Changes Are Coming

Summer is over, for me. The weather still may be warm, but my "year off" will end Wednesday morning when my MBA program starts. While I am still hoping to dedicate a certain number of hours per week to the car project, it will likely be on the order of 3 to 5 hours, rather than the 30 or so I have been managing to put in for the last several months. Things will clearly have to slow down and proceed in a different fashion. It has been good while it lasted!

I made good progress on the car last week. After priming the underside of the car, I returned at the beginning of last week to clean and prime the top (inside) of the floor pan, the rear seat patches, the inside of the battery box/trunk, and the engine bay area. Painting with the DP40 went much quicker this time and I used less paint as I got the paint gun dialed in more properly. Let me tell you, the bottom of the car has plenty of paint on it!

The next day, I set to work sealing pretty much every overlapping metal seam on the car. I used a heavy caulk made by U-POL on the underside, applied with an air-powered caulk gun and then smoothed with a finger (wear gloves and a respirator; many seam sealers contain isocyanates, just like paint). On the inside, I used a brushable sealer made by Wurth. As far as I can gather from reading, coupled with my own firsthand experience back when disassembling the car, the inside seams were not originally sealed. In fact, there are many seams on the underside of the car that I chose to seal that I don't think were sealed originally. Original appearance be damned, in this case. The less chance of getting moisture in a seam, the less chance of rust coming back to bite this car any time in the near future. Underneath, the seam sealer is all getting painted or undercoated anyway, and inside, everything will be carpeted. The changes will not be visible. The front closing panels presented an opportunity to apply lots of caulk. Inside the wheel well, the top of the front logitudinal closing panel slopes backwards, away from the tire, and forms a natural "shelf" for crud and moisture to sit and rot the panel. Over the years, this area gets packed with wet debris and the result is a hole in the fender just like I had to repair. Porsche should have curved this panel forwards, towards the tire! For whatever reason, they didn't, but I modified the situation slightly. As suggested in Jim Kellogg's 356 Restoration book, I applied almost an entire caulk tube of sealer at the top of each front closing panel and formed the caulk into a sloping area that hopefully will keep future debris from collecting. I finished caulking last Wednesday and realized I still had quite a bit of free time left, so I began the undercoating process. Using Wurth Underbody Seal, I coated each front wheel well, the outside of the battery box, and the floor pan. Then I ran out. The undercoating gun, which sort of siphons the product out of the can and mixed it in a spatter-pattern with air, shoots the stuff like it is going out of style. I don't want to apply it too thickly either, because I know removing it for a future repair, heavens forbid, will be a pain in the ass. Just enough to give a proper vintage-looking appearance. The real purpose of undercoating is to provide a bit of stone-chip protection, and sound deadening. Modern sound deadening panels work just as well, and I'll be applying these to the floor pan and seating areas. 356 GT cars had no undercoat at all, just satin black paint on the underside, to save weight. I spent last Thursday as well as today working on the transmission. Here's a job I had neglected for well over a year! If I am ever going to get the car back on its own suspension, I reasoned, I have to finish this job.

When the transmission came out, it was hard to recognize it was even made of aluminum because it was coated with such a thorough, thick layer of goo. Years of oil and mud mixed together to form a layer of crud that encased everything. After first removing it, back in my own garage, I made a half-hearted attempt to clean it with some Gunk engine cleaner and a toothbrush. It didn't go very quickly and I quit.

Now, I decided to tackle it again. First, I thought about pressure washing it, and while that would be good if I was going to completely tear it down, I ruled it out because I didn't want water sneaking in through the axles and rusting things internally. My remaining choice was to use cleaner with various scraping tools and a scotchbrite pad. I chose Gunk citrus-based engine cleaner, which doesn't have Kerosene in it like regular Gunk and thus doesn't smell half as vile. Plus, it works really well! I recommend it.

I put the transmission on end on a thick piece of cardboard, and then covered it with the gunk. Then I set to work scrubbing. After I had done a bunch of scrubbing, I would wash the case down with a garden sprayer filled with water. Then I would repeat the process. It took about 4 or 5 iterations of these steps to get the transmission case fairly clean.

Today, I took the clean(er) transmission outside to remove the axle tubes. After the case was clean, the tubes sure stuck out like a sore thumb. I removed the axle tubes by undoing the nuts holding the axle side covers on either side, and then putting a 3-arm puller on the end of the tube, against the axle. Tightening the puller pulled the tube with bearing off the axle with minimal fuss. It was then easy to remove the roller bearing from the axle tube.

I cleaned up the outer bearings, and they sound and work OK, but at this point, after all the work, it seems to make sense to replace them. I had Chuck order a pair that will hopefully arrive tomorrow. I pressure-washed the axle tubes, and then cleaned the gasket surfaces with a 3M roloc gasket cleaner disc on my angle die grinder. I didn't bead blast the tubes, but I guess I could of. Sort of rushing, I suppose. I quickly wire-brushed the tubes, and then wiped them down with Ospho in preparation for painting. A quick degreasing, and then I painted them with a new paint: Hammerite/Rustoleum "Rust Cap." It's a nice gloss black paint that I found at the hardware store that seems to be very hard, at least as hard as the Rustoleum Appliance Epoxy I've used previously. Speaking of spray paint, I've now used Rustoleum Epoxy, Rustoleum Enamel, Dupli-Color Engine Enamel, and Hammerite. It will be interesting to see which one turns out to be the most durable finish.

Tomorrow I'll re-assemble the transmission, and I should have time to tackle putting new bearings into the front wheel hubs. Then I think I may bead blast the steel wheels and get them ready for going to the powder coater. I really can't do any more body work until I either get the replacement nose or get the car off the rotisserie.

Posted by pbrown at August 16, 2004 10:16 PM