Sunday 26 February 2012

Everything old is new again

So off came the defective new water pump and the old pump was tidied up before being reinstated...

WaterPump01


And new gaskets made up...

WaterPump02

All back together (I am getting pretty good at this now), coolant in, test drive. All good.

Monday 20 February 2012

Groan!

Test drive, taking the kids to school in the morning.

Overtemp light on with low coolant. Topped up the coolant as the system rid itself of all air bubbles. All good, except I noticed a leak at the heater spigot going into the water pump. Trying to tighten it yielded (literally) this...

D'oh!

The casting around the spigot just crumbled... a bad casting in the brand new water pump. Great!

Looks like the old pump goes back on and I see if I can get my $'s back from Rare Spares <sigh>.

Sunday 19 February 2012

The one on the right!

With the carb rebuilt and back together, it was time to wack it back on and fire it up!

Time to pick a gasket (two came in the rebuild kit)...

The one on the right!

The one on the right matched what was on the car to begin with, but I wanted to try the one on the left as it seemed to match the pattern under the 4GC.

Ahhh... no. With the carby sandwiching the gasket on the left, the old girl would fire, but quickly die and would only sputter along if I held plenty of revs... all the while hearing a MASSIVE vacuum leak.

Left it all for church, then after church dug into swapping the gasket for the one on the right.

With the right gasket in place... muuuuch better! Idled fine, revved fine; all good.

J

Saturday 18 February 2012

(lack of) Choke Mechanism

With the rest of the carby back together, the only thing left was to reinstall the choke mechanism in a locked-open position to ensure that the fast idle cam isn't engaged.

The choke butterflies were removed...

Bye choke butterfly...

...and I inserted a short piece of AT hose in the choke linkage to remove any slop...

Deleted Choke

The added bonus of the addition of the small length of hose was when the linkage was tightened, it lightly crushed the rubber which in turn held the linkage in place and ensures the choke can't "close" and engage the fast-idle cam.

Deleted Choke

John

Bottom Radiator Hose

Sourced one from Chevparts in Yennora on 08/02/2012...

IMAG0196


14/02/2012
After a bit of shortening I managed to make it fit and the coolant went back in.

As the coolant went in, the blanking plug at the top of the pump leaked, so I had a to figure out a way to tighten it.

Water Pump Blanking Plug


16/02/2012
Had a chat to fitters at work. They suggested using a 9/16" bolt/lock nut arrangement as a make-shift hex drive. Brilliant!

Tightened the water pump blanking plug with the suggested make-shift hex drive... all good!

J

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Shiny!

New acquisition via a mate (thanks Andrew!) while in the States on business...

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Ramblings re. Cooling

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, 7 February 2012 2:26 PM
To: JtC
Subject: Fan Shroud
I need to check it for myself, but it looks like the ’65 only had a shroud with the small block if it was air con (or “heavy duty cooling” optioned)…
http://www.impalas.net/forums/showpost.php?p=20135&postcount=17

John

From: JtC
Sent: Tuesday, 7 February 2012 2:17 PM
To: Driver, John
Subject: Re: Thanks!

Clutch fans certainly came later on. I honestly think we try source a fixed one for now, even if from a Holden wrecker - we can take the old pump with us to make sure it bolts up. Take fan too, to check diameter of blades.

Actually: you can buy good plastic multi blade units from Rare's, I put one on the Monaro.

Shroud? See if the plastic ones sold by Rare Spares are still avail- I also fitted one of these to the Munro. We will need to check radiator size against dad's HK's radiator... I think it's the same.
Sent from my CincoPhone



On 07/02/2012, at 1:57 PM, John wrote:
I have also done a bit of research (read asking Mr Chev Parts at Yennora) about fans, fan clutches and shrouds.

He didn’t think the ’65 came with a clutch fan, but couldn’t be sure.

A quick dig on the Impala Bob website didn’t come up with any clutch style fans so my guess is a simple mechanical fan w/o clutch.

I sooo don’t have the original fan…
http://www.impalas.com/1955-1966-bel-air-engine-fan-blade-4-blade-v8-6-cyl/bl225.html
But if mine was locked solid, you would think it would flow better than the one in the link.

Mr Yennora also checked to see if he had a shroud, but no luck there, even 2nd hand.

You can get them from Impala Bobs, but I am not sure the small block came with them standard…
http://www.impalas.com/1965-1966-impala-fiberglass-fan-shroud-283-327-small-block/170001.html

The listing for the big block shroud refers to it as “…a nice fiberglass reproduction of the original GM part…” but not so for the small block one.

John

Saturday 4 February 2012

Carby Rebuild

Last year I sourced a rebuild kit for the Rochester 4GC carburettor from the states and now it was time to strip the carby and put the kit through it.

Joe came up and we set to work... well... Joe set to work ;-)

4GCRebuild01

4GCRebuild02


All parts were soaked in thinners and blown-out with compressed air.

Dimension settings were listed in the kit.

By the end of the day, the carb was back together, sans choke linkage.

While JtC rebuilt the carb, I pulled off the water pump and replaced it with a new one sourced from Rare Spares. The bottom radiator hose was severely perished, so a new one will need to be sourced before the coolant can go back in.

Once off, the old pump had it's cover removed to reveal.... perfect! The impeller looked brand new and there was no slop in the shaft! Obviously the pump was not the reason for overheating.

So the new pump stayed on and the old pump stored away as a spare.