- Hey, this is Davin with Hagerty and our Redline rebuilds.
Now, first thing you're gonna notice
is I am in my home garage, I am not at the Hagerty garage,
I am in self-quarantine, and self-distancing,
and whatever all that is relative to the Coronavirus so.
But with that, I still needed to make some progress
so I brought some projects home,
and relative to our Buick Straight-8.
So for instance, the first thing I have here
is a rebuild kit for our fuel pump.
Now, this is a duel action fuel pump
so it has an upper and a lower vacuum,
which one is for the fuel pump and one is for the wipers.
So it creates a vacuum to run the wipers.
Now, you can see that I have cheated here slightly,
only in the fact that I have already did a little polishing
on one half of this fuel pump, so I need to do
the same thing with the bottom.
My part will go into the drum, and then in here
are little stainless steel rods, and these rods,
as it rotates and tumbles around, polishes.
So this will be our before picture,
and it's all, it's almost chalky feeling.
This has been through the ultrasonic cleaner
so it is all degreased and cleaned.
I will most likely here, disassemble it the rest of the way,
but I wouldn't necessarily have to, but getting out
those little rods will be a whole lot easier if I do.
I'll leave this together and just see what happens.
Okay.
Place it on these rollers and let her run.
(motor whirs)
Now, that process is gonna take about three hours
to polish it to the point where that other one is.
At that point, we can take it out, rinse it out,
clean all those little stainless steel pieces out,
and then we can reassemble everything.
Okay so, that's the fuel pump.
I also have the oil pump to do.
So, here's the cover.
I already tore this down and cleaned everything up.
Now again, I'm gonna do the same thing,
I'm gonna put these two pieces in there,
and then in that tumbler, you can put more than one piece,
that's just the only piece I have left that's aluminum.
When I go to do these pieces, I'll put everything in
and polish them up along with the screws,
and then we just reassemble it with some oil.
Okay.
So, fuel pump, oil pump.
I also have brought home the distributor,
to which I have a fresh cap, I have a condenser,
I actually have two condensers,
and I know everybody's gonna ask
well, what are you using two condensers for?
That's because I am gonna modify
this single point distributor to a dual point distributor
with this lower plate.
So, two condensers, two sets of points, and a rotor.
Obviously, this piece didn't make the cut
as far as getting clean before I left the main shop,
thankfully I have a parts washer myself,
and we'll have to do it the hard way
without the ultrasonic, but using a manual parts washer
and get everything cleaned up on this end of things,
and then we'll go through the tear down and reassembly
of that component as well.
Now...
I said I brought home projects.
So, the next project in line relative to the Buick.
So these are the rods, okay, and if you,
well, these are two of the eight rods.
Now, if you watched our Model A video,
and one of the things that Ron's machine shop did
intrigued me in the fact that they black oxide
all of their rods and internal components.
And well, basically I'm gonna do the same thing
because one of the things I've always struggled with,
not so much on the rods whether they got oil on 'em
and all that type of stuff,
but with nuts and bolts and heads.
Basically, you go through and you 'em all up nice,
and then what do you do?
If you paint 'em they get, they chip and they get nasty.
Now, I have been using that coating, the dressing,
exhaust manifold dressing, using that
and then heating it on there, and that holds up very well.
But I've always wanted to try a good black oxide kit,
so I have this E-Tec kit here with all the stuff
to go through and try that, and I'm even gonna use
the directions, which quite honestly,
I usually don't as you know.
But, so that's, let's see, the fourth project.
Now, if I get bored with that, not bored,
if I get done with that, I also have a fresh set of springs
to go through, and understand if the springs I ordered
will work for the seat pressure that I need,
and I have that piece of paper somewhere around here.
But as far as how much seat pressure I need,
I think it was 85 pounds
at whatever installed height I want,
which I think I can use some place between 200 and,
I should say two inches, and 1.8,
or one inch, 800 thousandths.
Now, to test that,
over here in this corner (chuckles) of my shop,
I have a spring tester.
So what this allows you to do is, this is just
a random spring I had sitting around from a race motor,
but with this spring in here,
for instance this is usually in a two inch installed height,
and typically a 225 pound spring,
but allows you to come through, load the spring to height.
So there's pretty close to two inches,
and I got 225 pounds of load.
Now if you had older springs just laying around
that you wanted to check and see if they're any good
any more, what you wanna do is load them like this,
and then let them sit and see if this number changes.
If it drops off, that means the spring is weak and no good,
just throw them right away,
or turn them into some fancy ornament.
I'm thinking business card holders quite honestly,
because when you lay 'em on the side
the business cards would stack in there.
But that's the other thing I can do,
and I won't necessarily need to check all the springs,
and yes, I could've checked one of the Buick springs now,
but I didn't.
All right, I don't have my normal director,
and I don't have my normal camera person,
which is one of four gentlemen, and I have to tell ya
that the person behind the camera,
on the working function of the camera,
is a whole lot prettier than both of those two boys.
Four boys, sorry.
Anyhow, right, here we go.
We have...
I think this is the last one I have home.
Let me bring this over here.
If you watched the livestream to where we talked about
designing up parts in CAD on a 3D model basis,
and then having them 3D printed,
this is the 3D print of that spacer,
this is my harmonic balancer off of the Buick,
and what I'm doing is adding a pulley off to the front of it
so I can run a power steering pump
once it gets into the car.
The pulley at the bottom of this, is the factory pulley,
and that's used for the generator or alternator,
and the water pump.
And when you go to add a power steering to this,
it makes more sense in the belt routing
to get enough wrap around everything, on the pulley wise,
is to add a pulley off to the front
and have a dedicated belt for that.
So, one of the things, but what I need to do
is take this, put it on here,
mark where I want my holes to be,
and punch, of course, drill the four holes,
four mounting holes, and tap them
so then this can be attached.
I do have the aluminum part coming so I'll probably wait
'cause this one doesn't fit as tight on here
as I'd prefer it to, especially if we're trying
to locate holes.
So that one might wait until I get the aluminum piece,
but that should be within a day or two
so that shouldn't be a problem.
All right, so, that outlines five projects
relative to the Redline rebuilds,
and we'll go through that and walk through each one of them
as we do them.
I have the one part already tumbling,
and you'll probably hear that in the background
as far as noise for awhile,
because that is three hours worth of that.
I think at this point I'll probably tear apart
my distributor and get that prepped,
and then we can go from there.
Now, if you're sitting back going, oh my god,
the guy's got five projects going at once.
Well yes, that is normal life.
And I'll do a quick walk-around if you will indulge me
for a minute, and kinda give you an idea
of what my home shop is like on a normal basis.
So, and especially now, where I got a little more time
at home 'cause well, one I gained at least an extra hour
every day because I don't drive back and forth to work,
and well, not necessarily taking a shower every day either,
but you didn't need to know that.
All right so, what I have here is, I have a motor
on the very familiar, Easy-Run test stand.
Yes, I borrowed this from work, brought it home,
and what I'm using this for, is to break in,
or start up, a 350 engine out of my 1989 GMC pickup truck.
However it's no longer 350, it is a 383, so it's stroked,
and it has some aftermarket heads on it,
hydraulic roller cam shaft, and a dual plane
intake manifold, and I'll give ya a little peak
at the sniper underneath the towel here.
My $700 transmission is completely rebuilt,
I have a brand new torque converter,
I have a fresh set of Dynamax headers on it,
oh, I say, I should say fresh,
these been in a box in the attic since roughly,
let's see, 2009.
So they're fresh, they've never had exhaust
run through them.
So, I'm going to at some point in time,
here in the next week, will be starting this up.
I'm kind piecing everything together
and doing what I normally do, is pick at it
a little bit here, and get on something else,
and come back and pick it at it so,
it doesn't, I don't whack everything out real fast
onto my own projects that way.
I have a couple welding projects, couple assembly projects.
I build dragsters on the side, so in the evenings
and weekends when I'm not doing stuff with my family,
I am working in here, and when I can't get them to help me
then I have to be by myself.
Right, Grace?
- [Grace] Yup.
- So, I have a dragster I'm assembling,
that's what's up on the top, I ran into a snag with that,
so I'm thinking of how I'm gonna fix that snag,
and then I have a chassis here that needs
to be completely welded, and then I have another dragster
in the other garage that has a snag as well,
and that is over there and I go in and spend
about a half hour with it every day,
and it's kinda like a therapy session.
Mainly for the car, not for me,
because I'm talking to the car saying come on,
can't you just fix yourself?
Because you know, it would be a whole lot easier.
That car already has a name, and I won't release it,
but it starts with problem.
So, after that, I have an axle to weld up
as far as putting the brackets on it,
the chassis brackets on it.
And then I have another pet project of my own,
which is another oddly enough, Chevy engine.
This is actually a 350 block with a 355 stroke crank,
which makes it a 360, which is what they use in sprint cars
as far as the one class.
There's a 360 and a 410 sprint car class,
this happens to be a 360 sprint car,
and it is going to go in my personal dragster
because the other engine well, it really wasn't meant
for what it was doing.
It was out of a modified that I raced a few years back,
and that's a 383 stroked 350,
and that makes about 500 horse.
This was an old Gaerte engine at one point,
and the dyno sheet reads closer to 600,
so I'm going to oddly enough,
I'm gonna lose some displacement,
but I'm gonna gain horsepower,
so I have a fresh Crower crank, balancer,
I have a roller cam shaft for it,
I have every piece and part that I need
to assemble this engine, and it's been sitting
on the back burner for the last year and a half,
so that's another one of my personal projects
that I'm gonna go through and get accomplished
hopefully this week.
Let's see.
I kinda think that's about it for right now.
All the other projects are outside of the building, so.
All right, so with that,
that's the long drawn out here's what I'm doing.
You know what?
If you haven't, click on subscribe and actually,
tell me what you're working on.
I mean, we're all sitting home, sheltering safely,
and if you're like I am, you have some projects
that you're trying to clean up and trying to get done,
and you never have enough time
because well, ya have to work.
So, now that you're home, you have at least
a couple extra hours, like I said,
you're not driving in to work,
and I'd like to see what you're working on as well.
So, certainly post those in the comments,
send 'em to us, let us know what they are,
and check out our new media site at hagertymedia.com.
All right, so with that, I'm gonna wrap this up
for right now, get in the garage,
get your projects done to some extent.
The roads, there's zero traffic by the way,
but do everything safely, have fun, and enjoy your ride.
See ya.
We're all staying at home, we're all social distancing,
and we're all being told to constantly wash our hands.
Well you know what, you guys keep telling me
to keep washing my hands, so I'm going to
because they're greasy and I have to, right?
So, and the birthday song is to me, a little childish,
so I'm a child of a little different era,
so I'm gonna sing my own little song here.
It goes a little like this.
♪ Whoa, Black Betty bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ Whoa, Black Better bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ Black Betty had a child bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ The damn thing gone wild bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ She's always worryed outta my mind bam-ba-dama ♪
♪ The damn thing gone blind bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ I said, "Oh, Black Betty" bam-ba-dam ♪
♪ Whoa, Black Better bam-ba-dama ♪
(laughs)
Gotcha, that was horrible, I know, but hey, wash your hands.
See ya.
(water splashing)