Chevelle updates

[dykstra]

Turned out great!

[RPOLS3]

Spent some time with Jeff Ashen at MCACN and he convinced me to buy one of his original restored RC-15 radiator caps and get rid of the reproduction cap on the Chevelle. Never looked at one side by side - but there is a huge difference. The cap condition matches the age of the rest of the under hood look. Thanks Jeff!

[olredalert]

----Jeff spent a lot of time in our booth, but was all over the place as well. Talked to him when I got home and he really had a good time.....Bill S

[RPOLS3]

Like most of us here understand, it seems a constant effort to constantly improve and sort out/dial in our cars. The minutia of the small/relatively obscure parts can be both fun and mind numbing once you dive in (see previous post about the radiator cap). As I noted in a separate update post about our Regal and restoring an original horn for it, we met Gary from The Horn Works as our swap space neighbor at MCACN last fall and got talking about the correct horn(s) for my Chevelle. All the time I have owned the car (since 1987) it has always had dual horns. I was aware they were not original to the car but assumed it was supposed to have 2 horns. Gary let me know that it was supposed to have only a single horn. As luck would have it when I dropped of the Regal horn to be restored he looked through his stash of horn cores and found the correct (and dated) horn for the Chevelle. He restored it at the same time as the Regal horn and I installed it this evening when I got home. Thanks again Gary.

[RPOLS3]

Last fall before I put the car away for the winter I noticed a small gas leak coming from the top front of the tank, which probably explained the fuel smell in the garage...............I drove enough gas out of it and it went away, so I let it be over the winter as it was safe.

I brought the car back home last weekend and in between the various 409 projects I have going I decided to tear into the tank and see what the deal was . Dad and I made a minor repair to a couple of pinholes on the top of the tank after I acquired the car almost 40 years ago and I assumed that patch had finally failed.

I think the leak was actually the original rubber hoses on the fuel sender that had finally dried up as there did not appear to be any other leaks and the gas stain location lined up with the bad hoses. Since I have the tank out anyways I am thinking it might be time to just replace it with a Spectra one and be done with it (the top side of the original tank is pretty crusty) in addition to having the sender rebuilt (or replaced as it is crusty too). Another option is to take the original tank to my radiator guy who can clean it up and check it out, but the low costs of the replacements seem to make that a tough choice even though I'd like to retain original parts...........

Instrument Services who is local to me does the sender rebuilds so I might run up there to see what they think on the sender first and go from there.

While under the car it reminded of what a good candidate this thing might be for dry ice blasting as it was undercoated early in its life...............might have to look into that some more.

[RPOLS3]

OK..........learned a bit today - sharing for others knowledge if you didn't already know.

Instrument Specialties https://www.clocksandgauges.com/ is about 10 weeks out on their sender restorations and cost is about $350. I can't wait that long, (I brought the Chevelle up for the summer cruise season since the 409 won't be running for a bit) so I ordered a reproduction sender for $50 and going to see how that goes. Based on others experiences with the repro's I suspect after a while it will eventually quit so I'll get my original rebuilt and have it ready on the shelf when the repro gives up.

I picked up the freshly made 409 radiator this afternoon and brought my original gas tank for him to look at. With a fair amount of work (and expense) he can clean it up. The top is crusty enough that he is worried about not having enough metal after the clean up. It won't look original on the outside any longer and it will cost about 2x-3x a new Spectra one, so I ordered the new Spectra Precision OEM galvanized steel tank (Summit actually had the best pricing) this evening and it will be here by the end of the week with the sender. With any luck I'll be up and running again this weekend.

One thing to note - the radiator guy mentioned that on an original gas tank the filler neck extends into the baffle adding stability to the neck. Evidently on the repro tanks the filler neck doesn't always extend to the baffle therefore it tends to be less stable.

Hoping everything fits and works

[RPOLS3]

Received the tank and sender yesterday so I decided to put everything back together last night.

The tanks look pretty similar but defintely not identical. Good news is the filler neck extends into the middle baffle like the originals.

I tested new sender prior to install. Hung it off the tank straps and hooked up power wire to sender then hooked up ground, moved the float up and down and the gauge in the car worked as it should. Installed everything and put 5 gallons of gas in car and the gauge reads empty.

If I disconnect the power lead to the sender the gauge reads full. I had to drill a new ground as the new sender wire was too short to make the old location work, thinking that might be the problem. Ran out of time and patience (doing this on a garage floor) at 10 PM and will try again this weekend......ugh. I love old cars!

__________________

[Bill Pritchard]

Originally Posted by RPOLS3

I had to drill a new ground as the new sender wire was too short to make the old location work...

I experienced the same thing 15 years ago when I got a repro sending unit for my old 69 SS396 convertible. They make all the rest of the sending unit correctly and then 'cheap out' by making the ground wire a few inches too short! When I called whomever I bought the repro sending unit from, they claimed they had no complaints from anyone else on that issue, which I found hard to believe. Solved the problem by returning the repro unit and sending my original to John Wolf in Ohio, who correctly restored my original sending unit. IIRC, I had the rebuilt sender back from Wolf in about 2 weeks. Total cost including shipping both ways was right at $200.

[RPOLS3]

Saturday afternoon I spent 4 hours messing around with this. Ran a jumper wire from the sender ground to the negative terminal of the battery - nope. Lowered the tank again and removed the sender, re-tested out of the tank and all good. Put back together and nope. Lowered the tank again, tested the original sender after a ground wire repair and tested good. Put the original sender back in the tank and - nope. Ugh. So as I lay on the garage floor under the car defeated, thinking about what to do next, I thought to myself, what would Dad do here? He'd rig up some sort of tester to see why it wouldn't work in the car. I took some fishing line and tied it to the float on the repo sender (4th time in and out) so I could move the float up and down when in the tank to make sure it was moving. Put it all together, pulled on the wire to move the float and........bingo - the gas gauge was moving accordingly. Hmmmmm. When I was talking about this with another car guy locally he said maybe the 4-5 gallons of gas you have in the car is not enough to move the needle yet..........not sure why that would be. Once I knew the float worked in the tank I gambled that not enough gas was the issue. So I put everything back together and ran out of time last night to test. First thing this morning I ran up to the gas station and filled it up and guess what - the gauge started moving. I will run the repo sender until the original is rebuilt (I'm getting good at replacing them now ).

Hoping that sharing my experiences here saves someone else some time.

[Too Many Projects]

You should have bent the float wire until the gauge read a quarter tank with the 5 gallons in there. They ALL seem to need bending to read anywhere near correct. They package them in the smallest box possible, which has the float up tight against the tube and it wouldn't fit like that with the wire bent out for the float to be in the correct location...