All but the right front rotor has now been removed from the car. That rotor is really really really stuck. Heated it for a while and tried to hammer it off... nothing. Now I've got a couple of bar clamps (the kind that use black pipe) configured to apply pressure to the rotor to try and get it off the car. Hopefully with the constant pressure the liquid wrench will be able to get something to happen.
I gave T the option of removing all the lights, removing the rest of the interior, or taking out the motor next. He decided to remove the lights. I think it was a good choice. We'll start that on Wed.
T, S, and I put a few more hours in the garage yesterday. It's much nicer in there with all the extra space, and Terran is getting good at vacuuming up the rust that falls off the car every day ;)
We removed another brake and a half. The left front is completely removed, and the right front is basically done except that we can't seem to get the rotor off. It's really stuck on there well. We worked on it for a good 10 mins and it's not moving. I think we'll have to get creative about taking it off now.
Both front brakes were totally locked up, which would explain why pushing the car was so darn hard when we first picked it up. I had to pound them off the rotors with a mallet... a lot.
The most exciting part was getting the brake lines off the calipers. We had snipped them because the brake line connectors were tototally frozen in place. My neighbor stopped by last night and recommended heating them with a torch to try and free them up a bit.
Shmoo and I are not ones to turn down an opportunity to play with fire. So I fired up the propane torch and shmoo put the left front caliper in the vice. I heated it for a while and some brake fluid started to drip out of the lines as it expanded... we got a giggle out of that. We were a bit taken aback then when a bunch of fluid shot out one of the lines and flew across the room hitting the tool box I have. Safety goggles for everyone at that point.
We eventually got all the brake lines removed from the calipers with only a few fires. So now we can really focus on trying to clean the calipers up. One more brake and then we can start taking appart the suspension. What fun.
Lots of progress on the car this weekend. Saturday T, Shmoo, and I worked on getting the brakes off the car. I was hoping for all 4. We ended up getting one. But still, it was progress.
At the start of the morning (about 4 hours before we worked on the car) I soaked every part of every brake with PB Blaster to free the rust up a bit. I've at least learned that lesson.
First, we tried to drain the brake system a bit just for fun (wanted to see if the rear brakes were even getting pressure). The bleeder valve wasn't really a bleeder valve anymore.. it was basically a rusted knob on the brake. Strike one. Then we tried to remove the brake shoes from the caliper. Turns out the shoes were missing on the brake we were working on (right rear). Strike 2. Then, we tried to remove the brake line from the caliper so we could get the caliper off. Again, totally rusted and ended up rounding off the nut. Strike 3.
At this point we went right for the big guns... Tin snips. We put a pan under the brake and just snipped the line. Very little actually came out of the system reinforcing my feeling that the rear brake line is destroyed halfway down the length of the car (doesn't matter.. I'm replacing all of it anyway).
Then we had 2 bolts to take off that were attaching the calipers to the axle. 5/8" bolts, to be exact. Thankfully I could get a socket on them, because I ended up putting a 3' breaker bar on the socket to get the bolts loose. I also had to wear safety goggles because every time I moved something under the car, rust would break loose and fall on me.
Yeah.. this car is a project.
Anyhoo, magically got the bolts loose and out without breaking them. Terran got to work using a wire brush to knock all the rust off the caliper. Then there were two phillips screws holding the break rotor onto the axle. Of course there was no way to unscrew these by hand (not rusted, but definitely in there real good). So I put a phillips bit into my DeWalt hammer drill (the one Beetle used to drill a hole in his frame when the drill was set to reverse... it's got a lot of power). In normal drill mode, it couldn't break the screws loose.
By this point Shmoo was sensing the impending disaster and had grabbed the camera to photograph what was about to happen. I switched the drill to hammer mode and slowly pulled back on the trigger... kept pulling.. more noise, but no movement.. Shmoo's just waiting with the camera trained in on me.
Then, at 3/4 throttle, *whirr* the screw comes out. Not broken, not as a projectile... just really quick. "Is that it?" Shmoo asks... apparently it was. Repeated the same process for the other screw and pulled the rotor off. Huh. Sometimes things work out.
At this point we realized that the socket we used for the calipers had the bolt stuck in it. So shmoo goes to work to get that out. T keeps brushing the calipers and starts working on the rotor as well. I get the parking brake off (it's a drum style shoe). Shmoo still hadn't got the bolt out, so I offered to help. The socket was in the vise and we was trying to turn the bolt with pliers. No joy. I tried a pipe wrench. No joy. So then I revert to caveman methods... smacking it around. I take the pipe wrench and (without warning) swing upwards on the bolt. The socket moved in the vice a bit, but nothing else happened. "That would have been awesome if that worked" shmoo says. I agreed and without warning, took another swing. It worked that time. The bolt rocketed upwards and bounced off something (I think it was the cabinet, shmoo says it was the roof) and instantly returned to earth hitting the top of the compressor. It had some velocity, that's for sure.
Anyhoo, I then moved on to the front brakes, but those were totally rusted as well. So I snipped the two brake lines going into those calipers and left the pan under it to drain the whole system. That's where I left the car. So really, 1 and 1/2 brakes removed from the car.
Also, we went to Home Depot and got a new rack for the garage to help organize things a bit more. Today Bobby and I put it together (I had to use his plastic hammer to put the pieces together... at least initially.. then it was his hammer and my mallet in unison). Now I've got most of my medium sized tools on the rack (mitre, band, and scroll saws) as well as the spare B20 motor I have (in case the one in the 1800 now dies) and I have a TON more room in the garage. It took 3 hours to clean it all up, but it looks great now and we've got a lot more room to move around in. So hopefully in a couple days T and I will get the other brakes off.
No updates to the site in a while, but there has been progress on the car. T and I finally got all the seat stuff out. The left hand side driver seat rail had to be cut out with a pneumatic cut off tool. So now there's another big hole in the floor, but at least the rails are out. I then had to cut the bolts off the rail... that was an adventure. I need better cut off disks and a new hack saw blade, because one bolt took damn near 20 minutes. Not cool.
We then took the back seat back (ie: the thing your back goes on in the back seat) out. That was 4 bolts, so it should have been easy, right? Nope. 3 hours of total labor. The first three bolts came out pretty easy (T was basically a wedge holding up the seatback while we did this). The last bolt? well, once I managed to get to it and get a breaker bar on the allen wrench (!) I actually managed to twist the bolt completey out of the wheel well where it was attached. Tore a huge chunk of metal out in the process. Mental note: need to patch that too.
I swear, every bolt I take out of the car takes an hour.
Anyway, the seat back was in good condition. the frame around it was missing a few screws, and one of the latches is missing, but the leather and carpet are good, and no critters appear to have made a home in it. It's stored in the basement now with the front seats. We also took out the rear window ledge where the speakers were. That was totally an aftermarket thing in there made of plywood and carpet. Threw the whole thing out. It was a hack job when it was made, and 15 years of storage didn't do it any good.
So, I'm sick of the interior for a while I think. I'm currently printing out the brake manual. T and I are going to try and get all four disks off this weekend. By my calculation, that's 8 bolts, 4 pins, and 8 brake line connections. If we do this in under 20 hours, I'll be happy.