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Restoration Journal of a 1958 Porsche 356A Cabriolet
Friday, January 28, 2005
Progress With the Little Things
No major projects in the past couple weeks to report however we have completed a few small tasks. The front suspension is now installed complete with new bushings and tie rod ends.
The wheel cylinders were in suprisingly good shape. I cleaned them up with scotchbrite and decided not to get them honed as I was concerned with taking off too much material making the cylinders larger than they needed to be. With a straight edge I couldn't find any wear through the stroke and the pistons were very tight with only a 0.008" to 0.012" clearance.
Once I have the brake drums turned I'll install them as well as the front wheels to give me a little extra protection when I'm under the car. Both of the drums are oversized by about 0.015" and will probably be about 0.025" after they are turned. I have new shoes to install so I don't think that this will be too much of a problem.
The broken bolts for the trailing arms are still giving me trouble. I work on them every now and then until I get frustrated. Last thing I need is a broken tap or drill bit. I tried to recruit my dad the machinist to help. I think he knew how big of a job it is so the only support I received was a bunch of sharp drill bits, die grinder bits, and a big grin. I guess he's retired from rebuilding cars.
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Sunday, January 09, 2005
Transmission Completed and Engine Tested
We finished the transmission assembly this week. Not too difficult considering that we really didn’t take it too far apart. We replaced a couple gaskets and cleaned up a few surfaces so it now feels like it shifts a little bit better. We really won’t know until we get it on the street. I bought a couple new axles tubes this week that had been power coated. I really only needed one for the left where we had a broken bearing casting but I think I found a pretty good deal.
The real excitement took place at Hamilton Classics in Martindale where we took our completed engine to Bill Hamilton to run on his engine stand. The engine stand made the process starting up a fresh engine so much easier. Once it was installed on the stand, we needed a quick timing adjustment and it fired right up. We quickly found a few gas leaks from the carbs and some minor oil leaks. After fixing these, we fired it up again and ran for a few minutes while Bill adjusted the timing and balanced the carbs.
We found that things ran well with the exception of a knock on the left side. We adjusted the valves and found that we bent one of the push rods. Unfortunately, this did not fix the problem. Once we got the engine back home, we took the right head off and found that the piston was actually hitting the head just slightly. Fortunately no major damage was done. Now we will go back through the process of setting the head/piston clearance again with the shims between the cylinders and case. I’m confident that it should fix the problem.
In all the day was a great success. We had good compression, good oil pressure, fixed all of our leaks, set the timing, and balanced the carbs. We also found that we had a good generator however our starter solenoid was bad. I still can’t image how all of this would have turned out if we tried all of this the first time with the engine installed in the car. It would have taken me weeks to do what we were able to do with Bill in a few hours. It was exciting to see our hard work turn in to something that made noise and smoke on it’s own. We left Bill’s with a real sense of accomplishment eager to get the car on the road.
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