Calling Fred Flintstone

The floor pans, the most obvious problem with the El Camino, is now being rectified. By this time next week, it will no longer be a car that Fred Flintstone could drive, but a real, modern car … with a floor and everything.

It is funny how rust works. The floor was completely ruined in this car, yet the underfloor bracing was solid. Josh, the guy working on the car, said this is the first car he has seen where the pans were so far gone yet they didn’t have to replace the braces.

Small victory to be sure, but I will take my wins where I can at this point.

Photograph taken January 27, 2012

Going broke saving money

A few weeks ago I registered the El Camino and set it up on our insurance as “Devon’s” car.

Because of some stupid insurance rule, if you have the same number of cars as drivers, each driver has to be assigned to a car as a primary driver. Never mind that one of the cars, the Challenger, is never driven … by anyone. Never mind that on a day to day basis she has no car available to drive. None of that matters. All that mattered to the insurance company is that we had three cars and three drivers, and therefore Devon had to be listed as a primary driver on something. The effect of assigning Devon to a car as if it were her own, my Civic in this case, was our insurance went from around $600 every six months to around $1,750 for the same period.

This morning I received the new bill for our insurance, the first one after placing the El Camino on the policy. As expected, it went down. Instead of the $1,750 that it was going to be, it is now $1,248. For the math challenged, that’s a savings of a $1,000 a year. Never mind the fact that nothing has changed, having a clunker with her name on it dots the “I’s” and crosses the “T’s” for the insurance company.

By coincidence, $1,000 is also the amount I paid for the El Camino. So in a year I have paid for the El Camino from the savings in insurance. Now, getting the car road worthy … that is going to take a little longer to recoup.

Cason is promoted

It took three tries to get the Roundhouse Kick right, but Cason finally passed his test and was promoted tonight from a Yellow belt to an Orange/White belt.

I knew as soon as I saw him coming to the car he had passed. Both kids have an extra spring in their step when they pass their promotion test.

Photograph taken January 23, 2012

Work in progress

I stopped by Murphy Rod & Custom today to see what progress has been made on the El Camino. The short answer is some. When I arrived Josh, Kelly’s son, was welding away on a door and the firewall.

The door was having some minor rust issues repaired, and on the firewall he was sealing up holes left from the removal of the heater core. The reason that he was working on both at the same time is that you have to weld slowly to prevent the warping of the sheet metal. So while one place was cooling, he was welding on another place, and in between bouts of welding, he was grinding the welds to make them smooth.

The holes are in the fire wall because the firewall is being smoothed. Smoothing the firewall is taking off some or all of the things that the manufacture placed there to obtain a clean look. Some people take it to an extreme and remove everything, but in my case I am just having the heater core removed. The holes that remain are where the ducting attached to the heater core and if they are not sealed up, well, the car would be a might drafty. Because the car is having an aftermarket air conditioner put in the heater core is no longer necessary. The air conditioner unit, which is mounted under the dash, not only will cool the interior of the car but it will also heat it. So I guess the unit would be more accurately called an aftermarket climate control system.

Also this week, the drip rails were shaved. Drip rails haven’t been found on cars in years, but at one time nearly every car had them. The drip rail was a bit of curved metal attached to the roof that ran along the top of the door. They were there to prevent rain from running off the roof and onto the door by channeling the rain around the door opening.

On my car I had them removed, or shaved, to clean the roof-line of the car up a bit. You can see the roof after the rails were removed in the last few pictures. For such a small change, the impact on the look is enormous. I think that is going to be money well spent.

The last picture shows another disappointing find. After much consideration it was decided that the front of the bed need to be replaced. The panel that was there looked ok, but the supports behind the bed were so deteriorated that it was cheaper to replace the whole thing than to try to fix the support.  It is amazing the amount of damage a little leak can do.

Nearly every GM made during the 1960′s and early ’70′s leaked around the rear window. It is a given that if you buy an unrestored car from this area you are going to have rust to repair around the back glass. This El Camino is no exception, and I knew about the rust when I bought it.

Unfortunately that leak allowed water to get into other places and cause rust that is now going to have to be repaired. Fortunately there are products available that weren’t available in 1969 that will prevent this from happening again. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating when you have to cut out and repair all this rust though. You can tell where old cars rust without ever setting eyes on them. Just look through a catalog of parts … if you find replacement panels, that is a good indication that those panels are prone to rust. For an El Camino, almost every piece of the car is available … if that tells you anything.

Despite it all, this is still a better than average example of a 1960′s GM product. I just thought I was getting a much better than average example when I bought it.

Photographs taken January 16 & 20, 2012

That was close

I left work early yesterday so that I could get Cason to the dojo early to sign him up for an upcoming sword clinic. This clinic, where they will teach the students basic Japanese sword techniques, is all he has been talking about for the last week. When the class was announced it was suggested that you sign up early because the class was expected to fill up quickly.

Taking the Sensei at his word, we arrived at the dojo at six-fifteen, forty-five minutes early for class but fifteen minutes after sign up started. Cason was number seventeen on the list … out of twenty available spots. The front desk lady said they had people waiting since five o’clock to sign up.

It’s a good thing I left early or I don’t think he would have gotten in.

It’s a frame up

Now that the body is back from the media blaster, it is time for the frame and suspension pieces to go out for blasting to remove all the rust, grease and accumulated gunk.  And as you can see, there is a lot of it to remove.

After the frame and salvaged suspension pieces are cleaned up they will be sent out for paint. Not only will they look better after being painted, they will also be protected from future rust.

Thus far I have been pouring money into the car and it has been getting worse instead of better. I think we have turned the corner on that and now we will begin to see some improvement.

Photographs taken January 9, 2012

It’s always something

Friday I decided that I needed to get either the Lincoln or the Challenger out for a drive. It has been a while and they needed the exercise. I finally settled on the Challenger for no other reason than I just picked it.

The plan for Friday was to drop Devon off at school, then I would swing by and pickup the Challenger before returning home to do some more laundry. Later I would pick Devon up at school, bring her home, do another load of laundry while waiting for time to pick Cason up at his school. Cason and I would then leave directly from his school and go look at the El Camino.

The reason for all the running about was because it is semester finals at school. Because of some strange rule normal classes are not held on finals days, so if you are not testing you don’t have to attend school. It is all very confusing and I don’t claim to understand why it is done this way, but because the kids are allows to stay home when they are not testing Devon only had to attend school for 90 minutes on Friday, from 11:45 to 1:30.

Anyway, after dropping her off I zipped to the storage facility to retrieve the Challenger. It started readily enough, but after I backed it out, I noticed there was a problem. One of the tires, the right rear, was flat. Not low … flat, and because the car is fitted with run flat tires there is no spare in the car. I didn’t want to drive the car with the tire flat because I suspect that while driving it with a flat might get you safely home, it would probably ruin the tire.

In place of the spare Dodge fits a compressor to the car to reinflate a tire, so I broke it out and hooked it up. After it started pumping I carefully watched the tire. It didn’t appear to be inflating, even after watching it for five or ten minutes. I didn’t know if the problem was the tire was losing air faster than that little pump could pump it in or or the pump was just that slow. It is a big tire, so that could be that the pump is just slow, but I had no way to know. Plus I had to get the problem solved before I had to leave to get Devon or put the car back in storage with the tire still flat.

Finally I decided that the tire wasn’t going to inflate, so I walked up to a car wash place nearby and asked if they had a portable air tank I could borrow. I wanted to see if the tire would inflate if I put air into it faster than the little compressor could. They did have a compressor, a nice big one on wheels too, but they had lost the chuck. So I walked across the street to a garage as asked if they had one I could borrow. They had a pony tank, a tank that could be charged from a compressor, but their compressor was being repaired and they couldn’t charge it.

Discouraged, I decided I was going to have to get the Civic out and drive home to get my own compressor and bring it back. As I was crossing back across the street, a big utility truck pulled into the storage lot and stopped. I chased him down and asked if he had compressed air on the truck. He didn’t but he offered to let me use his small battery powered compressor, similar I’m sure, to the one I was using. I declined the offer and walked back to the car.

I had spent a good thirty minutes chasing compressed air and by the time I returned to the car the tire was inflated. Over inflated actually, with nearly 50psi of air in the tire. I unhooked the compressor and bled off some of the air. I put everything away and drove the car to the local Firestone dealer where I buy all my tires.

When I arrived I explained what happened so they took a look and found a nail in the tire. But because I has spent so much time fooling around trying to get the car into condition to drive, they didn’t have time to fix the tire before I had to get Devon. I told them I would be back, then left. I ran home and started another load of laundry, then raced over to Devon’s school, arriving just before the bell rang to release her.

After Devon got into the car, I made another trip to Firestone. Upon further inspection, they decided they didn’t want to repair the tire. Firestone’s policy is to dismount and patch a tire rather than plugging a tire and they were afraid their old tire machine would damage the wheel. So they sent me to the dealer.

When I arrived at the dealer they were very busy and it took several minutes before I could even work my way to the service bay. But after I did they took the car into the back without further delay. A few minutes later the service guy brought me a nail. It was just a tiny little thing, so small in fact that I kind of doubted it was culprit. Not only was it tiny, but also it was not shiny like it had been polished by the road, but I assumed they checked that the nail was shot through the tire while it was broken down. $12 later we were done and on our way to pickup Cason.

While I was waiting for Cason’s school to release, I inspected the tire. It was still lightly over-inflated from when I inflated it, so I now knew they probably hadn’t broken the tire down or wasn’t paying attention to their job when they inflated. Either way, I knew I needed to let some additional air out of the tire. I also looked for and found the repair made at the Dodge dealer … a plug. Since the Dodge dealer didn’t break the tire down there was no way to know if the nail actually punctured the tire or not unless they checked for a leak after they removed the nail. I have no way of knowing if they did or didn’t, but combine the size of the nail, the fact that it didn’t look like it had come out of tire because the head was still covered with rust, and the fact that Firestone indicated that it was a larger nail in the tire, I am doubtful the tire is actually fixed. In a week or two I will go back to the shed and check the tire on the car to see if it is still in fact aired up or if it has gone flat again.

After picking Cason up, we dropped Devon off at home then raced over to Murphy Rod & Custom to see the El Camino. Taking care of business there, Cason and I raced home, met the rest of the family for dinner, then Cason and I went to jui-jitsu. While he was in class I returned the car to it’s home in storage.

So I got everything done, but what should have been a mostly normal day turned into a mad scramble. Which, now that I think about it, is how most of my days are.

Looking for ideas

Saturday I went to the 2012 Shiner’s Drag Racing and Hot Rod Expo, primarily to see the three El Caminos you see in these pictures. The first and last picture are of ’68 El Caminos, the maroon and silver El Camino is a ’69. Except for a few minor trim changes, they are the same car.

My car is a ’69, but I plan to make a few changes to that will make it look more like a ’68 than a ’69, namely the grill, front bumper and tailgate, because I like the ’68 look better. In 1969 the rules changed and the government required that cars have more reflectors and lights on them, cluttering the look slightly.

All three of these cars are a little over the top for my tastes. Their wood beds and chromed out engine bays scream “Look at me!”, but there is no denying they are sharp. All three show to be SS models, but that is the car that everyone wants now and there are a lot more SS cars now than were ever built originally.

Each of the El Caminos show one or more of the features I am going to incorporate into my car. The first car has shaved drip rails which really cleans up the lines. The drip rail is that little bit of upturned metal over the door to catch the rain and direct it away from the door. I hadn’t thought of doing that until I saw this car, but I really like the look. So shaved drip rails has been added to my to do list … if it doesn’t cost too much.

The second picture shows the rear tailgate with an emblem removed from the upper center of the tailgate and the backup lights removed from the center of the tailgate. It also shows, on the rear at least, the removed side marker lights. This allows me to actually see a couple of fetures I had visualized in my head.

The third picture shows the SS hood with stripes, which my car will have. I am also removing the front marker lights as they have on this car, but I will not be putting an engine emblem on the fender. This car is in two tone, where my car will not be, but the stripes give me an idea of what it will look like, and I like what I see.

The last car shows the correct, for ’68, mirrors on the car. I will put ’69 mirrors on my car, but they are very similar to the mirrors on this car unlike the mirrors on the other two cars.

All these cars have more flash than my car will have, but it gives me some ideas of what I am looking at at the end of my build. I think I am going to like the results.

Photographs taken January 14, 2012

I hope he’s happy

I as I walked up to my car, on my way to join Tim for lunch on Thursday, I noticed that a bird had soiled my car. No, not soiled it. That doesn’t do it justice. He violated it.

The car was a bit dirty from driving in the rain the day before, but overall it was still relatively clean when I left it in the parking lot Thursday morning. But by lunch time, well, just look at it.

The top and front were nearly as bad. It’s not like the car is parked under a tree, wires, lamp post, or anything else a bird could sit on. As near as I can figure it, he must have made multiple passes over the car to have so thoroughly covered it in bird droppings.

I hope he’s please with himself.

Photograph taken January 12, 2012

So it begins

After nearly five months of waiting, the El Camino is back from the blaster. Well, the body is anyway. The frame is still there, waiting its turn in the booth.

The El Camino is another one of those good news, bad news situations. The bad news is some additional problems were uncovered by the blasting process. The good news is that none of them are deal breakers. But, this is why you blast them. Better to find the problems now, so they can be addressed, than to find them later after you have dumped a lot of money into the restoration, only to have to come back and do part of it again.

The most disappointing, and expensive, find was the bed. Everyone originally thought that the original bed could be saved. We knew there was going to be some rust repair necessary, but everyone thought the bed could be patched. Unfortunately the rot was more extensive than first thought so we are going to replace the entire floor rather than try to patch it together. It will be cheaper in end. It’s an expensive pieces, almost $800, but it could have been worse, much worse.

Had the sides of the bed been rotted out, that would have totaled the car. The rear quarters, the sides of the bed if you will, are $1,200, each. They do have some minor rust, but nothing that can’t be fixed.

Just for comparison, to replace the entire bed, from the back glass to the tailgate, the part alone is $6,000, with probably another $2,000 for labor to install it. So as you can see, $800 isn’t such a bad deal.

There was some other places that were found that need repair that were unknown before the media blast. Most of them were previous repairs, which would be find except they were done as cheaply as possible rather than fixing the car right. For example, on the rear quarters where these cars always rust out, rather than cutting out the rust and welding in new metal, someone in the past just slathered the holes with body filler and painted over it. A definite no-no.

Some rust on the dash was also found that wasn’t known before, but it is minor and easily repaired.

So overall the truck is in slightly worse shape than expected, but nothing cropped up that I would consider a deal breaker. It is nice to bring back one of these classic American beauties back from the brink, and to do so is going to give me a lot of satisfaction.

Photographs taken January 13, 2012