[roger1]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

Awesome shop/garage space.

Originally Posted by bluejudge

Wow that was a lot in a few weeks. Good luck with everything Roger, and glad you posted all those pictures and took the time to show us all your 69 Conv. Restoration. Thanks, Marc.

Thanks guys.
Yes, it was a lot. We are still a bit shell-shocked because it all happened so quickly.

Btw, all that stuff in the workshop belongs to the previous owners. Nothing in there will be left behind. Next time we see it, it will be totally empty. The previous owners are leasing back from us for a short time in order for them to get moved.

[Shiny]

Wow, you've been busy!

Congrats on making it all happen! That took some work!

We lived in Ft. Collins for 10 yrs before the job ended during the 2009 mess.

We then lived in Bothell WA for 9 years until retiring and moving to Montrose CO.

We decided to move back to the front range this year as we have one son in Boulder and one in Denver. We had no trouble selling our house but finding one is a different story!

Small world....

Mike

[dataway]

Love the shop matching the house. Very nice.
I'd love to know who built the shop building if it wasn't the same contractor that did the house.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by Shiny

Wow, you've been busy!
Congrats on making it all happen! That took some work!
We lived in Ft. Collins for 10 yrs before the job ended during the 2009 mess.
We then lived in Bothell WA for 9 years until retiring and moving to Montrose CO.
We decided to move back to the front range this year as we have one son in Boulder and one in Denver. We had no trouble selling our house but finding one is a different story!
Small world....
Mike

Indeed!
Thanks and yes, it took some work but I think we got lucky
as well. No way did we think we would be where we are now back in the end of July when we made the first decision to sell our Boulder condo.

Looks like we will be neighbors at some point. We will have to meet up. I've never been to Montrose but was interested in looking at the possibility of Grand Junction. I could not get my wife interested in that side of the mountains at all so we locked in on the front range.

Originally Posted by dataway

Love the shop matching the house. Very nice.
I'd love to know who built the shop building if it wasn't the same contractor that did the house.

Thanks. The house was built in 2002 and the workshop in 2010. The people we bought the house from only owned it for 4 years so I don't have the info on who the builder was.

[Tarl]

Just gorgeous

[roger1]

So I'm back in Texas from spending time at the new house in Colorado. And back on the car as of yesterday.

Good news, bad news from yesterday. First the good news:

I drove the GTO down to a shop that does paintless dent removal. That's all they do so the guy is a real specialist. As you may remember there are 3 low spots on the hood that bother me. The hood was a real challenge for me since it was covered in hail dings and had a couple of other places where there was slight damage on the surface.
He said he believes he will be able to fix them. He said he will probably scratch the black paint on the under side. I told him no worries on that because it is no big deal for me to do a bit of spraying to touch them up.
He said he's pretty booked but probably would be able to get me later in the month. I'm fine with that since I have to re-shoot the doors and can keep busy with that while I wait.

Now the bad news:

On the way home from the shop, I started hearing a hell of a noise coming from the rear of the car whenever I let off the gas pedal. I nursed the car home and immediately put it up on jack stands to inspect. It didn't take long to find the problem. The yoke on the differential was all sloppy! So, that would mean to me the pinion bearings are toast.
I bought all the new parts including gears for it and then paid to have it assembled. I bet it doesn't even have 50 miles on it yet. The machine shop I used to assemble the engine recommended the guy to me for the rear end assembly. He said just bring me the rear axle and I'll have him come pick it up and assemble it for you and bring it back. So I never met the guy that did the work and don't who he is. I will start out by calling the machine shop guy on Monday and see what he advises me to do.

[Shiny]

Darn would be a word.

I'm sure you were freaking out but sounds like it could have been worse.

Hope you get it resolved quickly.

[dataway]

Wow. I'd imagine the ring and pinion are toast too. Did the rear end guy fill it with fluid or did you? Just thinking it would be unusual for a guy that does diffs to have the preload so loose or so tight it would self destruct that quickly.

I just finished that job on my GTO not long ago, probably only have 10 miles on the rear. Checked it after each short drive, the pinion area was warm, by no means hot. Figured I'd ease it into breakin with short drives.

No expert here but it sounds like the pinion pre-load was too tight .... or there was no fluid in the diff. I guess a bad bearing would also be a possibility, but rare I imagine.

Will be following the solution to this situation. Hopefully you'll end up with a no cost to you solution.

[roger1]

Thanks. I'm not sure about getting it resolved at no cost or not with the way the deal happened. I did hear that the guy who did the assembly does it on the side and not as a business. Even though it wasn't the machine shop owner's fault, I hope he will feel some responsibility to give me help in getting it resolved.

I filled it with the oil and the additive that came with the Auburn Gear unit so that wasn't the problem. I do think the TV cable for the transmission needs to be adjusted as the 2-3 shift is a little late and slams in sometimes when I let off the accelerator. But I can't imagine that would cause a rear end to fail.

[roger1]

I posted a question about the issue here:
https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com....php?p=6465007

[roger1]

Yoke wiggle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8VSRmxYAk

[Greg Reid]

I can just imagine how that felt and sounded. Interested to see the innards of that one.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

I can just imagine how that felt and sounded. Interested to see the innards of that one.

I'm hoping I didn't drive it far enough to have any damage to the gears or Auburn unit.
I'll update here tomorrow after I talk to the machine shop owner. I just texted him and gave him the story and the video and said I hope the guy he sent it out to will make good on it and that I'd call him tomorrow.

[roger1]

This morning Mike Garblic replied to the other thread and gave me his opinion on what happened after seeing that short video I posted. He is optimistic about there not being any damage to anything beyond the pinion seal but says it needs to be disassembled and fully inspected and then start the assembly process from scratch.

I got in touch with the machine shop owner this morning. He said he will come to my house with a car trailer and pick up the car on Wednesday. He wants to disassemble the rear to find out what happened. He didn't disagree at with it being a high chance that the preload wasn't set correctly but of course needed to see it when it's taken apart. It sounds like he has a closer relationship with the guy that does his rear end work than I thought as he said he has a couple of rear ends done per week through his shop. I think he said he has more than one guy as well.

Anyway, at this point things are looking good at getting this issue resolved at my satisfaction.

[dataway]

Excellent. That's a scary video. Lucky you found it when you did and not going down the road at 70 mph.
Now I'm going to have to crawl under my car after every drive for the first hundred miles

[roger1]

Good news. I got the car back last Friday and the rear end seems fine. I took the car on a couple of long test drives. All quiet and feels tight. Very happy that they took care of this for me. He told me there turned out to be no damage to any of the internal parts and the cause was indeed because of the pinion not being tightened enough to crush the sleeve.

There was one unrelated thing that I noticed during that test driving though. The front end has a slight shimmy feeling at around 30 to 40 mph but goes away at higher speeds. I'm wondering if it's tire balance. When I had the tires installed the guy was having problems with his balancer giving error codes and he fought with it the entire time. I'm going to get them re-balanced and see if that corrects the issue. If not, I will take it back to the alignment shop and have them re-check that.

For the last couple of days I've been preparing to re-shoot the doors on the car to correct where I went through the paint. I removed the door panels and all the hardware from the doors and then sanded them with 600 grit wet.

I moved the car outside yesterday to rinse and then snapped these photos:







As I mentioned before, on the driver door, I color sanded through and on the passenger door I grabbed an edge with my polisher.
I only need to spot in a few coats of red base coat in those areas and not the entire panel. Then spray 3 coats of clear over the entire panel.





Moved the car back into my work room and attached my filter wall. Looks like the car is in jail.



I did get some time today to install the filters on the wall and to start masking off the car. I'll spray the doors tomorrow and will post a few photos here when I get done.

[Greg Reid]

That car is looking beautiful.
I'm interested in your aint booth' setup. Any photos of that?

[dataway]

Wonderful, and what beautiful red outside in the sun.
Excellent news about the rear end. Sure hope I tightened mine enough.
Wanna see some photos all done and parked at the local drive-in burger joint.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

That car is looking beautiful.
I'm interested in your aint booth' setup. Any photos of that?

Thanks Greg! And you know me, I take photos of everything:

https://www.trifive.com/threads/my-n.../#post-1999176

Originally Posted by dataway

Wonderful, and what beautiful red outside in the sun.
Excellent news about the rear end. Sure hope I tightened mine enough.
Wanna see some photos all done and parked at the local drive-in burger joint.

Thanks Johnny!
I hope you did too. I'd say drive it a while and check the lash and make sure it doesn't change even if it remains quiet. When I think back, I thought I was hearing bit more clank when I changed from reverse to drive before it started making noise while driving.

Photos at a drive-in and at a car show will be coming but don't know when at this point. As you know, I'm stretched a bit thin right now with the big move coming up.

[roger1]

Not taking any chances. Masked everything well. Blankets over everything inside the car too.