I had the BEST day with my dad today. I helped him get his car running again after months of being out of commission. When he pulled the car out of it’s spot for the first time in 6+ months, I was so excited! It felt so good to have been a part of making that happen.
My dad drives a ’69 El Camino. My grandfather bought this car brand new, and my dad bought it from him sometime in the 70’s (80’s?). He’s been driving it and doing his own work on it ever since.
Working on that car is physically demanding. With it jacked up maybe 18-24 inches off the ground, there’s a lot of getting down on the ground, shimmying underneath the vehicle, shimmying back out to get the tool you forgot… Once you’re under the car, there’s about a million bolts to remove, some of them requiring 60lbs of pressure, plus all the heavy, road-filthy car parts, all at an awkward angle with little or no leverage. When the clutch went out this time, he hadn’t done any serious work on it in probably 10 years or more, so he asked me to help him.
I was excited to work on his car with him. I just like learning new things, and it was a nice opportunity to spend more time with my dad. I left home 19 years ago and only saw my dad 2-3 times a year at best until I moved back in 2013, so I welcomed the chance to up my stats.
When the clutch went out, dad was pretty sure he knew what the issue was. Also, the clutch disc was old and needed to be replaced, so we got started taking the underbelly apart. Dad must have got the drive train out by himself, but we had to take out:
- The stick shift, which attaches to the transmission (2 bolts, washers, nuts)
- The cross-beam, which goes over the exhaust pipes, but under the transmission, and getting it out (or in) is a bit like doing a 3-D puzzle (6 bolts, washers, nuts)
- The transmission, which is heavy and awkward (4 bolts, washers, nuts)
- The fly wheel housing, which is also heavy and awkward (8(?) bolts, washers, nuts)
- The fly wheel, which is maybe the scariest piece to remove because not only is it heavy, it’s also a thin, flat disc that sits inside the housing, which makes getting a good grip on it difficult and smashing your face in when it comes screaming out likely (6 bolts at 60lbs torque)
- The clutch disc (no bolts, I don’t think)
There might be a part or two I’m forgetting – I’m reciting this from memory, so no guarantees on the accuracy of anything I’m relating here. Having the right tools for the job is CRITICAL! I cannot stress this enough. We used ratchets and sockets (deep and shallow) and extenders and wrenches and ratchet wrenches… You had to get serious leverage on some of these buggers, and others were hidden in places you couldn’t see and had to bend at awkward angles to reach. There were times I thought it was simply impossible, but then I remembered dad used to this all by himself, so I just needed to get the hell over it.
Once we got all that off, we had to wait until dad could get the fly wheel refinished (I think it was the fly wheel). It had grown rough with use and had to be sanded down smooth again and balanced. That was an outside job. Once we got it back, we spent one day putting the clutch disc and flywheel back in. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it took a few hours. And getting that 60lbs of torque back on those bolts was a real…experience.
Today was a marathon session – nearly 9 hours gettin’ ‘er done. We didn’t think we’d finish it all, but we did. Back on with the fly wheel housing (which had to scraped “clean” of years of black, greasy road filth before we could put it back on), the transmission (also had to be scraped), the cross-beam, the stick shift, and the drive train. All of that took 8 hours. But, the clutch pedal still wasn’t working.
When we took it apart, the piece dad thought was responsible for the clutch pedal going out was intact, and since we’d taken everything apart, replaced the worn out parts, and put it all back together again, that meant the problem had to be in the clutch linking, a separate set of parts under the hood (vs. under the car). Dad removed the first piece in the linking (just a single bolt kept it in place) and found the problem – it had cracked. Fortunately, dad keeps all his old parts. So, he fished out the old part this cracked part had originally replaced. It was still functional, just an elongated bolt hole. He popped it in and the old girl was as good as new. We were done.
Well, as done as you can be on a 46-year old car. But, she’s running and driveable, which is a heck of a lot more than we could say about her yesterday! And that feels pretty damn awesome.
TL;DR: Father-daughter super duo restore new life to old car, get dirty in process, smirk like bad asses, commemorate momentous occasion with selfie.
