69 SC Journey

Last weekend dad was down to do some charcoal lacquer painting and we had 50 % success...  Finished up the first quart of paint on the rear side panels on Friday and a small redo on the glove box, and had to open the new can mixed for me last fall only to have that paint be a miserable fail.  From the mixing shop's analysis, the blue tint that is in the Ditzler mix must have gone bad.  Paint on the parts looked like someone threw sand on them before painting - wasted time...  ugh.  They mixed me a new can and we'll get the very last of the pieces redone in a few weeks, but I didn't need that much wasted effort.

The rear panels got a light shot of white on them as we finished up the weekend on some white touchup on the rear panel where the rotissiere hooked on, and got a first shot of white on the underside of the scoop.  I am starting to run out of safe places to store finished parts (time to start bolting on!!) so the trunk floor is the current warehouse for these:

This week I started tearing down the upper control arms.  You have to save the cupped and flat washers, so careful drilling was in order.  I used a 9/16" bit to bore it out, then came back in and pecked at the flared end of the bushing with the 5/8" bit until the washer was free.  My bushing rubber was in better shape than I thought with only outer cracking, but they needed to go.  I pressed out the bushings at work the other day, and after getting the blasting done on the arms and some etch primer they are headed out to another forum member's shop for pressing and swaging in the new bushings and washers.  The TSM has no instructions or tools for changing these.  AMC intended these to be full arm replace-outs, so they are not the easiest thing to do right.

The washers were gathered up and bead blasted and tin-zinc plated in prep for their trip out to be re-assembled:

Tonight, I got the top of the scoop painted white.  Watersanding on Saturday and maybe sometime in the next week the inside and inset areas will get flat black.

At the moment we have calipers out for sleeving and rebuilding, and the upper control arms out with another forum member getting the new bushings press-swaged in.  Meanwhile back at the shop I am finishing up the little details to get the dash installed in the next week, starting to assemble the right front axles now that most pieces are detailed and the hardware is back from plating.  The oil pan and alternator brackets have been primed and sanded out in preparation of the motor needing its parts soon.  Back phosphating of hardware was on the docket as well, so I decided to do some the restoration of the NOS exhaust pipe clamps this week (they look sharp), and the hood scoop is being readied to spray the flat black inside and on the center section.  Have you ever masked off a scoop to do that painting?  What a pain in the butt!

A couple pictures of things that have been going on:

NOS as found above.

As restored below:

The hood scoop ready for black spray tomorrow:

The hardware for the front end came back the other week, some of the nice looking original hardware:

With those pieces back in house and the bushings pressed into the powder coated strut rod bracket, I was able to hang the brackets (may have to take down again for engine install - so just finger tightened)

If you can look close at this photo above - you will see the restoration of the hardware as it came off the car - horizontal bolt - zinc, zinc lock washer, and black phosphate flat washer.  The vertical bolts are zinc, with zinc nuts and black phoshpate lock washers - talk about messed up!  Enjoy!

Tonight, I needed to assemble something to feel good about progress, so I was able to pull out the right axle pieces and started to assemble - loving the variation of colors and finishes:

Thought it would be fun to show some of the small things in rebuilding a Rambler, and trying to make good use of things in the shop to get it together, and in some cases, better than factory.

First up:

The steering column middle tube has (or had) a foam seal down at the bottom.  Documented here at teardown:

When I went to do re-assembly last month, I realized that I hadn't gotten any material to replace this.

I remembered that the DMT kit for the rear taillight housing had about the correct thickness foam in it and the diecut remains from the center were still upstairs in the box.  So, it was an opportunity.  After a cut or two, and some double sided adhesive, we had an instant $0 solution that worked perfectly!

A test fit show'd a perfect slide fit!

Second one happened today.  I was working to add the final things to the dash assembly to get ready for the dash install coming very soon.  I had already done gluing repairs on the defroster duct and was ready to bolt fast to the dash.  Test fitting, I started to see why these things always break the tabs off - the brackets are not parallel and they twist the ends down when tightened and because they are brittle - they just cracked.

So I started thinking about what to do with it to improve it and decided I wanted to cushion it, and recalled the DMT foam again and decided that the taillight lens foam would be enough thickness to do the job - so I decided the time to do it was worth it, and spent the next 45 minutes making little foam pads to fit the defroster duct:

It bothered me that although no one would ever see this, it was grey and decided 30 seconds more with a black sharpie would fix that!  Then a little 3M adhesive to bond it on:

After finishing them all, it was finally time to bolt it up.  This worked out good, decreased the stress on the re-glued joint, is invisible, and best of all - it was free.  I would suggest this improvement to everyone re-assembling an American.

This past week one of the side projects was getting the exhaust manifolds ported and cleaned for delivery to Jet-Hot for ceramic coating, as well as getting the original rotors turned, and the hub assembly detailed with high temp cast iron paint and trimmed out.  Those were finished up today and left out in the (finally) 84 deg sun to bake a little.  The races have been changed out and are ready for bearing packing and final assembly when the suspension gets loaded on the car.