My newly acquired 1974 Eldorado convertible project car

[MaR]

Paint pen link please?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E7EG3NM

[MaR]

Time to dye the middle dash panel. It was the same as the other parts: good condition but faded and dirty. I cleaned it up and taped off the vent bezels. It is possible to remove the bezels but it requires lots of pressure on what can be assumed to be a fragile dash pad so I just opted to mask them off. It turns out that the bezels are 2" wide which matched my tape width so it was actually quite easy to mask them.








And here is the finished product:

[MaR]

I circled back around to the 3D printed filler to paint it and fit it to it's mating part. It fits as well as the NOS filler but I think I will tweak it just a little more to tighten up the fit a bit.












I'm pleased overall with the filler and am proceeding with the other parts on the front right now. I hope to have the turn signal filler done next and then the front fender filler after that.

[hornetball]

I think I need to have you come down to TX to paint my car.   

[35-709]

Yes, nice work!

[MaR]

The new filler fits the bumper nicely. You can see just how far the bumper is pushed in on the drivers side though. Fortunately, it just looks as if the energy absorber is just compressed a bit. When I get a chance, I will pop the mount off and see if I can free it up.

[hornetball]

Reference photos.  Pretty sure the soft piece is aftermarket.

[MaR]

Perfect! That's just what I needed.

[MaR]

I have put off the heavy engine maintenance long enough. Sitting for decades never does anything good for an engine and I need to completely go through it to make sure there is nothing about to go horribly wrong. This engine is an odd paradox of horrible neglect and almost pristine parts.

Here is the starting point:




I drained the coolant and pulled the radiator. The upper and lower hoses seem to be the factory installed pieces but the radiator was changed just before I got it.




The coolant was more like mud than coolant. I wonder if the previous owner just put the old coolant back in when they changed the radiator...




Here is the power steering fluid. I think we are starting to see a trend here.




All the accessories removed from the front. There is a fair bit of crud and just about any place that can leak oil is leaking oil. The motor mounts seem to be OK though.




I'm fairly certain that this is the factory fuel filter. I'm sure that this is probably causing some performance issues.




The thermostat is a little worse for wear also.




With the timing cover off, the nylon cam gear is in surprisingly good condition. The chain has about an inch of slack in it though. I knew that it was bad already though, I could see it with a timing light.





I still have a ton of crusty rust to get out of the cooling system and I need to pull the heads to fix broken exhaust manifold bolts. Someone had already replaced a cracked manifold on the drivers side so I think that both of them are OK.

[hornetball]

Gird yourself.  My engine looked better inside than yours, but when I pulled off my valve covers, I had mountains of crud built up over the exhaust crossovers.  The end result is that all my rockers were badly worn and two valves needed to be replaced for excessive tip wear (wear is a gentle word here).  I'm going away from the T-pedestals to a shaft system.

OTOH, you've got nice, fresh paint on the valve covers, so maybe somebody cleaned up under there?

I've never seen a fuel filter and thermostat look quite like that!

[MaR]

Gird yourself.  My engine looked better inside than yours, but when I pulled off my valve covers, I had mountains of crud built up over the exhaust crossovers.  The end result is that all my rockers were badly worn and two valves needed to be replaced for excessive tip wear (wear is a gentle word here).  I'm going away from the T-pedestals to a shaft system.

OTOH, you've got nice, fresh paint on the valve covers, so maybe somebody cleaned up under there?

I've never seen a fuel filter and thermostat look quite like that!

I had already pulled the valve covers and refinished them myself. They were gushing oil when I got the car so they needed urgent attention. There was a little crud on the exhaust crossovers but nothing substantial.

[MaR]

If had some time to dig a bit deeper and get the rest of the rest of the engine apart. Nothing was surprising, and most of the parts were in decent, albeit very oily, condition. The exhaust manifold bolts were the only things to give me any trouble.

The cam gear was in surprisingly good condition with only a few cracks starting in the nylon gear teeth. It won't be going back on the car though.






Nothing surprising in the valley pan, just some oil residue and some crud from burn oil around the exhaust crossover tube.




There was nothing exciting under the valve covers. Just a bit of crud build up over the exhaust crossover outlet and remnants of the acorns that some rodent had stored in the open breather hole.




With both heads off, the front completely undressed, and the wiring and vacuum lines removed, I can now start cleaning up the block for a bit of paint.

[MaR]

Here is where the fail starts...




Five out of eight exhaust manifold bolts broke on the passenger side.




One of the bolts broke some time ago and was already missing. You can see in this pic that the very last bolt head was just hanging on by a thread.




The drivers side was much better with only one broken bolt. That will be easy to mill out once I have the head torn down.




Here is what was my dads old valve spring compressor. I have no idea how old it is but it weighs about as much as the head casting...





The compressor still does the trick and I had no problems compressing the springs and popping the locks out.





Frankly, I surprised that as much of the valve stem oil shields were in place. I think the one on the #8 intake valve may have actually still been functional. A new set is on the way.



More work on the engine parts coming soon...

[MaR]

Now for some non-greasy work. I acquired a really nice set of interior door panels from a '78 Eldorado. I got both the upper and lower door panel parts but for now, I'm concentrating on the lower panels. I do like the spring loaded handle from the 75-78 Eldorado, so I very well may use that upper assembly in the end.

Here are the lower panels. They are in very good shape with a minimal amount of wear and distortion. It's very hard to find good OEM door panels like this without paying an arm and a leg for them.







Since the panels came from a coupe rather than a convertible, they have seen very little (if any) water damage.





Obviously, they are completely the wrong color for my interior. I pulled the carpet off first so I can recarpet it the correct color later. I also cleaned it completely with a Magic Eraser dipped in lacquer thinner.




Under the carpet I found a manufacture date. These panels were probably some of the last ones made.




And here it is dyed with the same dye that I used on the rear seat panels. I put several extra coats on, especially in the areas that will likely see heavy wear. I have used the same dye to change the color on a center console before with superb results so I'm not worried about it flaking or rubbing off.

[hornetball]

Nice work.  I'm looking forward to doing cosmetics.

One thing I wonder about . . . looking at pictures of other '74s, sometimes I see a vacuum canister and sometimes I don't.  My car doesn't have one, and close examination of the firewall shows that it never did (there are indentations for drilling the mounting holes, but no holes).  Hmmmmm . . . .

[MaR]

Nice work.  I'm looking forward to doing cosmetics.

One thing I wonder about . . . looking at pictures of other '74s, sometimes I see a vacuum canister and sometimes I don't.  My car doesn't have one, and close examination of the firewall shows that it never did (there are indentations for drilling the mounting holes, but no holes).  Hmmmmm . . . .

What was the manufacture date? Mine is a late '74 build.

[hornetball]

What was the manufacture date? Mine is a late '74 build.

I'll look it up this evening.  Found this link describing how to read the data tag:

http://www.tpocr.com/cadillacbp14.html

[MaR]

Back from some business trips and ready to work. If you remember my previous pic of the thermostat, the cooling system needs some attention. It has a new radiator, but I'm sure that it is already full of rusty crud. Here is what was residing in the upper block crossover passageway that goes to the heads:




That crud was almost completely clogging that entire passageway from one side to the other. It did clean up nicely and I was able to get just about everything out all the way across.





I found an similar amount of crud in the cylinder head passageways also but the lower parts of the block seem to be clear. I suspect that the slow evaporation of the coolant over the decades of sitting lead to the build up. I also know that it's going to take several coolant flushes to get all of the sediment out of all the nooks and crannies.

[MaR]

I have also been working on the valve train while I have the heads off. Several of the valves had some slight surface pitting that cleaned up nicely with some lapping compound.






The pitting looks much worse that it actually was and it lapped out very easily. After lapping, I liquid tested all the valves and they all held solvent for hours with no leaks. I also replaced all the valve stem seals. All but one on the drivers side had disintegrated and crumbled up. It was surprisingly the opposite on the passenger side head where only one was broken and all of the remaining ones were still intact. New ones are cheap though so they will all be replaced.




Still on the docket is fixing the five broken exhaust manifold bolts on the passenger side. The drivers side only had one broken bolt and it was fairly straight forward to drill out and tap.

[hornetball]

My head guy put in regular viton seals instead of those Cadillac-only plastic things.

Question on the headlight adjuster screws -- is the style in the pictures above (Dorman 42124) correct for 1974?  I can't seem to find a clear answer anywhere and most places indicate that style came into use in 1975.  I suspect that what you removed was original, so . . . .  Mine were a jumbled mess -- they probably installed whatever was on the shelf when they did the cheapo paint job in 2015.