My tow vehicle repower

[boxhead]

Into it again today.
Stripped out the brake and clutch pedals, brake booster and mount assy (V8 is fitted to different bracket), also removed the steering colomn (replacing with power steering colomn that is shorter and auto selector on colomn) and the old under dash a/c assy.


Rebuilding a new colomn out of all the parts I have.




Then it was time to strip out the K frame (to fit the V8 one) and all suspension parts.


Valiants are notorious for rusting out chassis rails and cracking rails around the steering box.
Here is what mine looked like.

All looks fine, but it was eating away at my mind, so I cut an inspection hole in the chassis (after all I have a MIG welder and can easily zap in a new plate to fill the hole), this is what greeted me.

Insert many swear words here.
Now I need to decide to either replace the entire chassis or cut open and see how it is inside (what I will probably do).

[Modena]

Where do you find the time Dave? Keep at it! Bad luck on the metal-cancer there, bugger.

[Merv and Sharon]

Don't know how you do it Dave. What is the temp in that shed?

[boxhead]

Temps this weekend in the shed was not too bad.
We had a big storm blow through at about 2pm on Saturday and it rained all night and most of Sunday, humidity is up but temps in the high 20's was ok, just made sure I had the fan blowing.
Also had the swampy on until the rain came.
This was Saturday arvo with the storm on its way.


It is a bummer about the chassis rail, I will cut it open for a beter look tonight, I do think I will be pulling the rail from the police car and using it as a replacement (This car was Alice Springs all its life) where as George lived in Tamworth for the first 8 years.

[Baz]

Dave - Charger Story - As you know I was a Highway cop for the best part of 35 years and in the early 1970's we were using a mixture of marked and unmarked Chargers from 6cyclinder, to big V8's. I had an unmarked E49 that really flew, but had a bad habit of seizing the distributor bearing which in turn, ripped the cam gears to pieces. This seized the motor and had disaterous results on the valve train. The bonnet lifting and flying back over the windscreen at high speed was another small problem. I had the car towed to the local dealers quite a few times for the distributor / cam problem. Just before we changed camps and moved from Chrysler to GM products and Harry Firth's missile tripple carbied, massively camed, Bathurst Torana's with long range fuel tanks, I had a similar probelm with the distributor on the Charger for about the third time. It was towed to the local dealer and a smart arsed mechanic who wasn't really affectionate to Police, installed a Taxi cam in my E49. Instead of pulling 120mph in third with massive amounts of torgue available (similar to a Cobra with an LS2), it would only do 85 mph flat out, but I was getting over 30 miles per gallon. The only person who was happy was the euivalent to the then Financial Manager who was paying the fuel bill. Other than those couple of small problems, I loved the car and it did win Bathurst. One day I will tell you about the all black, unmarked Phase 4 GTHO's, but that is another story. I loved work.



Baz

[boxhead]

What color was the 49 Baz?
Also was it s "big tank" with fillers in the upper rear quarters, or standard tank with filler in ducktail?
The distributor drive is a very common problem.

[boxhead]

Tonights instalment.

First up I painted the streeing colomn parts and left them to dry.
Next I decided to strip out the engine bay, as I want to repaint that.

I will buy some paint stripping disks tomorrow so I have them when I need them.

Then I figured I would pull the dash cluster, as the amp gauge and headlights played up some times, I thought it was a loose wire on the alternator, once I removed the dash pad I could see that 2 of teh retaining screws had fallen out, and the remaining 6 had almost fallen out, the cluster needs to earth to the metal dash frame. So with loose and missing screws then the whole cluster was not earthing, this was ok in the daylight but with dash lights on it was jsut too much.
Whilst the cluster is out I will clean it up and repaint the needles.


Then after avoiding it for as long as I could, it was time to cut open the chassis rail.


Insert many more swear words here.

So I will now be cutting the rail out of x cop car.

[Gav]

Paint the engine bay?

The paint will be worth more than the whole car!

Seriously though, how far back do you cut out the frame rail Dave?

[Towmaster]

Hey Box are you going to have this back on the road and ready to tow to Shelbyfest?
My Dad had an ex SA Police CL 318 Valiant, that thing used to fly.... until it spontaneously combusted one night in the shed... A bit weird that. We lived west of Goondiwindi on a property so there were no local vandals to set fire to it... Just a mystery.
Love the story keep it coming.

[boxhead]

The frame rail runs to under the drivers seat, from radiator panel.
I will most likely replace the complete assy.

Just reasearching now so I know what I am doing.

[Gav]

Sounds like the right time to graft in a HQ front end and big block (392 hemi of course).

[boxhead]

If you read here, this is the most likely repair scenario.
Hemi6pack.com - Australia's Chrysler Community Online!

Another option is to cut out the lower sections of rail and replace with my donor one, then sleeve over the top.
Driver's Side Chassis Rail Repair Sleeve (Steering Box) AU$159.00 from Hemi Performance (Powered by CubeCart)

[boxhead]

I had some more goodies arrive in the post today.

[boxhead]

I finished the overhaul on the power steering colomn tonight.
Fitted a new indicator canceling mechanism, sanded and repainted and repainted the selector quadrant.

[Rog246]

Crikey Dave, George won't know himself when you're done. He might start looking for a mate, mate !

[Gav]

I reckon with all that new paint, V8 power, auto and the like, Dave might have to splurge with a new set of fluffy dogs for the dash

[Aussie Mike]

Originally Posted by Gav

I reckon with all that new paint, V8 power, auto and the like, Dave might have to splurge with a new set of fluffy dogs for the dash

Probably need to velcro their bums to the dash to stop them flying off.

[Aussie Mike]

Dave,

I did one of those sleeve repairs on the drivers side rail of my old VG coupe. Pretty straight forward to do.

Cheers

[Rog246]

The curtains will have to go back in along with the pompom's around the tailgate window too !

[boxhead]

No curtains.
But it will get blinds in the back.
VH-CM VALIANT S/WAGON SIDE VENETIAN BLINDS / SHADES | eBay