Imperial Journey

Getting the frame and bottom of the car painted brings me to a breakthrough – I can actually start putting things back on the car! The first step is the front suspension.

The starting point is to install the bushings and ball joints in the upper A-frame and lower suspension arm. The bushings press into the upper A-frames fairly easily.

The lower suspension arm has a spindle and requires a cylinder of the correct diameter to press that bushing into place. Of course, since this is an Imperial, it requires a couple of tries to get the correct bushing.

Installing the ball joints is a “special experience”. The Chrysler ball joints are screwed in and cut their own threads. They use a special 2-9/64″ socket and require massive amounts of torque. Fortunately I now have a large vise on a workbench that is bolted to the wall. The procedure is to clamp the control arm in the vise and lock the vise down so it doesn’t rotate. The new ball joints are started carefully so that they don’t cross thread. The first few turns are done using a regular 1/2″ ratchet. After it gets too hard to turn that, bring out the 24″  ratchet. After that gets too hard to turn, it is time for the three foot 3/4″ breaker bar! Nope, not quite enough. Add the 6 foot cheater bar to the breaker bar, lean on it, and snug up the ball joint.

Actually installing the upper and lower control arms and the spindles was easy. The factory service manual has instructions for doing this – some of the suspension parts shouldn’t be tightened until the car is on the ground with full weight on the tires.

Installing the torsion bars is a bit tedious. They have to be installed through the adjusters, which are located on the rear cross member. This requires 3 hands, preferably small hands to reach into the tight space, and wrestling with blind parts and 3′ long steel rods weighing 15-20 pounds. The instructions tell you to heavily grease the fittings and to make sure you don’t mix the left and right torsion bars.

At this point you are ready install the rebuilt steering box, drag link, and tie rod ends. Of course, one part is missing… I had to send the drag link out to be rebuilt, so the suspension won’t be done until that gets back. While most suspension parts are available new, the drag link is an Imperial-only part that isn’t available and can only be rebuilt.

It feels really good to finally be making some visible progress!

Next: Stop It!

When I last wrote, most of the preparation of the bottom of the car had been done. All that was left was to actually get some paint on it!

The first challenge is that the car is on jack stands and is only 18″ off the floor. It is possible to work under it, but not easy. Painting involves the paint flowing from the paint cup into the spray gun – which means that it doesn’t work if the spray gun is held upside down, sideways, or at strange angles. Painting the bottom of the car involves almost nothing but holding the spray gun upside down, sideways, and at strange angles!

Fortunately DeVilbiss has a solution in their DeKups system. This system uses disposable plastic bladders to hold the paint. While the main purpose of DeKups is to make cleanup easier, one of the side effects is that the gun will spray in any position. The plastic bladder collapses as pain is sprayed, so there is never any air in the cup and there is no place for the paint to run.

Devilbis even offers a DeKups starter kit which is surprisingly inexpensive. It is almost like they think people will be hooked once they try it…

Painting the bottom of the car is something I never want to do again – which means do it right the first time! In this case that involves two coats of epoxy primer and two coats of paint.

Before painting it was necessary to cover everything in the workshop to protect it from paint overspray. This is a pain; it would be much better to have a real spray booth. Something to think about in the future.

Actually spraying the paint is the fastest part of the job. After months of preparation I was able to actually spray in just a few hours!

As a reminder, this is what the bottom of the car looked like before:

And this is what it looks like now:

The brown material on top of the frame rails isn’t rust – it is grinding dust from other work that needs to be blown off.

I’m actually rather happy with how this is turning out! Now to start putting the suspension back together.

Confession: I haven’t actually done the entire bottom of the car. I’ve done back to the rear wheel wells. I still need to remove the rear end, rear suspension, and gas tank and prep and paint the rest of it. Which I’m not looking forward to! The strategy was to do things so that I can put the car back together mechanically and even start driving it. The rest of the bottom can be done as a later project.

Next: No Longer In Suspension

The plan was to wire brush the rust off of the front end frame, paint it, and start putting things back together. This plan immediately hit several snags…

First, there were rust holes in the firewall behind the doubler plate – the black piece in the center just above the transmission tunnel. This is underneath the large heater box, and is an area that traps leaves and pine needles. I had to clean out a lot of gunk in this area when I started working on the car, so this wasn’t a major surprise. It wasn’t a large area – roughly 4” x 6” to get back to solid metal. So, cut out a piece of the doubler, cut out the rust-eaten area on the firewall, and weld in a patch.

Of course I didn’t cut out enough of the doubler. After fighting the edges of the patch for a while, I finally just cut out the whole bottom half of the doubler to get enough room to work on the patch. Started a new, larger patch, formed it to the curves of the firewall, and then welded it in place. This actually went quite a bit easier than I expected.

The next step was to weld the pieces of the doubler back together and then weld it back in place. Except that the doubler was now too narrow! After studying it for a while, I realized that I had just butted the pieces of the doubler together, resulting in the doubler being narrower by the width of the cutting disk for each cut I had made.

This wasn’t enough to really make a difference, and no one would ever notice it when everything was back together. But I would know it, and it would bug me for years. So, cut the doubler in half, mount the two pieces back in place so that everything fit and lined up, make a filler piece for the cut, and tack it in place. Then remove the doubler, weld it up and grind smooth.

Since water tends to get trapped in this area, I took advantage of the opportunity to prime and paint this area of the firewall and the doubler piece with two coats of paint. The next step was to liberally coat the firewall and the back of the doubler with seam sealer, and then position it in its original location. The doubler was originally spot welded. I had drilled out the spot welds, which left me with holes that I could plug weld. After grinding down the plug welds you couldn’t tell anything had been done.

The frame responded well to a wire brush on an angle grinder. Fortunately and unfortunately, the bottom of the car was covered with undercoating. 50 year old heavily applied asphaltic undercoating… When new, this protected the floor and contributed to the quiet Imperial experience.

When 50 years old it was a combination of missing, cracked, falling off in sheets, and stubbornly attached. Now, this undercoating was a good part of the reason the floor was still solid, so I could have left it in place. But the poor condition of the undercoating bothered me, so it had to go!

I had discovered that the best way to remove this undercoating was a heat gun and scraper. Hold the heat gun on a small area for a minute or so, scrape off the softened undercoating, and then move to the next small area. Keep in mind that the bottom of an Imperial is roughly the size of a football field…

Inspiration struck – make an arm to hold and position the heat gun! After raiding the scrap wood pile I had this arm which would hold the heat gun in whatever position was needed.

The routine was to crawl under the car, point the heat gun at the next patch of undercoating, and lay on my back for a minute while the undercoating softened. Then move the heat gun a few inches, scrap the softened spot, and wait for the next spot to soften. Over and over and over.

It took me a few months to actually get the whole thing done.

Of course, scraping doesn’t remove all of the residue. So the next step was to scrub down the bottom with Prep-Sol and a sponge or abrasive pad. Did I mention that the bottom of this car is roughly the size of a football field?

After finishing removing the undercoating, I still had surface rust on the frame and various areas of the floor. The obvious thing was to use the wirebrush on the angle grinder. But the angle grinder was far to heavy and awkward to use under the car.

Die grinders, on the other hand, are light and small. Another chance to buy tools! A few days later these showed up, along with Roloc adapters and a variety of abrasives.

Roloc is an absolutely great system. The 3M abrasive disks do a great job of surface prep. You go through quite a few of them covering this much area, but they are relatively inexpensive and much faster and easier than trying to do hand prep.

After a few more days of prep, the frame, firewall, and floor were ready for primer and paint.

Next: Shiny Bottom

It hasn’t really been 10 months since I did any work – I’m just way behind on updating the blog. My original goal had been to get the car back on the road in 2018. My new goal is to get to the point where I am putting things back on the car rather than taking more things off. Every time I touch something I uncover more to be done. While the car is structurally sound and in amazing shape, there is surface rust everywhere. With all the work and money going into the car I just can’t leave it like that.

The entire front suspension, down to the torsion bars and crossmember, is out. All new bushings, tie-rod ends, and balljoints are going in. A front disk brake conversion kit, all new brake lines, and an upgraded 1″ sway bar are ready to go back in. The power steering box has been rebuilt, as has the brake booster. As part of the disk brake upgrade, the master cylinder has been upgraded from single to dual. It is going to be interesting putting this back together, as the Autopilot cruise control sits where the new brake lines need to be run.

As a side note, the Chrysler ball joints are screwed it. I had been warned about this, I had the proper 2-9/64″ socket as well as a 3/4″ x 3′ breaker bar and a 4′ cheater pipe ready to go. I had also acquired a 2′ long ratchet. Surprisingly, I didn’t need the cheater – the 3′ breaker bar provided enough leverage, once I put all my weight on it. This may be a hint that I need to go on a diet… In any case, the ball joint came out fairly smoothly.

Cleaning the suspension parts was “interesting”. There was a thick coating of grease, dirt, and other substances on most of the parts. Extensive scraping removed most of it. Some had hardened to the consistency of concrete, and had to be chiseled off. After the bulk removal, it was over to the parts washer and spend lots of time scrubbing and scraping to get the rest of the gunk off. There are too many front end parts and they are too big on this car!

After cleaning and painting the control arms, it was time to install the new ball joints. These are much too easy to cross thread. What should have been a one minute job took over two hours. The big ratchet and the 3/4″ breaker bar got a good workout. Once the ball joint was started straight it screwed in smoothly – but took major muscle on the breaker bar to drive it in.

While the engine and suspension were out, it was time to clean and prep the frame. Normally I would just pull the fenders, inner fender wells, and other front end pieces. The 1961-1963 Imperials have a one piece front end – the fenders and nose are all one piece! Actually they are made from several stampings, but the individual stampings are  welded together and all of the seams are leaded. This looks great, as the entire front end is smooth and unbroken, but is a pain to work with.

The original plan was to leave the front end sheet metal in place and clean and paint the frame. This was difficult to do, as all the sheet metal was in the way. Studying the situation showed that there were only 6-10 bolts holding the inner fender wells in, so I pulled those out. Much more space! And everything now exposed was covered in surface rust. It looks like Chrysler didn’t even prime the hidden parts of the firewall; it looked like bare steel. Nothing rusted through, but there is a uniform coat of surface rust.

I didn’t want to pull the front end off because it is one piece and large, heavy, and floppy. Picking it up and moving it seemed like an invitation to seriously bend things. Then inspiration struck – put in some cross bracing across the back, use the engine hoist with straps to pick it up, and call a friend.

This worked great; the front end is now off the car and upside down to work on. There are a couple of rusty patches that were under the rocker panel trim piece; other than that, everything is surface rust. You can clearly see rusty areas, especially the large pan in the center, that I couldn’t get to while this was on the car. This had been really bugging me – now I can treat it properly.

I can now get to the entire front frame, which needs cleanup and rust treatment. And it will be MUCH easier to put it back together like this! The suspension should go back on easily and the engine and transmission should slip right in. Hmm, I may even want to put the exhaust on before the sheet metal!

Next: Bottoms Down

Having some end of year vacation time to use up and a new heater in the workshop I planned to rebuild the front suspension and upgrade to disk brakes.

The heater was only able to warm the workshop about 20 degrees, so if the outside temperature is in the 20’s the workshop will be in the 40’s – and New England is about to drop below 0! OK, have to insulate the workshop before working in the middle of winter. I decided that “this just isn’t fun” and found indoor things to do after a couple of days. But I did make progress before retreating inside!

Pulling the brakes was interesting. The brake shoes were worn and both wheel cylinders were leaking. All of the brake hardware was corroded. One side was loose and the other side was dragging. No wonder the braking was so scary! I’m glad I’m upgrading to front disc brakes.

The first part of removal was easy. In this picture you can see the torsion bars, drag link, and steering box.

The drag link came out easily – undo the ball joint nut, insert a pry bar, and then pop the ball joint free. The big ball joints in the steering knuckle were a different story… After a couple of hours of prying, pounding with large hammers, and use of applicable language, they were still frozen solid.

It was clearly time to get the right tools. As I was getting ready to head over to Harbor Freight I considered how the Imperial front end is heavy duty and locked in place with with 60 years of corrosion. I really didn’t want these tools breaking at the wrong time – heavy pieces of sharp edged metal flying around can lead to a bad day. Checking online OTC got the best reviews for heavy duty use.

So, two days later an OTC front end set showed up:

All of the tie rod ends popped off easily with no problems. Having the right tools for the job makes all the difference! Now to the Big Job – removing the steering knuckle from the ball joints.

The ball joints use the separator tool in the middle of the box. Slip the separator onto the upper ball joint and tighten it down. Nothing. Not really a surprise… Next step is to hit it with the impact wrench. Again, nothing. OK, I got the OTC set to be able to abuse it. Set the impact wrench on its highest level and just let it run.

After several seconds of the drive bolt slowly turning there was a loud “spoing” and the separator popped off. Checking it, the tool was fine – the the ball joint was free! Pro tip: always leave the nut loosely on the ball joint when freeing it; then when it breaks loose the heavy parts don’t go flying.

With the top ball joint free it was time to do the bottom one. Slide the ball joint tool on it – and discover that it is just a little bit too small. Remember when I mentioned that Imperial parts are large? None of the other pullers would fit – they hit the upper ear on the steering knuckle. So, back online. Found one source for an over-size spreader that looks like it should work. It will be here in a few days; hopefully it is strong enough for the Imperial!

Update: the over-size spreader worked on two of the remaining three ball joints, but the last one absolutely refused to budge. After fighting it for a few hours I noticed that there is a space between the body of the ball joint and the steering knuckle – just enough room to get in there with cutting disk without touching the knuckle or the suspension arm. One minute with the angle grinder cutting the ball joint apart and the knuckle was off. With the knuckle off and on the workbench, there was plenty of room to get the heavy duty separator tool in place, tighten it down, and smack the body of the knuckle with the BFH (“Big Forceful Hammer”). The remnants of the ball joint popped right out.

The power steering box is out and has been sent off to be rebuilt. The brake booster is out and has been sent off to be rebuilt and to have the master cylinder upgraded from single reservoir to dual reservoir – an important part of the disc brake upgrade.

And hopefully it will warm up enough to get back into the workshop before July.

Next: Front End Removal

The first step in removing the motor is to remove everything attached to the motor – top, sides, bottom, front, and back. It took me close to two months to get all of this done – there are a lot of things attached to the motor, and surprisingly little room to work.

Some of the parts coming off and out were easy, and some fought me all the way. Since the exhaust was welded, the plan was to unbolt it from the exhaust manifolds and leave it in place. Of course, it didn’t work out that way.

The exhaust manifold bolts were inaccessible and rusted; I managed to get one off, round one off, and give up on the other two before too much blood was shed. The exhaust was so close to the drive shaft that I couldn’t get to the center carrier bearing. I ended up having to cut the exhaust to take it out. In five pieces. For each side… For such a huge car, there is no space to work in surprising places.

I had decided to pull the motor and transmission out as a unit. In retrospect this was a wise decision – there is so little clearance between the transmission and the transmission hump that it would have been impossible to get to all of the engine/transmission bolts.

I had to remove the radiator support to open up enough room for this. This proved to be another project – Chrysler used many bolts and some “creative” attachments for this. But, the support finally gave up and came out.

After all the prep work getting ready, actually pulling the motor was anticlimactic. I called a friend over to help. We chained the engine to the hoist, jacked slowly and moved things carefully, and the engine and transmission just slid out! This job went so smoothly I just kept looking for the disaster that had to be lurking. Nope, no problems.

Split the engine and transmission, remove the rest of the accessories from the engine, and start the expensive part.

Based on recommendations from people in the Chrysler 300 club, I took the transmission to Don Verity in Rhode Island. When I talked to Don he was very familiar with the pushbutton transmissions and with Imperials. Even better, when I pulled up to his shop there were three 1950s and 1960s Imperials parked outside, including his daily driver.

Don went through the transmission for a reasonable price. He reported that someone had been inside the transmission before, but they didn’t quite know how these old Torqueflites worked. The transmission was still in great shape, but needed the rebuild and a few missing and mis-matched parts replaced.

Don talked me out of replacing the torque convertor – he felt that these never go bad, and replacing them was unnecessary. Finally, a place to save money!

The engine went out to Custom Automotive Machine (Camco) in East Weymouth, MA. I have a friend who has a business restoring old Studebakers. He said that whenever he needs engine work he just sends it to Camco – he has had over a hundred engines done over the last 20 years with great results.

I had called Camco last year to discuss this project with them. They were familiar with the Chrysler 413, including knowing what parts were hard to get. They said that the knocking I was hearing sounded like a spun rod bearing, so don’t drive the car – the crank for a 413 is impossible to find, so if the crank is damaged the engine is probably a complete loss.

As it turned out, the knocking noise wasn’t a rod bearing – it was a broken piston! They found pieces of the piston skirt in the oil pan. They also found broken piston rings in two pistons. I have no idea how the engine managed to survive this without being destroyed.

They also found three cracks in the block. Fortunately not in structural areas, and they have a place that can repair cracks like this as good as new. Oh well, its only money…

So, the engine is now .030 over, new pistons and rings, bearings and seals, cam and lifters, and a head job with hardened valve seats

So I now have a completely rebuilt engine, beautifully painted in the factory turquoise color, sitting on a stand waiting to go back into the car. And several months of work ahead getting the engine bay ready to receive this work of art.

Next: Front End Deep Freeze

A long time since the last update. I’ve been working on the workshop: electrical is in and I now have power and light! While running electrical I also ran telephone and Internet out to the workshop – as I said, I’m a geek…

The Imperial is right at home in the workshop, which is a slightly oversize two car garage. There is enough room both for the car and to work! I’m getting really spoiled by having my tools where I need them. And a flat concrete floor is a fine luxury feature.

I spent the winter tracking down parts and suppliers. The engine and transmission need to be rebuilt, as does the entire front and rear suspension. This is going to get expensive very quickly.

I’ve started with a small victory: the spring was broken in the passenger windshield wiper arm, allowing it to flop around. Like everything else for old Imperials, the windshield wipers are a special part. Which, of course, is not available.

I had another pair of wiper arms that didn’t fit. I suddenly realized “hey, these wiper arms have a spring. I wonder if it would fit?”

Of course, it didn’t fit.

While staring at the old and new springs I noticed:

1. The hook had broken off one end of the original Imperial wiper arm spring.
2. The donor spring had two good hooks.
3. I have a welder.

So, cut the hook off and weld it onto the old spring. This took a while, as it was challenging to get the old and new spring lined up and stable so that I could weld. After a half second zap from the welder I had a spring with two ends on it. Reinstall the spring in the wiper arm, and I now have two working wipers.

It’s a small thing. But “the journey of a thousand miles begins with tripping over the shoelaces your friends have tied together”.

Next: Motor Out

Workshop structure done! The workshop is a bare shell, but ready to start work. I want to finish the interior and insulate, but that will come later. I know I’ll regret this later as it is a pain to do after you have moved into a building. But, “budget”.

Started work on the Imperial. Took off the cowl cover at the base of the windshield. Managed to break off a mounting stud in the center trim piece – pot metal that was stuck in place. Have to be more careful. Considerable buildup of leaves and dirt around the center air box. Managed to vacuum a lot of it out. Need to make a flexible hose for the shopvac to get into tight places. Can’t quite figure out how the air inlet works – there looks like a large rectangular door on top of it; will need to disassemble it some more. Need to paint inside the cowl air inlet. Tight in there; may wait until the engine is out to tackle it.

There is loose stuffing inside the heater box – looks like mouse nest inside the heater. Need to pull the entire heater system apart and clean it out. This will be a good time to make sure all the air doors work. The problem with the fan not working may be that the fan is completely clogged. Need to replace all of the vacuum lines. Look into getting a vacuum test kit for the vacuum servos. Check service manual for how to check and set the heater valve.

Started the car and cycled the air conditioner. The compressor cycles, but there is no trace of freon in the sight glass. Looks like the AC is completely empty.
Sound like a vacuum leak under the hood – heard a distinct hissing sound. Plan to replace all vacuum lines and check all fittings under the hood. The heater hoses look new, but should replace them just to be safe.

Electric windows aren’t working – only one window moves, the rear passenger window. It got stuck half way down and had to be pulled up to close. The power windows worked last fall. Check wiring and switches. Need to work on entire electrical system for corrosion. Contact cleaner and dielectric grease?

Took apart the right windshield wiper arm which was flopping around. Spring broken; need to find a replacement spring. The replacement wiper arms that are available are generic and don’t seem to have the screw lock, so it would be much better to repair this one.

The cruise control doesn’t seem to be working and seems to be putting extra resistance in the gas pedal. It looks like the linkage from the cruise control to the bellcrank can be removed completely.

Notes from last fall: The dash backlights work, but some of the gauge needles don’t illuminate. Speedometer is wildly inaccurate; using GPS to check speed. Need to check lighting for transmission and heater. Fuel gauge partially works; never shows above half full. Need to check to see if it is gauge, wiring, or sender. Oil pressure is very high when car is cold; may be problem with sender or guage.

There is a knock in the engine. Brakes pull rather badly and the mechanic said that three of the brake drums are badly worn. Have not been able to find replacement drums. Significant body lean and wallowing when turning – need to check suspension and sway bar. Can ran fine on Interstate – tracked smoothly and no vibrations.

Next: An Early Win

Plans are important. Plans are good. Plans are the secret to success. I enjoy planning and like to have at least a rough plan for projects.

The first thing to know about restoring a car is that it will be apart in pieces for 3-5 years. You need a place for the car, room to work, and room for storing all the parts you take off the car. You don’t do this in the garage you park cars in – not if you want to stay married! Thus, a 4 step plan:

1. Build a workshop.
2. Locate and acquire the car.
3. Restore the car.
4. Enjoy driving the car!

Since 1963 Imperials are rather rare I expected to spend 6-12 months looking for a car, flying out to check out a car, probably in California, Florida, or Arizona, and then paying $2,000 to have the car shipped.

While planning the workshop I happened to check Craigs List. And discovered a 1963 Imperial 30 miles away. At a good price.

Having no real choice in the matter, I headed over to check it out. It was, indeed, a 1963 Imperial Crown 4 door hardtop. The body was straight with only a few spots needing work. Checking it over it was solid – no rust in the frame, solid floorpans and trunk, and little to no rust in the fenders. The only rust spot on the whole car was a small hole in the bottom of the drivers door.

Further, all of the pieces were there! All of the chrome trim was present (and there is a lot of chrome trim on this car!). All of the underhood pieces were in place, including air conditioning and the AutoPilot (cruise control). The interior was missing carpets and the trim panels for the rear doors were in the trunk, but all of the important pieces were there. Even the jack was in the trunk!

I was able to drive it around the block. The suspension was worn, the brakes were scary, and the engine had a knock. Just what I was looking for!

This was not according to plan. I was a year away from being ready to start working on a car. And this was too good a deal to pass up. So I made an offer on the car. And in July of 2015 it was delivered to my driveway.

So, time to build a workshop and start the 3-5 year (or longer…) journey to bring this behemoth back – an Imperial Journey.

Next: Early Evaluation

Let me introduce myself: I’m a long time geek working in the computer industry on open source software. I spend too much time in front of a computer. Way too much time.

I needed to do something to get away from the computer. Something physical – something to get dirt under my fingernails and sore muscles. Something where you can actually touch and see results at the end of the day.

So I decided to restore a car. [Insert scary music here]

Note: while WordPress puts the most recent posts at the top, you can also read the story in order starting with The Car Shows Up.