[Tim john]

Perfect, factory as I recall was the blinkers/parking lights would go out with the headlights on, swapping the two wires in the bulkhead connector allowed them to stay on, much more pleasing to the eye and image of the car.

Tim

[ZeGermanHam]

Originally Posted by Tim john

Perfect, factory as I recall was the blinkers/parking lights would go out with the headlights on, swapping the two wires in the bulkhead connector allowed them to stay on, much more pleasing to the eye and image of the car.

Tim

Yep, having the headlights and parking lights illuminated simultaneously looks great. Cooler than the factory configuration, IMO.

The American Autowire Classic Update wiring kit that I used defaults to running the parking lights and headlights simultaneously as seen in the photo above. That was a pleasant surprise! I called them about it just to confirm I hadn't wired something incorrectly.

[1_Wild_Cat]

So close. Great to see an update and wonderful to see all the progress.

[fyrffytr1]

Congratulations on the great progress from someone who has " been there, done that"!

[Scarebird]

Excellent work.

[ftwmlp]

Every time you post, I look at your pics and stand in awe of the progress. Then I go out to my garage, look at my "partially" complete '66, smack my forehead, and call myself a lazy ***hole.

That being said, it is truly a pleasure to see what you've done with that car.
Mike Pearson

[ZeGermanHam]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! I'm glad it looks like progress is happening. It feels like it's slow going on my end, and I thought I'd be done with this restoration two years ago! If things keep going the way I anticipate they will, I should be able to get the GTO on the road this summer. What a long journey it has been.

[Greg Reid]

Thanks for bumping this thread to the top. I had forgotten about it. I'm just starting to scratch the surface of my '66 teardown and this thread is loaded with good information!

[ZeGermanHam]

Also, I should take a moment to update this thread. I'm still not done with this project, but I'm pretty close. The only things left to do are wet sand the paint, install the headliner, put on the remainder of the trim and badges, and that's pretty much it! I took it for its maiden voyage a week ago and it drove great! It has a very faint u-joint vibration at ~65mph, so I'll adjust the pinion angle soon which should take care of that. I only eyeballed it when I put the rear in. Otherwise, the car performed flawlessly.

However, I wanted to put out an SOS... I pulled my wheel arch trim out of the shed today to polish it up and get it ready to install. I haven't looked at it since I put it away in 2019, and I noticed that the driver side front piece is dinged up beyond repair. If anyone has an OEM driver's front wheel arch moulding for 66-67 without dings, let me know!

[Greg Reid]

Originally Posted by ZeGermanHam

It has a very faint u-joint vibration at ~65mph, so I'll adjust the pinion angle soon which should take care of that. I only eyeballed it when I put the rear in. Otherwise, the car performed flawlessly.

Can you tell me a little about that process? How you check it, change it and verify it?
I swapped rear ends last year and have the same symptom at the same speed.
EDIT- Scratch that... I see that you used adjustable aftermarket suspension parts at the rear. Mine is a factory setup so I suppose my vibration is from another issue.

[ZeGermanHam]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

Can you tell me a little about that process? How you check it, change it and verify it?
I swapped rear ends last year and have the same symptom at the same speed.
EDIT- Scratch that... I see that you used adjustable aftermarket suspension parts at the rear. Mine is a factory setup so I suppose my vibration is from another issue.

Yes, I did use adjustable upper links for my differential that allow me to change the pinion angle.

I'd still recommend verifying the pinion angle in your car even if you have stock, non-adjustable upper links. To check it, you'll want to elevate the car on level ground and have the full weight of the car on the axle or wheels. For people without a 4-post lift to drive onto, that would mean supporting the car by placing jack stands under the axle tubes so the rear suspension is weighted. From there, you will want to disconnect the driveshaft from the rear and use an angle finder (can be a free phone app) to determine how many degrees from zero you are at. My understanding is that the reading should be in the ballpark of 3-degree (not less), and equal and opposite to the angle of the output flange of the transmission.

So if the transmission is angled downward 3 degrees, the differential should be angled upward 3 degrees, give or take.

I'm not an expert on this, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you find that your pinion angle is not where it needs to be, you might need to buy adjustable upper links to get there.

[Scarebird]

Great to see, Karl - hope the rain takes a break for more testing.

[Greg Reid]

Thanks. I have a couple of things to do underneath it soon and I could take a look. I did replace rear control arm bushings and boxed them while I was doing the rear end swap. I may have possibly wound up a few degrees off.

[ZeGermanHam]

It has been a while since my last update here, so I thought I'd check in and show where things are at currently.

Some big news in my world is that I have a new personal shop space to store and work on my cars, so the GTO has been moved from its previous "country club" shop location which was shared with hundreds of other collector cars to a space that is just mine. I purchased a 2-post lift and have space for two cars along with plenty of workspace and storage area. It's great not having to work in shared space anymore. Although the previous location was a lot of fun in some ways and I met a lot of great people with cool cars and projects, the ultimate end game has always been to get my own space, so this was all according to plan.

Unfortunately, before I was able to find a suitable shop space for myself, the previous facility's staff damaged my GTO while parking it underneath a 4-post storage lift. This was in July of last year. Despite having one staff driving and another staff "spotting", they still managed to scrape the passenger side quarter panel on the post of the lift. So frustrating. It crunched the wheel arch a little bit and caused a very slight ripple in the flat portion of the quarter panel.



My painter was able to pull out the metal and no cutting or fresh metal was needed, but he did have to repaint the entire quarter panel. The repair came out good, but of course I will always be a bit salty about that incident. Accidents happen and I was kind to the staff about it, but yeah... Not ideal.

Alright, on to other things. I'm so glad that the '66 GTO doesn't have a ton of brightwork, because that stuff takes time to make right. Here is one of the wheel arch trim pieces that I removed some dents from and got looking pretty again.


Starting point


Dents removed and now ready for further sanding and polishing


All polished looking like new

I also took the opportunity to rethink how my tailpipe hangers were attached to the frame. The existing metal screws that I had holding them on were not super secure, so I decided to install some nut-serts and use bolts rather than screws. Nice and secure now.







When I was working under the car, I also noticed that one of my rear shocks from UMI Performance was leaking (see oil trail on shock tube), despite only having about 30-40 miles on the clock. I called them and they sent me two replacements for free despite being past the warranty period. They get a blue ribbon for customer service.



I installed a set of retractable 3-point seat belts from Morris Classic Concepts, which are outstanding. I really like them and am grateful the '66 came with threaded inserts in the roof structure from the factory despite never having been equipped with shoulder belts.





Eventually, I finally took the car back to the painter for final wet sanding, which even though the car was painted in 2022, the plan was always to have wet sanding performed once I was mostly done with the rest of the car. Here I am with it last month on the day I got it back from wet sanding. HUGE difference in the appearance of the car. Really can't be understated how much smoother and rich the paint looks after wet sanding. 99% of the orange peel was removed and it looks wet.



And now that wet sanding had been finished, I could then begin putting the remainder of the trim and badges on the car.







I also took the opportunity to repaint my steelies, since they got some overspray on them when the body was painted, and I never liked the quality of the Eastwood wheel paint that I sprayed them with the first time. It was too flat, too textured, and too grey. Not good. Here is after I repainted them with my favorite semi-gloss, Duplicolor engine enamel with ceramic DE1635. I didn't repaint the centers around the lugs since they just get covered with caps anyway.



The weather was really nice here over the weekend, so I decided to take the GTO out for a spin and see how things are working. I have just under 200mi on the clock now since getting it running under its own power. By most accounts, it runs fantastic. It does everything it's supposed to do and seems very healthy. Never had any hiccups, until this Saturday's outing...

I drove about 20min from my shop space to a park, and shut it down to take some photos. I was there for maybe 10 minutes, and when I attempted to restart the engine, it didn't want to fire up. So I pumped the gas pedal a few times and cranked but it still didn't want to go. At that point, I feared I had flooded it, so I held the gas pedal on the floor while cranking and eventually it sputtered to life. It backfired through the carb and I noticed that it seemed to be running a little bit rougher than normal. Thinking that it would probably clear up after a moment, I put it into gear and pulled away. After about 100 yards, the engine hadn't cleared up and I noticed that the brake pedal was really stiff. I had almost no brakes...

I put two and two together and realized that I must have a vacuum leak at the booster, causing both the engine to run rough and no brake assist. I opened the hood and sure enough, the backfire had blown the front of the booster check valve clear off.

I tried to MacGyver a roadside fix with electrical tape, which seemed to work momentarily, but the pedal got stiff again so I threw in the towel and called for a tow. Had to wait for 1.5hrs for the truck to arrive, and during that time I called a nearby O'Reilly to see if they had any check valves in stock. Nope. Hard to believe, since it's a super common part used in many GM applications. If they had one, I'd have taken a Lyft to grab it and been back on the road in 20min, but no such luck.















The tow went smoothly, and we arrived back at my shop without any issues. Glad that I had water with me while waiting for the tow truck to arrive. Now I just need to figure out what caused the backfire.



After I sort that out, the only things left to do on the car are install the remainder of the rocker trim and fender badges, A-pillar trim, headliner, windshield wiper assembly, and have the A/C system charged.

[kingbuzzo]

Car looks great...hopefully you get her runnin' rite...

[Scarebird]

Karl, that looks really nice. Surprised the hangars at Sand Point are accessible - would make a nice shop!

[ZeGermanHam]

Thanks, Mark! Yes, the hangars at Sand Point are pretty much totally accessible. One of them has a fence around it, but you can still get right next to it. They all appear to be in use in some fashion or another. Either for long term storage or some other more active purpose. One of them is used frequently for public events, etc. Crazy to think that there used to be a huge runway and Naval Air Station right next to one of the nicest neighborhoods in town (Laurelhurst).

[Scarebird]

yeah, that's why it ain't a NAS anymore - serious NIMBY action there...
and runways were pretty short for jets.

[ZeGermanHam]

Yeah, the runway was about a mile long. There's still a PB4Y sitting mostly intact in 140ft of water just off the shore that failed to get airborne and went into the lake in '56 (all crew survived). Landing gear is still down and everything. Here is a 3D photo of it that divers captured a while ago.