What is the good of having a blog if you don’t rant once in awhile? Eh?
With the Dodge wagon down in Glendale on spring break at Lui’s for her new threads, I decided to clean the shop, kind of, I used the leaf blower to move some of the body work dust around and then I swept the floor and put away most of the left over parts and pieces. It took me most of a day to sort and put away all of the nuts, bolts and screws that were left laying around the place.
I then moved the ’39 on to the lift to check her out and do a little service and PM before taking her to San Diego later this month, which brings me to my Rant!
Shiny After Market Hot Rod Parts – I began to really hate most all after market custom, racing, hot rod parts when we were off road racing. Off road racing moves the concept of part function and reliability to a whole new level. We quickly found that most of the parts developed for drag racing or worse yet hot rods would not survive to constant stress and work loading that a car gets in a 400-1000 mile off road race. For the most part we either used stock parts when we could or we re-engineered after market parts so that they would live.
My ’39 was built way back in the mid 1990s and from as near as I can tell it was a 1-800 project which used a number of after market parts in the build. Since I bought the car back in 2003 and started driving it instead of hauling it around in a trailer like the former owner and builder did.
Over the last 10 years I have been steadily replacing, repairing or re-engineering most all of the 1-800 parts that had been used to build the car originally. Most of the crap stopped working or failed early on as we started to really drive the car and not haul it around on a trailer. That lead to a period of about 5 years where the car drove well and didn’t cause any undo problems. At 85K miles we are now moving into a different mode of failure – fatigue. Where most automotive parts these days are designed by the factory engineers to last close to 200K miles before failing, most after market parts have been designed to last until the buyer gets them home.
After getting the car up on the lift, the 1st thing I noticed was that the lower shock mount on the right rear was bent down nearly an inch! And the shock was blown! How could that have happened? I didn’t recall hitting anything hard enough that could have bent the mount that much, let alone the hit would have had to come from above. So, out come the tools and I quickly pulled both lower spring plates off to inspect everything.
The rear suspension was manufactured by Chassis Engineering back in the 90s but is still being made and sold today. On the whole the spring perches and spring mounts were nicely made and were welded to the Chevy 10 bolt rear axle in a professional way. The problem was the lower spring plate which was basically a piece of 1/4″ cold roll steel that was cut and drilled to fit the spring mount. The lower shock mount was basically a shock bolt that had been notched and welded to the plate in a position that had it cantilevered off the back of the plate.
Once I got the plate off and inspected it, I noticed right away that a crack had formed from the closest mounting hole to the out side of the plate where the shock mount began. Over the years metal fatigue had set in causing the plate to crack and then to bend. Had the plate been gusseted on the mount side it would have never failed. I then checked the left plate and it was cracked as well, not as bad yet but definitely cracked.
The repair entailed notching the crack with the cut off wheel, straightening the plate using a 2 1/2# hammer and anvil, then welding the crack and using a flap disc to level the weld so that a nut and washer could be used. I then cut a couple of 11/2″ straps from some 3/16″ stock and made a gusset for each plate and welded them in to form a T on the shock mount side.
I then moved to the front of the car where I pulled the side panels off to improve access to the headers. It was then I noticed that the alternator was not sitting parallel to the engine anymore. The lower mounting bolt had broken. The alternator and A/C brackets had been ordered from Street Performance back in the 90s. The brackets themselves are well designed cast and polished aluminum pieces, unfortunately they chose to use stainless bolts to mount the brackets to the block/heads and to bolt the alternator and compressor to the brackets. Sometime ago, I had to replace the stainless bolts on the compressor with grade 5 steel. Unfortunately I neglected to replace the stainless bolts on the alternator. The issue is that stainless fasteners will soften in time if they are subjected to heat, once the soften they will break. So I screwed up when I didn’t replace all of them when I was having issues with the compressor. Pay me now or pay me later!
The take away is that if you are going to use any shiny after market stuff, at least replace the stainless fasteners in any stress type applications.
I finally got to the headers! Over the years I had been fighting leaks between the heads and the header flanges on the tubular Hooker Headers. Two years ago, I pulled the headers off and sanded the flanges flat, then I laid down a weld bead around each exhaust port, and then sanded the welds flat and around .080″ proud to give a decent mounting surface to bite into the gasket. It worked well for about a year then started leaking again. Late last year I had a chance to pick up a set of cast Sanderson headers from Larry Besore which would solve my mounting problems and also help move the collector further away from both the power steering box and the starter, but of which need periodic replacement due to the added heat load.
After I removed the headers, the 1st thing I noticed was that the exhaust gaskets had not been blown! That was the good news, the bad news was that once I got the flanges sealed, it blew out the welds around the header tubes and the collector… again, a drag race part that was meant to be used only on week ends failed when put into long term use. When I built the wagon, one of my 1st decision was to use the stock Dodge exhaust system if at all possible to maintain as much reliability as possible.
The cast Sanderson headers are much like the stock cast rams horn headers, except that they are pulled in tighter to the block to give better clearance, and as such I think that my header problems will be a thing of the past. To get enough clearance on the power steering box, I had to swap the headers from right to left sides to move the collector forward enough to clear the steering box. It will be heading over to Performance Automotive on Monday to have Anthony fab up some new head pipes.
Rant off, I feel better now. It is good to have all of this at the front of my mind as I am thinking about how I am going to do the ’40 build. I am pretty sure that it wont have a lot of shiny after market stuff on it… just saying…