Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

Hahaha. I was a participant in a reality show once. They are definitely fake.

 

Dad stopped by with Little Red. It's the first time it has been driven in a very long time. Last year it wouldn't start, which turned out to be a fuel pump, so while he was gone during the winter I put a new fuel pump on it. When he tried to drive it a couple weeks ago it would drive for a short while and then sputter and die. It seems to have just been the fuel filter, which on this car is a small filter that fits into a housing on the carburetor. The old filter appeared to have something melted inside of it. My best guess, which is a long shot, is that the old diaphram broke apart and got stuck in the filter and then melted. He made it over to the house one day last week and it barely made it home. On this trip it didn't give any troubles.



This car has had the 283 replaced with a 327 bored .30 over and has a small cam. The air filter fitment has always been pretty finicky and after looking closer I realized that if you positioned it so that the throttle didn't hit the base plate when your foot was off the throttle, then it would hit when you pressed the pedal. If you adjusted it so it wouldn't hit when you hit the gas, then it would make contact with the base plate of the filter when you didn't touch the pedal. We marked and modified the base plate and got the throttle working with no contact with the air cleaner base plate.







I put the passenger side fender back on. Working on the car would have been easier if I left the fender off, however covering the car continually with a tarp was a bigger hassle than it was worth. This is where all of the previous labeling came in very handy.





It's always easy to let imperfections slide in the alignment of panels because the factory didn't even align the panels correct back in the 70's.





This clip fell out of the fender when I took it off. It was rusted and the nut was stripped out so I welded the nut back on, cleaned it and painted it. Then I found out it doesn't go anywhere. All of the bolt holes had bolts and clips.





I took the old water pump off. I'm not sure if it was bad, but I didn't want to find out. It is a true test of discipline to not over-restore this project. The temptation to clean, paint and restore everything is enormous, but this is a daily driver that needs to be finished quickly without snowballing into a 6 month project. I really want to paint the block, powdercoat the inner fenders, and make the entire engine bay look brand new.





The instructions for the new thermostat were somewhat confusing. There are two types of gaskets to use depending on what type of housing you have. The instructions said to use a paper gasket for my type of housing, but the housing didn't have a gasket at all when I took it apart. Also, the new thermostat didn't have this piece of rubber around the outer perimeter so I had to reuse the old one from the old thermostat. Pictured below is the new thermostat with the old rubber gasket attached.





I opened up the Holley high mount AC bracket kit. The packing was top notch.





The instructions were much better than what I've been used to seeing from some of these "so called" LS Swap kits.





The new pump went on without too much of a hassle except for the fact that I got it torqued down and realized I forgot to put the gaskets in place. Since gaskets are fairly important I got to install the water pump twice.





The worst part about the Holley kit was that I found they included bolts and brackets for all 3 types of kits they offer, which meant that I had to find out which bolts went with my kit and which bolts weren't needed. Perhaps someone better at following instructions than myself wouldn't have had trouble, but it was a bit confusing. Either way, the kit was very nice and fit as described. Nice fit, nice finish and an overall well designed product, which is something I've grown unaccustomed to with the other kit's I've used so far.





I'm going to need to adapt the power steering pump to The Caprice's gearbox. I'm not sure what the 3 fittings are for just yet. There's two lines and a fitting at the bottom of the pump.





I started working on getting the new pedal mounted. This is the area I have to work with. The three humps below are where the old gas pedal assembly mounted. Because the firewall is not flat in this area and I also don't want to drill more holes in the firewall, the solution I came up with is to make a plate that will bolt to the original holes and then mount the new pedal assembly to the plate. I used a piece of paper to get a rough shape and then transferred that to cardboard.





I got out the giant piece of 1/4 steel I got years ago at the scrapyard for practically no money. I've made all kinds of car parts out of this piece of steel and it's still bearing fruit. I was fortunate and found one of the existing sides already matched one of the angles I had made with the template.





This finished up yet another grinding wheel.





After lots of trips back and forth between the table and laying in the floorboard the final product slowly began to take shape.





The tricky part was transferring the hole pattern to the piece of steel plate. I was not able to fit a pen through the holes to mark the plate and I also didn't have anyone to hold the plate for me while I marked it even if I could. I taped a piece of cardboard to the firewall and marked the hole pattern from inside the car.





I then measured and drilled the first hole.





I used the first hole to hold the plate in it's location and left it loose enough to adjust back and forth until I had it positioned in just the right place. Then I used white fingernail polish on the back of the plate. I was able to get a small, pointed pick through one of the holes in the firewall and score the location on the white fingernail polish.





I then used the old pedal assembly to align the markings. I had to have the plate mounted in the car to get it clocked in the right position. After that I used the two holes to locate the 3rd hole and drilled it as well. I was tired at the end of the night I forgot to take a picture of the last step I got done for the night. The final plan will be to use small spacers between the firewall and plate and also spacers between the pedal assembly and plate, which will allow room for the nuts and bolts from each piece to fit.





After doing some research and getting a lot of opinions I decided to try to return the radiator which did not have a transmission cooler built in. It seems that the transmission cooler also heats the transmission fluid when it is cold causing the transmission to get up to temperature sooner which allows longevity of life of the unit. After considering this and the amount of fabrication it was going to take to get an external transmission cooler to fit in the limited space I have I decided to try if I could swap out the radiator. Fortunately, because of the Holley debacle with the AC compressor I had established a relationship with a tech support at the vendor so I called that extension and they worked with me. I hadn't installed the radiator, other than just sitting it in the car to measure for mounts, so I was able to return it. I am currently awaiting the new radiator. I also painted the bottom radiator mounts but will have to wait for the new radiator to get here before I know exactly how many layers of rubber to glue to the bottom. I had to do two oil change and tire rotations and get some personal business done today so I was yet again unable to make it to the scrapyard to try to find some metal for the upper radiator mount.

 

The P/S pump--I forget what vehicle you pulled it from, but did it have hydroboost? I'm thinking the two pipes are the separate returns. I'm also thinking there's a Sag reservoir just like this one, except only one return.

 

What!?
You mean to tell me that they aren't "real" as the title implies?

 

I like "lil' Red"

If your father experiences any further problems with it, just drop it off at my place. I'll be happy to take it off your hands.

 

haha yeah, he has some problems with it. overheating and the windshield not fitting in the frame properly. I'll be glad to get done with some projects so I can finally focus some attention on that car.

 

Here are the pictures of the Holley A/C bracket with Sanden 508 fully installed, minus the belt.









I wasn't exactly sure what to do about plumbing the power steering and then someone on the forums mentioned that the original lines should fit. I pulled the original lines off of the old engine and they not only threaded into the hole but they also lined up perfectly. Apparently the new pump is almost exactly in the same location as the old pump.





There is a 3rd line on the 2004 power steering pump that was originally used as a return line for the hydraboost brake system on the donor Avalanche. I'll crimp this line off and seal it.





I later found out that even though the old Caprice power steering line threaded into the back of the 2004 power steering pump, the new and old lines have different styles of fitting and they have different fittings internally in the back of the pump and that would not allow for a good seal. There were several options here and companies make adapters to fit the old hose to the new hose, but since I have the old pump I was able to swap the fittings in the back of the pumps that the power steering lines threads into. I pulled the fitting out of the old motor.





They look identical from the outside. The 2004 fitting is on the left and the original fitting is on the right.





however inside is a different story. The 2004 fitting is on the left, the original fitting is on the right.





After installing the old pump fitting in the back of the new pump the lines fit perfectly and bolted up just fine. That was a relief.





I finally prepared the dining room table for operation of the wiring harness. Funny enough, these sheets I'm using were actually used at a funeral home for covering embalmed bodies, brown blood stains and all, so this isn't the worst operation they've seen.





Here's the harness splayed out.





I started removing the loom and black tape.





And spaghetti went everywhere. I'm a bit overwhelmed here as I really don't fully understand what I'm doing. I'm just trying to take it one small step at a time.





I started back to work on the new gas pedal. I got the holes drilled in the mounting plate to attach it to the firewall. There were many different ways to accomplish what I needed to do. While I was at work I would design this in my head and then piece together the parts a little at a time.





I marked a plumb line on the plate while it was mounted in the car so I could align the pedal assembly straight.





One thing that made the mounting difficult was avoiding interference with all of the bolts coming through the plate while still getting the new pedal positioned properly.





I had to drill a hole in the pedal assembly with the hand drill because it wouldn't fit in the drill press.





This shows how the bolts were positioned so the pedal could mount flat without interference. My original plan was to use spacers between the pedal and the plate but I found this didn't give the the stability I wanted.





I also didn't want anything sticking out of the back of the plate between it and the firewall. The new pedal had two mounting holes, one on the bottom and one on the top, shown here.









I decided to countersink the bolts so they would sit flush with the back of the plate.





I was able to use the drill press to drill to drill the right depth without going too far. The 1/4 inch steel gave me enough material to achieve this.









Everything mounted up as planned.





And there was no interference with the pedal travel.





The silver bolts will be on the outside of the firewall when the assembly is mounted.

 

Then it was time to relocate the pedal. I made this jig to help me put the new pedal in the right place.





I mounted the original assembly to the jig and marked where the pedal sat.





I used a drywall screw through the cardboard to locate the depth and height of the top of the pedal,





I mounted the assembly so that the bottom of the pedal aligned at the cardboard and I then marked that location on the cardboard.





Since the new pedal assembly will use the original holes I was able to mount the new pedal assembly to the same jig and reference the marked position of the old pedal. I drew a line on the new pedal arm for the cut.





And I chopped it off with my dwindling supply of cutting wheels.





I wanted to keep the original pedal. The new pedal arm would not mount to the original pedal so I had to cut the original pedal arm and mate it to the new pedal arm. With the new pedal assembly mounted on the jig I was able to locate where the pedal should be and begin to work from there.





For the entire build of the car so far, this was by far the most frustrating process yet. What seems like a quick and easy process in pictures actually equates to several hours of test fits and failed ideas and bruised fingers pushing the now stubby pedal arm down with no leverage. I did take the spring off. The electronics required a special socket to remove, so I was not able to take this apart. Because of the shape of the original pedal and the way it swiveled on the arm there were certain angles which could not be modified. Because of this, no matter in what position I put the pedal it would make contact when the arm would be mashed down fully. As I stated, I literally worked on this for hours trying to get the pedal to reside in it's original location without making contact when the pedal would be pushed to the floor.





I wanted to keep the welding on the new pedal arm to a minimal to keep the heat away from the electronics. Because of this, I didn't want to cut the arm too short and then have to reweld material back on if it wasn't absolutely necessary. As a result I went through several iterations of cuts to the original pedal arm, each time cutting a little bit more at a slightly different angle until I finally found one that was as close as could be achieved. I finally reached a point where I knew this was as good as it was going to get and I would have to make this it and deal with whatever else later. I welded a plate to the original arm with wet rags and vise grips used as heat sinks attached to the arm to protect the electronics on the assembly.





I then used the pedal and arm to locate where the new arm should be welded. It wasn't very pretty, but it's on there. Again, I wanted to keep the welding and grinding down to a bare minimum.





The position isn't exact but after a lot of playing with options I was able to get it relatively close.





The pedal arm did end up with some interference, but it wasn't too bad compared to the previous versions.





I marked the areas and ended up cutting off the bottom of the mounting plate and using a round file to cut a relief in the bottom of the pedal assembly and taking some length off the bolt.





At long last the piece was ready for primer and paint. This simple piece of steel took many hours just to get to this point.





The finished assembly, after paint, bolted together.









Start to finish, I probably have 16-20 hours in this assembly. Even though it looks pretty straight forward the placement of all of the pieces was so critical that finding a way to make all the parts work together in the right location was very time consuming to figure out. I understand it would have been much simpler to drill new holes in the firewall and put the pedal where it needed to be, but that's not how I wanted the finished product to be and one great thing about a project like this is you can do it however you want.





Here's the end result.





It seems to work well and allows full travel of the pedal with no interference, and I get to keep my original pedal.





The new radiator came in and fortunately even though it has a transmission cooler built in it is the same exterior depth as the radiator I returned so I was able to reuse the mounts I had previously made without modification. I glued some rubber inside the mounts and put some weight on them until it dried.





I flushed the heater core using this attachment for a garden hose I made a few years ago.





I finished up by running the heater hoses.

 

Your attention to detail is incredible. I like to point out that all of these little things are "things not mentioned" when people decide that "just convert to an LSX" like it's an afternoon of simply dropping the new motor in...

 

Yeah, the wiring harness is a very good example of that.

 

I agree completely and was going to make the point myself. Your attention to detail is amazing. Things are looking good.
Keep up the good work.

 

I just hope that’s not the same table you eat thanksgiving dinner off ofnice work

 

His wife thinks they're just gravy stains left from Thanksgiving's Day turkey carving

 

Thanks, guys. I really wish I had the time to delve into this project but I'd end up spending a year or so just to get it running again. We used to use those sheets to catch the leaves when we would trim the shrubs. Shhhssss.... she doesn't have to know it's not gravy and dressing!

I got all the wires cut and labeled for the wiring harness. Now I just need to figure out how to do... all the rest.

 

"A journey of a Thousand Miles begins with that first step."