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Overhead door from brown to white. Man door from brown to white. 24 liner feet of of pegboard from brown to white. Six 25+ year old florescent lamps replaced with LED. Four incandescent lamps replaced with LED. I may have to hang black drape on the walls to tone it down.
Picked up a new lock set with deadbolt for the man door, along with white trim paint and primer for it and the man door on the other shop. You can guess how I'm spending part of my "holiday" weekend.
Looks like it is all finally coming together! I've just gone through most of the thread, what a rollercoaster, glad things are on the upswing for the garage. I was hoping to see myself in the woodward pics, wife and I went down thursday in the Jeep (a/c and/or top down, plus a great high vantage point!), so many great cars, been a couple years due to various reasons since I've been down there.
While we were at the apex of the loop in Pontiac, a drone flew slowly over the line of cars. So I've been watching YouTube videos of 2021 Woodward coverage, but have yet to see us in any of them, or find that drone footage.
We're getting close. Painted, new overhead door, new opener, new man door, new benches, new peg board, second layer of insulation blown into the attic....and did I mention LIGHTS? It's like an operating room in there.
I used to have 6 fluorescent lights over the two bays, and other misc. lights over the benched. The electrician said, "Lets put one over each bench, and one at the ends of each bay". I was worried it would be dark in the "middle" of each bay, but that LED light is diffused so well, I really can't tell a difference between being at the ends of the bays, or in the middle.
Have to get the painter back to do a little drywall repair / touch-up, then some re-paint. But we are very close to done with the reconstruction portion of this.
Our Pontiac club had it's Fall Color Tour today. Weather was decent. No navigator this year, so the pictures aren't great, but hopefully enjoyable to those who enjoy old cars. About 175 miles round trip.
You'll have to wait a while to get that particular car. The owner ordered just the way he wanted. I think he plans to keep it for a long time. But there are others out there!
Originally Posted by Buddy
Dave, huge hats off to all those pics! Every car is amazing and the scenery of the landscape is just fantastic as well.
Thank Buddy. I'm glad you enjoyed them. It's just been a little too warn the last few weeks to get the fall colors we always hope to have. It's one of my favorite club activities.
Only thing about the fall shows and colors... means winter is on it's heels. And winter sucks. lol. Come on April/May will be on alot of folks lips soon.
Too bad your pictures were taken with a potato, lol. I love the Mallet cars
Your only partially wrong. I've been in that place a couple of times, and I'm pretty sure those were shot with my good Nikon. So in that case, the potato is the photographer who doesn't know how to best use the camera! But they may have been taken with my 9 year old cell phone, and it IS sort of a potato.
But mostly, as you can see by the poor to harsh lighting, the circumstances were not ideal. This museum is very much a work in progress. While there is a wonderful Pontiac Oakland Museum & Resource Center (POMARC) in Pontiac, IL, (now celebrating it's 10th year, and located in a great tourist town on Route 66, in case you are looking for a road trip idea), this museum is an extension of that one, and is not open yet. The focus of this museum (Pontiac Transportation Museum) in Pontiac, MI is slightly different, as it focuses on everything transportation related made in Pontiac, MI. There is actually a very rich manufacturing heritage in Pontiac, MI, from buggies to buses, trucks to motorhomes, scooters to trailers, and of course, the Pontiac Motor Division of General Motors as well as a couple of other auto manufacturers. While it seeks to serve all of those interests, much of the content by volume is PMD.
Starting a new museum is no small undertaking. Key donations have been made, and the building (an old grade school with a very unique floor pan that actually lends itself very well to becoming an auto museum) and it's contents are being dealt with as funds allow. It is not yet open to the public, but has had several open house events. The director was kind enough to give me a tour to take a few photos for a story in our local Pontiac Oakland Club International (POCI) Chapter 16 Michigan Widetrackers newsletter. At the time of that photo, lighting was by sporadic bare bulbs hanging from temporary construction lighting cords, with a flood light pointed in my direction. I just could not get the camera to focus properly, and I don't know enough about it's confusing controls to know how to manually focus it, or force it to do what I wanted.
Still, it was very exciting to be in this place, see all the wonderful automobiles they have there, and see the museum in it's infancy.
Far from a peak crowd, but still getting good attendance at Culver's. This is last Tuesday. This coming Tuesday is their last cruise night of the year, so I'm hoping I can make it out there one last time.
This was a surprise....my T/A came from Rinke Pontiac in Warren, MI, just down the street from the GM Tech Center. I bought a GMC Jimmy from them in '94 also. Now the dealer principal is running for Michigan Governor.
Wow, Dave. You've had quite the adventure. I had to read this from beginning to end to catch up. Lots of great photos from the car shows and some interesting details of what you've been working on. I enjoyed reading it all.
Good luck with the garage rebuild. I know that if I had the chance to do something like this I would have made sure to add in some good upgrades like your LED light fixtures too.
It's been a while since I updated this. Missed a few posts. Still working on things when I get the time.
I have a couple of swivel lamps for each end of the bench. The lamps survived, but their mounting hardware did not. Also, the way the benches were reconstructed, there was no lip (overhang of the top) to clamp them to. So I had planned to used a couple of scrap 2x4 4" squares with a hole drilled in the middle to mount those lamps on.
Meanwhile, one of my favorite new YouTube channels is for the Battleship New Jersey. A few weeks or so back the curator had an episode discussing the ships teak wood deck. The are replacing it, and pieces of the old deck are for sale as souvenirs, the purchase of which helps support the museum/ship. Perfect! I ordered up two squares of. Waiting for some teak deck cleaner and conditioner to come in, then I'll get them mounted. Video below. Mine appears to my eye to be WWII vintage, based on his description.
Book cabinet survived and is all cleaned up. Very pleased that all of the books, manuals, and tons of factory documents and ads all survived. Lab coats and uniforms back from the dry cleaners.
Tools are all back up on the pegboard....at least the ones I got back.You'll notice there's a lot of vacant space on this section.
This side is a little more complete.
Because the benches were not reconstructed properly, the 340 short block for my '72 Charger lost it's home (it also got coated with drywall mud and paint speckles, thank you contractors without tarps). To get it back into it's previous home, a pair of drawers (also built in the wrong place) will have to be torn out and rebuilt, then I can wheel it into the corner under the bench on this engine stand (bought God knows how long ago...I believe from the old State Fair Winter Swap Meet, when it was at the State Fairground on 8 mile). The Mopar reman small block Mopar shipping crate c1987 will have to go.
DynoDave,
My son worked a couple of summers at a golf course in Westchester county in NY (Waccabuc) and I would fly up and drive him back (or vise versa), we stopped for visit on the New Jersey, being a Navy man on one trip. It was fascinating to walk the decks, use the sound powered phones, etc. So cool you got a few Teak boards. Really cool video of the curator telling if you may have gotten some WWII Teak!! Reminds me of a story about the USS Kamehameha SSBN 642, (first king of Hawaii), where the shipyard had installed Teak handrails and other fancy carved features on the submarine, which were not approved by the Navy, and they made them tear them all out.
It's only a penny for a "cent imental journey". Go Navy!!
My Dad served in the Navy during the Korean war, and my neighbor and best friend growing up was on one of the battleships in the '80s. I'm going to text him and ask which one. Might have been the Missouri. Thank you for your service.
It was perfect timing on the video. I've been subscribed to that channel for a while now. He posts almost daily. It's very interesting. I was on the Alabama around 1980 or so with my folks on vacation. I'd love to go back. Went through Edson with my oldest brother and my son a few years ago, and have been through the WWII sub Silversides several times. It's always fascinating stuff.
Dug out the cherry picker from the back garage (a small project in itself), and got the 340 moved from the pallet to the engine stand. Getting to this point was an entire evenings worth of work, starting at 5-ish, and didn't go into the house until 10:30. Wrestling that picker out of the over-stuffed back garage, dragging it across the frozen snowy yard, moving things in the attached garage to make space for it, assembling it (yes, even that fought me), figuring our how to mount the engine on the stand (tried it several ways before realizing it was not meant to be mounted with the engine mounts still bolted to the block), and finally wrestling the 4 arms of the stand into alignment with the holes on the block (this is a china made $39.99 swap meet item...precision is actually pretty good, but not perfect).
I did try (no photos) moving the engine into the spot by the bench where I wanted it to be under, just to make sure the bench or floor didn't slope that 1/16" or so, but no luck. Standing there watching the news out the Ukraine, and thinking about this mess, I thought if I tipped the engine and stand (can this spindly stand take all the weight of the engine tipped at an angle and on two wheels without collapsing?) up on two wheels, I could duck that china wall under the bench frame, and when it came out on the other side, the block is lower after the wall, and I'd be good (the engine is too long to make it all the way under the bench, so the wall at the flywheel and of the block will not be an issue). Turned out that while the idea was sound, and while the block and frame of the stand would clear, the casters (which turned out to be the widest spot) would not, colliding with the leg of the bench and gouging into the drywall.
Before I turned out the lights for the night, I stood there and thought about this for a while (a slow process ).
So close. If I could just get that bench a "tiny" bit higher. Tried lifting up on the bench...zero play. So the only thing that would help would be making the stand lower. There is room under the pan. If this garage and the other were set up (not still being reconstructed), I could cut a 1/2" out of each leg, weld it back together, and life would be good. But that's not an option right now. So I started looking at the iron casters. Very beefy, but a full 4" tall. If I could find some that were just a fraction of an inch shorter, I'd have the room I needed.
A quick visit to the local Ace Hardware the next day produced these. Not much shorter, but I only need maybe an 1/8th inch to clear comfortably. 90lb. rating each, so 360 across the four of them, should be enough for the short-block. They will probably flat spot terribly over the coming years, but I'm not worried about that right now.
Smaller roller bearing area, and using flattened pins for an axle Vs. the bolt on design of the original. Not as strong and serviceable, but also quite a bit thinner. You can't see it in this photo of the new caster in front of the old, but the wheel itself is half the width, and the axle is much slimmer (you can see the bolt/axle of the original caster in the background behind the new caster).
The other issue I foresaw while at the hardware store...the new downsized casters have a mounting stud just as tall (which means they will have the same reach through the tube frame...that's a good thing), but smaller in diameter. This would allow the new casters to wallow around in that hole, and under load, get cocked sideways in the frame. So I walked one of the new casters over to the Ace bulk material center, and picked up a piece of aluminum tube that would just go around the outside of the stud.
Back in the shop, a test fit of that tube into the hole in the frame showed it to be just a touch too big around. A quick bit of work with a round file (one of the few files that got returned post-fire) removed the powder coat and opened up the hole just a touch. I only opened the upper hole. Leaving the hole in the bottom of the frame tube smaller will prevent the bushing from dropping out of the bottom of the frame.
Test fit = perfect.
Marked and cut to length to create a bushing for the caster stud.
Set it into place = perfect. Shown here only partially installed. It sits flush with the frame when fully installed.
A mixed bag on the amount of grease on the caster bearings from their factory. One had an OK amount, two barely any, and one appeared to have none. A trip to the back garage and the 25 gal. drum of '50s vintage Sinclair brand bearing grease (doesn't everyone one have one of those?) for a little scoop of product. Each caster bearing got packed.
Cleaned up and ready for action. Action in this case means rolling it about 8' and sitting for a decade.
As long as we're at it, a touch of grease for the new busing too.
Victory (again)! And a damn site closer than I had hoped for. I was nervous for a moment.
While I expect those rubber casters to eventually flatten and fail under load, they are a day and night difference to roll around on. Those iron casters sucked, very hard to roll, and damn near impossible to steer. With these new casters, it's like steering a shopping cart. Super easy.
Wheeled into place for a long nap.
With a Trans Am powertrain build up (along with a whole host of other mods) as Job #1, the Chrysler Cordoba will be build #2. The Duster #3, and the poor Charger #4. Hope to get to it before I die. So easy access of this stored engine is not a priority.
Not sure the engine is even salvageable (or the car). But it's the numbers matching engine, so we'll keep it and determine it's fate another day. Before this space gets boxed in by a large filing cabinet, I'll add an additional layer of oil/grease to the bores and other machined surfaces, then bag it as best I can.
It was just too nice on Sunday, so I pulled the T/A out of the garage, dusted her off, aired up the tires, installed the new Historical license plate, and took her for a nice cruise. Burned up the last of the winter gas (lots of WOT pulls [img]core/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ) while cruising the countryside, listening to Sammy Hagar's Top Rock Countdown on KSHE 95 out of St. Louis. Heard an O'Reilly's ad for buy one-get one on Techron. So I stopped in the Lake Orion store and picked up 2 bottle, and added one to the fresh load of fuel going into the T/A. As it's the first tank after sitting, I went with good ol' regular for it's ethanol content, to chase out any remaining moisture.
No pics this time. Meant to stop and take one, but forgot. Was having too much fun.
Thanks guys. I'm very happy with it thus far. Sure wish the weather was nicer so I could enjoy it. It actually needs a few things before I'll be ready to drive it (wipers, LOF), and an alignment (wheel is off center, but not pulling...I want to protect that $800+ set of Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus tires that are on it, and like new). Then quite a few more to do to get it closer to 100%.
I honestly don't know if the GM accessory alarm works or not. I'm suspecting not. The LED never flashes, and the dealer had no notation of a code for it. In the storage compartment in the back, there is a ziploc bag with an alarm module and harness in it. I don't know if it was never installed, installed but quit working and was removed, installed but he lost faith in it and had it removed, if this is a spare from another car? The story is that the owner was in his 80s when he traded it in. I'm going to try contacting him, but not sure what sort of luck I'm going to have. I almost sort of hope it's been removed. We saw cars with no start problems traceable to aftermarket alarms when I worked at a Chevy dealer in the 80s, so my faith in this 25+ year old piece of electronics would be pretty low.
hello i would like some advice for a problem on my trans am
Thanks guys. I'm very happy with it thus far. Sure wish the weather was nicer so I could enjoy it. It actually needs a few things before I'll be ready to drive it (wipers, LOF), and an alignment (wheel is off center, but not pulling...I want to protect that $800+ set of Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus tires that are on it, and like new). Then quite a few more to do to get it closer to 100%.
I honestly don't know if the GM accessory alarm works or not. I'm suspecting not. The LED never flashes, and the dealer had no notation of a code for it. In the storage compartment in the back, there is a ziploc bag with an alarm module and harness in it. I don't know if it was never installed, installed but quit working and was removed, installed but he lost faith in it and had it removed, if this is a spare from another car? The story is that the owner was in his 80s when he traded it in. I'm going to try contacting him, but not sure what sort of luck I'm going to have. I almost sort of hope it's been removed. We saw cars with no start problems traceable to aftermarket alarms when I worked at a Chevy dealer in the 80s, so my faith in this 25+ year old piece of electronics would be pretty low.
1986 trans am carburetor 305 with its winter wheels 1986 trans am 305 carb in Canadian artic with silver winter whells 1986 Trans am with its gold summer wheels 1986 trans am with Louver in short Summer and gold summer wheels 1986 Trans AM 305 carb witht its gold wheels in the Canadian Arctic
If you guys want to see my 1986 Trans AM 305 carburetor in the Canadian Artic, heres some picture of it in Winter & Summer
1986 trans am carburetor 305 with its winter wheels 1986 trans am 305 carb in Canadian artic with silver winter whells 1986 Trans am with its gold summer wheels 1986 trans am with Louver in short Summer and gold summer wheels 1986 Trans AM 305 carb witht its gold wheels in the Canadian Arctic
If you guys want to see my 1986 Trans AM 305 carburetor in the Canadian Artic, heres some picture of it in Winter & Summer
Hello mumirluu. And welcome aboard! That's a nice looking T/A. Where are you located?
It took until the 4th outing this year to finally get a picture of the car. Culver's Lake Orion, MI. Cruise Night, 5-10-22. A bright afternoon sun did not make for great quality photos. And yes, they are all Pontiac or F-body, with a couple of C4's sprinkled in.
Note the Cali front plate. I asked the Michigan owner if the car came form there, and he said it did. I told him that was cheating.
One of my best friends growing up had one of these. Dark blue, light blue cloth interior, Olds 403 and automatic, t-tops. Proves to have been a pretty popular color and option combo that model year. I just watched one like it on BAT end today, went for over $25k. An amazing price for that combo, which note too many years ago was a $10k car.
Another friend from my first job here in Michigan had one of these...301 2bbl. and a 2004R IIRC. A fat little 60 series tire all around. We took it up north for a weekend of snowmobiling. The riding was great. Towing a snowmobile trailer with our 2 sleds, with that car and those tires in a snow storm, not so great.
08-31-2021, 06:54 PM
lol. Come on April/May will be on alot of folks lips soon. 
).
