. I had the torque wrench set to 18 ft-lbs, and later I checked, and the correct setting was 12-15 ft-lbs. This difference should not have broken the bolt, so I figure it was just old. I found new bolts, and installed the thermostat housing.
Next came the water pump, fan, belts, fan shroud (how I hate that thing), and all of the hoses.
On the test drive, I found a leak at the bottom radiator hose (where it meets the radiator). That's always a hard one to get right. I have yet to be able to get that down, but I can do that some night this week.
Anyway, after all of this, I hope to drive it to work next week (after I have a bit more confidence in my fix).

Now that the exterior looks so good, the interior looks worse than it did before. I need to get the power windows working, and I've got a new wiring harness for the driver's side door. Once the windows are working, I might be able to start on the rest of the interior.

Hot Rod Revolution

Went to the Hot Rod Revolution today at Camp Mabry. Here are a few pictures:

The Doors

Paint and Body

I've been wanting to get some body work done, and the paint redone, for quite a while.
The current paint job dates to 1983. It's quite faded now, and it wasn't very good when it was done, anyway. The color is supposed to be the original Fiesta Red, the same color it was when it was made. I've never been a big fan of Fiesta Red - it's got way too much orange in it for my taste.
Here's a photo of the right front fender. There are a few dings in it, but the body panel seems to be straight. The headlight rims are chromed, which is non-original. I'm not sure when that was done. They've been like that my whole life.

The front end
The bumper is in quite good shape. It was re-chromed almost 30 years ago, and it still looks really good. Notice the ding in the center below the Thunderbird emblem. That happened some time while I was in high school - I don't know who did it.







I'll publish another post soon with details of more of the body.

More about the Brake Conversion

Bleeding the brakes was difficult for a couple of reasons.
1. I had not connected all of the brake lines. I guess it was sort of a "I'll do it later", but forgot.
2. I had a few leaks. I hadn't tightened all of the connections.
3. The crappy one-way valve I bought for bleeding at Harbor Freight Tools (I know, I know, Harbor Freight sucks) was leaking.
4. It takes a lot of pumping to clear the air out of completely empty lines. A LOT of pumping.
5. Once I had completely got everything bled, I noticed a leak on the line going into the power brake booster. As I tightened it, I stripped out the threads on the brass fitting. Finding a replacement part was somewhat difficult - none of the catalogs carry the part (some of them have a part number, but none of them carry it), and getting the specs for the part was pretty hard. Eventually I found someone who knew the weatherhead part number. From that, I found an auto parts store here in Austin that had it. The part I ended up installing is Edelmann 265301. 3/16 inch female thread, 1/2 - 20 male to go into the booster.
Now everything is back together. The brakes work well, but are still a little spongy. The power booster is working quite well.
Anyway, here's some pictures.
The replacement fitting is on the top center part of the picture, going into the booster.
Here's the new dual chamber master cylinder:

Below, the pictures are the left front rotor and caliper, right front rotor and caliper, and a couple of pictures of the car.

Brake Conversion Complete (almost)

The disc brake conversion is complete (mostly).
Once I got all of the parts in, the first thing I did was replace the pads and cylinders on the rear brakes. This was fairly simple, but there was quite a bit of grime on all of the parts. The pads were not completely worn, but the wear was uneven, probably because the springs were not installed correctly.
Once I had the rear pads replaced, with the new cylinders from the disc brake conversion kit installed, I replaced the brake lines on the rear axle. This took a bit more time than I thought, since I had failed to order the flexible rubber hose that attached the brake line on the frame to the rear axle.
Next, I painted and mounted the rebuilt power brake booster. I did this first to get an idea for how all of the new brake lines needed to be installed.
Next, I removed all of the parts from the front drum brakes. Since these were not going to be reinstalled, I didn't bother cleaning them, but I did keep them (since replacement drums are quite expensive).
Finally, I removed the master cylinder and the rest of the brake lines. I found the broken brake line on the front right side (which was the cause of loss of brake pressure which triggered this project).
Next job was to install the new front brake discs and calipers. I started with the front left since it was at a more convenient location in the garage. On my first try, I installed the mounting plate, and installed the brake caliper. However, I installed the brake caliper on the wrong side of the mounting plate, and was not aware that I needed to grind down a minute portion of the spindle before the installation. After grinding it down a bit, the mounting plate and caliper installed correctly.
Of course, the caliper needed to be removed before installing the rotor (but was necessary for making sure it fit). To install the rotor, I needed to pack the bearings, which was a new experience for me. I found some very helpful youtube videos that showed how to do it without special tools. Only time will tell if I did it entirely correctly.
Once I was sure I had the left rotor installed, I installed the right front, which considerably less difficulty.
Next I installed the new brake lines. One of the brake lines, the rearmost line attached to the frame, I was unable to remove. This seems to be because the lines were designed to be installed before the body was attached to the frame. Thus, I could not get the old line off without bending it out of shape. If I was going to have to damage the line removing it, I was not going to be able to install the new line without damaging it, so I just left the old line in.
The disc brake conversion kit has a dual bowl master cylinder. This is a massive safety improvement, but it meant that the front and rear brake systems had to be separated. This was accomplished by simply removing the line connecting one of the frame brake line blocks to the front left brake. The unused connection on the block was plugged with a part from the conversion kit. Note: this means the power brake booster only works on the front brake system. The rear brakes are still manual.
After I had all of the brake lines installed, I needed to bleed the master cylinder before connecting the lines. This was done with a kit that I bought at an auto parts store.
Another thing to note: not all of the crush washers I needed for this job were supplied with the kit. This was because I did not already have the power brake booster installed, and was not strictly a deficiency in the kit.
Next post I will go over the issues I had (and am still having) bleeding the brakes.

Left Rear Brake Drum

Since I was unable to make progress on the power brake booster rebuild, and I found a place that would do it for only $50, I mailed it in.
In the mean time, I took a look at the left rear brake drum. It was pretty dirty in there - lots of road grime. That's not too surprising, since the brakes haven't been done in probably over 20 years. The rear brake pad had some uneven wear on it, which if memory serves me, indicates that the springs are unevenly worn. That's not so bad, since replacing the springs on both rear drums costs about $7. The brake cylinder looked pretty bad on the outside, but once I got it taken apart, it was in surprisingly good condition. There wasn't much fluid in there, which isn't so surprising, since the hydraulic system seems to have lost pressure. There didn't appear to be a significant leak in the left rear wheel.
I'm predicting that I won't find a definitive cause to the loss of pressure - the entire system probably died from a million little pinholes. If the rest of the wheels are like this one, the amount of fluid loss of all of the wheels was probably enough.
In any case, I am going to be replacing all of the brake lines. The disc brake conversion for the front includes brake cylinders for the rear wheels. Once the power brake booster is back from the rebuilder, and get the parts I'm ordering in, I should be able to start and get the work done in a couple of weekends.