http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTzLVIc-O5E
This post is about parts. They're all over the house, under the pool table, in the closet, and just piled up everywhere.
They all have their demands. The old ones need to be cleaned and painted, the new ones, well, that's even worse. We'll talk about that in another post. I've been corresponding with a couple of brothers who also restored a 69. It's just getting on the road and they started in .... 2002. I'm beginning to see how that can be.
In thinking about this post a little I've decided the old parts are pretty boring. Most everything is obvious, take a picture, put whatever in a bag with a little tag and hope you can figure it out later.
Sometimes there is a right and a left and it is important to keep them apart. An example is my front wheel hubs which have bearing races that will need to have the original bearings restored to their proper hub. I've got some case hardened metal letter and number stamps that I can hammer an identifier onto the part, just in case they get mixed up. Get enough parts out of the bags and onto the bench and it becomes three card monte real quick..
Witness marks are also useful. Scribe positions with a metal scribe where alignment matters. Car doors and hoods are really annoying to align. Rob suggested drilling a hole in my door hinges which I thought was a great idea.
What I've learned from past work is if parts are rusty and you only clean them up, they'll just rust faster the next time unless they are protected somehow. They can be blasted (bead blasting is best), and either plated or painted.
Not having access to a bead blaster, I've been using my sandblaster. Dave at Component Finishing where I got the frame done, gave me a bucket of the "sand" that he uses, and it is way different than the sand you get at the beach. It is some kind of metallic byproduct, is black and gritty and agressive. You do have to get the grease off of everything and then it works amazingly well. Highly recommend that if you have any significant cleaning to do you get this special sand. Sandblasting takes a lot of compressor however and the better stuff is a lot less work for the compressor. The blowback is fierce, don't try this without a mask and gloves and long sleeves.
For corrosion protection, it's mostly been the POR-15 product, either silver or black. The black is hard to tell from the powdercoat and both colors are really tough. You can bend or hammer it. I used a variant of the product for my rotors. That product has to be heated to 350 degrees for 10 minutes to cure. Thought dangerous thoughts about shoving them in the oven when Betty was somewhere else and then realized I had a gas barbeque and could do the whole bake outside.
I've also been using a dilute mix of the black POR-15 to coat bolts and that is a pretty good imitation of the factory black oxide. The latter has little or no corrosion resistance. We'll see how the former works. Nuts and washers are replacements, mostly stainless steel from ARP. We are a long way from NCRS standards by now.
I could go the plating route but then I have to dump everything in a bucket, get somebody to bead blast it, get the bucket contents plated and then try to figure out where everything goes again. Kinda destroys the work of putting things in bags. Entropy at work here.
Told you this was boring. Let me close with my three laws.
- When you are done using something, put it back where you found it.
- If you can't find what you are looking for, start cleaning up. You will eventually come across it.
- When you are done with it, put it back in the first place you thought to look for it.
Step 2) is the difficult step. Stop looking, start cleaning. Works for me!
