Things continue

"MM54" (mm54mk2) 01/31/2019 at 21:20 • Filed to: '71Chevelle

4

5

I’ve not posted in a while (by the standards of the past month at least) about it but I am still ma king some progress on the Chevelle.

Here you can see the pitman arm and the steering shaft as they came out of the car, undercoated, some rust, and greasy. As with everything else, these are going to get cleaned up.

After some quality time with a 1" scraper and the wire brush, they made it to this point. Better, but not ready for paint by any means.

That’s better. I used the wire wheel on the bench grinder to clean up the pitman arm and a stripping wheel (die grinder) and some wire brushing to make more progress on the steering shaft (the latter still has a little prep to go as pic tured ). These are basically a degreasing away from being ready for primer; the steering shaft will be black and the pitman arm will be cast iron color.

Bonus: the wire wheel on the bench grinder makes it very easy to make incredibly satisfying improvements to small parts, in this case the bolts on the firewall which supposedly are rear stops for the hood, but don’t seem to actually do anything. These will get painted too, of course.

Next up I’m working on cleaning up the control arms, knuckles/spindles, and the whole of the steering linkage.

someassemblyrequired > MM54 01/31/2019 at 21:32

0

Didn’t convert over to rack and pinion?  

MM54 > someassemblyrequired 01/31/2019 at 21:33

0

no

someassemblyrequired > MM54 01/31/2019 at 21:46

1

yeah probably no reason to if the steering box is good, even though the stock box is like 47 turns lock to lock

MM54 > someassemblyrequired 01/31/2019 at 21:51

1

I have a faster box to go in; the original wasn’t sloppy but as you mentioned was a pretty slow ratio and valved for the one-finger-parallel-parking feel.

someassemblyrequired > MM54 01/31/2019 at 21:56

1

ha yes, perfect for a full-size Oldsmobile, not so perfect for a muscle car