problems

I ran into a 'glitch' with the new harmonic balancer. Before I pulled everything apart I did a quick measurement and discovered the HB on the car is 7" in diameter and the new one is only 6". So I called the Damper Doctor and he said to go ahead and ship both back to him and he will rebuild mine. Since this project was going to be done in the front of the house I had hoped to not have it take more than a few hours. So I pulled the car into the driveway as far back from the street as I could and went to work. About 2 hours later I had the radiator and balancer off the car. I went ahead and cleaned up the radiator for when I re-install it and also cleaned up my old HB. Should only take a few days so with shipping etc I figure by the end of next week I should get it back.

Here's a picture of both the old and the new balancers.

Also here's a close up of the old balancer with the part number visible. Now I see why I couldn't find it when I was looking for it. It's on the inside (towards the engine)!

New balancer is here!

UPS just dropped off the new (rebuilt) harmonic balancer from Damper Doctor. I'm surprised how good it looks. Appears to be a brand new one rather than rebuilt.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get it installed and see if my vibration problem goes away!

Rear tires, new electric fan

Last week I took the Ranchero down to the local tire store and had them put the 185/80r13's back on (give the car a bit of a boost in the rear end and also helps to keep the rpm down a bit lower. I also ordered the new 14 inch electric fan and the harmonic balancer.

Today I pulled the front bumper and lower valance (rock shield) so I can modify it to fit the new electric fan. Fortunately the PO (previous owner) had already cut the core support so the radiator could be moved forward just a bit. Since the old mechanical fan was so small (12 inches) and probably wasn't working that well, I went ahead and removed it. The new 14 inch fan is quite a bit larger and covers most of the radiator surface.

Hopefully the harmonic balancer will get here today and tomorrow I can pull the radiator so I can get to the front bolt on the HB. I'm hoping my compressor has the poop to power the impact wrench enough to get that bolt off! If not then 'plan b'.

I took a few photos of the modification that was done to slot the radiator core to move the radiator forward.

passenger side

 drivers side

drivers side 

passenger side

 old harmonic balancer and distance from mechanical fan to radiator

Need to cut front rock shield for new 14 inch fan. This is with the old 10 inch fan.

1st coat of paint on tailgate

The rains stopped and I was able to finish up the 1st coat of paint on the tailgate. Pretty happy with the results considering it's a 'rattle can' paint job.

I took a quick photo of the drivers side of the car. The area in the forward part of the front door is going to need quite a bit of work but I'm still wanting to get one color on the whole car. Now just the passenger side rear quarter and the roof are left. Hopefully I can get them both done this week.

primer

I got the roof, tailgate and left rear quarter prepped and in primer just before the rain started. It's been raining the last few days and looks like it will be throughout the weekend.

I still need to do some additional bondo clean up to fill some of the 'cracks' that were left so will work on that next week. Once everything looks good I will do a light sanding of the primer and spray the color on. Then the whole car will be one color!

Looks like I will be ordering the new harmonic damper, and electric fan next week. Then I need to take the rear wheels off and get the 185/80r13's mounted that were on the car originally. They are in decent shape and since you can't get that size any longer I will put them on. Should help compensate for the low rear end also.

I will post some pictures when the sun comes out again!