Restoration Projects Update w/ Jeff Clawson

The following is a production of Gear Head Media.

All right, welcome back to the all automotive podcast.

I'm your host, Matt Clausen, and today,

today we're talking with my brother one more time.

And I know I've been talking about this

for the last couple of episodes,

but we're gonna give you the update

on our 1968 Chevrolet C-10.

That is a project for me and my wife.

Actually have her out in the barn doing stuff.

So we'll get into all that.

We're gonna talk to my brother about his project

and he's got something really cool

that I think you guys are gonna like as well.

So get ready for the next 20 or,

ah, let's see, 45 minutes or so.

I'm glad you're all here.

Fasten your seatbelts.

We're getting ready to go green.

Welcome back to the all automotive podcast.

What's up, brother?

Not much, brother.

How are you today?

I am doing well.

I'm glad to hear that.

So ready to talk about cars and fixing things.

That's what's going on, I guess.

That's our shtick, I guess.

Of course, I'm always ready.

I'm always ready to do that, right?

So no worries there.

So a couple of months ago,

just so everyone's on the same page as we are.

Gosh, it was several months ago.

I know it's like, you try to get a plan in place

and we've talked about that too.

So we had a free weekend

and Danny was out in the barn with me, helping me.

And the truck originally came with a straight six

and if everybody else is up to speed,

I've got a 2002 six liter out of a heavy duty Silverado

that we are going to install in that

and that is all together and on the engine stand

looking all pretty and we'll pull some pictures of that.

I do have all the harnesses and stuff in the mounts

and stuff that I need to get it put in.

However, in the last couple of months,

I've been, I purchased a kit, a wearing kit for the body

and the whole vehicle itself

because I don't, the gentleman who owned this truck before me

should not do wiring and I'll tell you why.

So all wire nuts, right?

Oh my God.

Every little connection that needs to be weather.

I mean, under the hood and everything, it's all,

you know, the wire nuts used for house wiring everywhere

and wherever there was a problem with a wire,

he'd run a new wire and wire nutted in, I don't know.

So it was, it was, it was challenging getting that removed

which wasn't, you know, too big of a deal.

So I would tell people if you're going to do this

and I'm in a couple of she-ten groups on the Facebook there

and I'm very well versed in 12 volt electronics and vehicles

because that's really what I've been doing

for the last 25 years.

And so systematically, I kind of just took the bulkhead.

There's a pass through, I call it,

between the firewall inside the truck

and then outside the firewall there, just on bolts

and you pull it out and disconnect a couple

of different things here and there.

And I would really tell people that do not destroy this harness

because you can use it as a guide

for putting the new one in.

Now, Painless does a really good job

with telling you on each wire and it's kind of an eye chart

but it tells you what each wire is for, which is nice.

But we're putting an LS engine in this

with its own little standalone harness

and so we need to kind of mate these two together.

So there's some things in there like alternator

and cause it's really designed the Painless one that I bought

which is specific to the 67 through 72 Chevy trucks

and Burbs and Suburbans and so forth.

That they, it's for an original replacement.

So there are things that I'm not gonna use, obviously.

And so I'm going through the wiring

and the stuff that comes down the left fender well

is all for the headlights.

And then prior to this episode,

me and my brother were talking before the show

about how far I've gotten with it.

And I'm good at it and I know exactly

but I'm trying to be extra meticulous too about

cause the length of the wires are,

they give you plenty, which is great.

So I'm like, I don't really need all this extra wire

for the marker lights.

I'm gonna cut these and make them shorter.

And then there's the question of what do you cover it with?

And of course, Painless does sell the fancy mesh type stuff

or you can just go get convoluted tubing

and stick it in there, which is what you see

under the hood of most any car today.

But yeah, so the old harness actually has

cause these turn signals have a little rubber grommet

that hooks onto the core support

and there's like a two prong plug

that I ended up reusing because I didn't want to wire it

how they said to wire it in the manual

because they wanted you to cut those wires

and then just kind of splice them together.

And I thought, well, the pass through,

you know, those lights worked and I don't think that,

so I cleaned all them up and I got a good length of,

until there was a wire nut on the one side.

So I was like, okay.

Yeah, it was, it looks good.

I just got to get, like I say,

I got to invest in some convoluted tubing

and get the other side done.

And then there's, like I was telling Jeff before the show,

before we got on, that there's a wiring harness

that goes across the firewall

and then it comes around the right front fender too.

And it kind of sneaks down underneath

behind the hood hinge, which is not a big deal,

but you know, with the engine out,

it's easy for me to get up in there

and stand in there and get that kind of all hooked up.

But again, it's a factory replacement for these trucks.

So if it is, if we were to have kept the straight six

in there, it would have all the hookups

that are necessary for its starter and all that stuff,

which is kind of what we're gonna probably still use

as the starter circuit.

And that's not very complicated too.

It's, you know, power and then signal and.

Well, the long time listeners

of the all automotive podcast might recall

that I was working on a Jeep for a friend

and we did the rewiring, you know, on that.

And the Jeep, this is a Jeep that had been rebodied.

It had a fiberglass body.

It was titled as a 1974, but who knows, you know,

what it really was.

We swapped out the AMC V8, which was swapped in.

It was like a, you know, the car wasn't,

it wasn't born with a V8,

but it had been welded in at one point.

We pulled that and put a small block,

first gen small block Chevy in it.

Well, I used a painless wiring kit, a universal kit,

you know, for that.

And what I would say to anybody

that was gonna use one of these kits is,

is as you were kind of saying,

don't throw whatever you can of the old stuff away

to at least give you some breadcrumbs

as to how it's supposed to be hooked up.

But, you know, in this case,

we switched out the factory column for a tilt, you know,

like an aftermarket tilt.

And it was a GM style aftermarket tilt column.

And now the painless wiring was good about life.

Especially with Jeeps because AMCs of that vintage

were like, you know, Ford transmission and Jeep,

you know, Jeep body and a GM steering column.

And, you know, you know, whatever they had.

Everything in the, yeah, it was like.

Parts been special or whatever.

So it was, it was an interesting, you know,

exercise to get that all to work together,

which ultimately happened.

But what I would suggest to anybody,

because after I had it all done

and you would look underneath the dashes,

it looked kind of messy.

So I had to spend some time like fluffing it up

as best I could.

If I had it to do over again,

I would have laid it all out on the floor

and, you know, tried to, you know,

look where everything was going.

But I had, you know, pulled it all through the car

and I had the whole engine compartment done

and then started on underneath the dash.

And I probably should have done that in the other,

you know, the other way, right?

So that I was, you know,

so it would have been a little bit of a cleaner install.

But everything works and nothing's blown out

and my friend Mike has driven it, you know,

a bunch of times now and with no ill effect.

Everything works.

The only other thing I'm painless

if you're going to use or any wiring

and you run into a car with a fiberglass body, you know,

you need grounds everywhere and you need lots of grounds

because you can't ground anything to the body.

It doesn't, it doesn't work.

So I ended up putting some ground,

I don't know what you want to call them,

but some stations where I had it grounded to the frame

and then I ran a bunch of ground wires to it, you know,

so that it could ground everything, you know,

nothing works without a ground, couldn't figure out

why the blinkers are going crazy.

And this one blinks and this one doesn't blink

while this one's not grounded.

So once you figure that out,

like every single thing has to be grounded.

Yeah, the electricity has to have a path to ground.

So what I'm, what I was dealing with

was just stuff that was not, you know,

repaired correctly or install, you know,

they were just trying to avoid what I'm doing.

But yeah, so with any kind of hardest like this,

it looks daunting to start with.

And even myself, I was just like, you know,

ASC master technician isn't going to be a big deal at all.

Then I got it out of the box.

And I was like, Oh,

it's intimidating when you flip the cover and you're like,

this looks like 60 miles worth of 18 gauge wiring.

What am I going to, what am I going to do with this?

But, and I would encourage,

I would encourage everybody to, to read the freaking manual

because it does tell you, you know,

and I wouldn't have known that about the turn signals

if I had not have read that.

And I've, I've read as far as I've gotten.

So I'm, I'm doing under the hood stuff right now

so that I can get the engine installed.

So I don't have to, you know, work around the engine

while I'm trying to work across the back of the firewall.

Cause, you know, some of that wiring

and it's, there's not a lot of wires.

Once you kind of just get them all,

okay, this is for, this is for that.

All right, so, but the kit doesn't, you know,

the kit for the headlights, you know, I had to get my,

I had to, I have a special wiring repair kit crimping tool

that I bought from Mac tools a number of years ago

because we're constantly in Michigan here

fixing corroded wires for one reason or another.

And so I had to dig that out.

That's not something we use every day,

but it's nice to have, you know,

the ones that are the crimping pliers that crimp down.

So you can kind of get the terminal in there,

have the pliers closed and locked

cause it's like a ratcheting one.

And once you squeeze it all the way together,

it opens back up.

And so I had to dig that out.

And it's got, thankfully it's got a couple

of different styles of, cause the terminals are different.

And they give you in this kit, all these terminals.

So it was a little bit of guessing with that.

And then again, so I referred back to the old harness

and I thought, well, maybe I'll just splice

these old connectors in.

And I was like, no, I don't want to do that.

They're giving us all this stuff.

I might as well use it.

So I screwed a couple of terminals up initially,

but that's because like I said,

I didn't have the correct crimping tool.

And when you get the right ones,

when you, they're ratcheting.

So once you start closing it,

you can get the terminal in there,

hold it with one hand and slid the wire in there

and then it's done.

And then all you do is stick it in the back of the connector.

But then you got to figure out is high beam,

this terminal and low beams, this terminal

and the bottom terminal is ground or,

and it just needs a path to ground.

It's just, we needed to know,

I needed to know which one was high and low.

And who knows, maybe one of them

isn't going to be right, but without the car

having the battery and all the other harness in,

I can't really test that

until I get the whole thing together.

Well, you know what I did to test it,

which I thought, I thought I was pretty smarty pants.

When I did this is I hooked the, my battery charger.

I have an old school battery charger

that just can push two amps.

And I hooked that to the battery terminals

with no actual battery.

And I just pushed, because just the two amps,

it wasn't going to like fry anything or whatever.

And I could make the lights light up.

They were dim, but they lit up, right?

So I could see, turn the, turn signals on,

beep the horn, you know,

or the relays clicking, you know, all that stuff.

I was pretty, I mean, I'm sure that that's what there's a,

there's probably a tool for that somewhere,

power probe or whatever they call it now.

But I thought I was pretty,

I was pretty proud of myself when I kind of thought of that.

When I was standing like,

how can I test this without ruining it?

I worked out really well to do it that way.

Yeah. And that, and I've got a battery charger

that's like that.

But I, you know, some of those don't come on

unless there's 12 volts present.

So you kind of got to watch for one of those.

I do have one of them battery charges.

And that was really frustrating.

If it doesn't have any voltage in the battery

or you're not, you kind of got to light it up

with 12 volts initially.

So you may have to have a battery in there

to get your battery charger going.

But yeah, I kind of did that.

I kind of did that with the horn

because it's got a single horn and it's on the left front.

And I go, well, why don't I crimp?

Cause this wire was super long.

And I go, oh, well that'll reach over to the other side.

I'm going to set this up for dual horns.

Yeah.

And then I can just buy the kit

that's got the high and low night note,

A and the F note or whatever.

And, you know, the one can be on the right

and the other one can be on the left.

And it'll sound like a new Chevy truck.

We will be back after a short break.

Hey guys, it's Matt Claus

and your host of the all automotive podcast.

I've been in the automotive industry for over 30 years.

I've owned my own repair shop for the last 15 years.

I was going to write a book,

but I started this podcast instead.

So come join me for my take

on vehicle extended service contracts

or what to look for when purchasing used vehicle.

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Yeah, no, it's, I mean,

they should be spots on this podcast,

but painless does a pretty good job about,

you know, everything's marked and the instructions,

the instruction manual is 20, 30 pages long.

And it's, I usually use the instructions

when I get stuff to make sure I don't get oil on the bench,

but these were, you know, worth reading

and reading the whole thing cover to cover was helpful.

And it doesn't turn out to be as hard as it looks,

even for somebody like me who doesn't really know

a hell of a lot about, you know, wiring,

you know, for these older cars,

you don't need to be a genius.

You just need to know how to read

and know how to match colors

and have a little bit of mechanical aptitude.

You don't need, you know, if it doesn't have a computer,

it's not, you know, it's not going to confound you.

We're not talking about local can networks and.

Can network, is that got beer in it?

Like I don't even know.

Well, we worked on a Grand Cherokee and it was a 2023

last week and thing has 23 modules.

Nice.

Both door modules, the engine computer,

transmission computer, ABS.

I mean, you just go through them all,

front door, rear door, lift gate, center stack,

transmission shift control module.

It's like, oh my gosh.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's, like I said,

it did look a little daunting when I got it out of the box,

but then I was just like, oh, well, this ain't too bad.

And then I got over here and over there and yeah,

I guess if you're really worried about it

and you really, really don't know,

and you most likely have somebody like us

that is probably either helping you

or you've, it's in their house or their barn

and you're doing it for them.

But if you want to learn, that's a good way to do it.

If you've got a friend that knows stuff like that

and I encourage that as well,

just because it's always good to know stuff like that

and then it's helpful too,

so that you can maybe fix something that's your own

and not have to do that.

Right, right, well.

So I'll probably be buying another painless kit pretty soon

so we could use this as a segue

because I have another project that I acquired in the fall.

Uh-oh.

That is gonna need to be rewired.

And what that is is a,

it is a little bit of a funny story

and it's a short story.

I was on Facebook Marketplace,

as happens from time to time

and a guy was giving away some shop lights

and they were those long eight foot fluorescent ones

and he had a bunch of bulbs to go with it

and so I was, he was just giving them away.

I said, okay, I'm on it.

And he wasn't there when I picked him up,

he left him leaning against the garage, whatever,

so I grabbed everything.

I spied the, I spied a yellow

old-style Beetle sitting on a trailer over by his barn

and when I texted him that I picked up the stuff,

I says, a cool Beetle, let me know if you're,

you know, if that thing comes up for sale.

And he said, well, it just so happens.

You're in luck.

You know, you'd be a fool not to buy this car, son.

And so I went and looked at it

and it is a 74 standard Beetle with Autostick.

And so-

Oh, it's just like the one you got, sort of?

It's pretty much, it's pretty much, mine's a 71.

My good one is a 71.

This was a 74, but it was still a standard Beetle

with flat windshield.

And so I harvested a bunch of stuff that I wanted

for my Beetle, like the retractable seat belts

and the window glass just in case I was to ever need it.

And then I'm in the process.

I've almost got the body off of the shell at this point,

but without any further ado,

I also was on Facebook again,

as you know, happens from time to time, marketplace that is.

And I saw a guy selling a couple of Bradley GT bodies

and, you know, several tubs of parts, you know, to go with.

Great, tubs.

Yeah, tubs.

And it's actually pretty cool though,

because, you know, a lot of those Bradley GT kits,

it turns out, you know, you could buy the standard kit

and you could buy the gauge kit

and you could buy, you know, a lot of different things.

So I got like the seat shells, I got all the gauges,

I got the headlight doors.

I got, you know, most of one of these Bradley,

I got a couple of the windows, the Gullwing windows.

You know, if you look at a Bradley GT online,

it looks like, you know, like a 5 eighths version

of like the, like a little sports car.

Back in the day, you would see pictures of them.

It's like a Ford GT.

Yeah, it looks a little bit like a Ford GT

and it's swoopy and back in the day,

you would see him with like,

Crager wheels on them and white wall tires

on the Crager wheels and the heavy metal flake body,

you know, that kind of.

And it's kind of got like a Corvette shape

a little bit too, maybe.

It's pointy in the front and flat in the back

and it's swoopy in the middle.

And, you know, so it's a, but it was a kid car

back in the day.

And so eventually.

So it's got a specific year?

Cause I know they were like, the kids from,

all they made them from, I don't know, the 70 to 81.

This one, I don't know when this is dated.

I have the assembly manual and stuff,

but I don't know when it's dated.

That would be interesting to.

It's pretty cool.

So still, I mean, it was when we were prior to 10 years old.

Well, I was just telling you before,

like I'll tell you for the listeners,

I was just telling you before we got on the phone

when we, you and I were kids,

my father brought home a brochure for the Bradley GT.

And I remember just looking at it and thinking

that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

And I don't remember that.

I don't know.

Yeah. And so I don't know why he would have brought it home.

Maybe cause he, you know, he's got two, you know.

Cause he built an airplane by himself.

Yeah. Two young boys at home or whatever.

We like cars, whatever.

So maybe that's why I don't know where he got it.

I don't know how he got it, but.

We had it.

And I remember flipping through it and flipping through it

and thinking, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

And so anyway, when this came up, you know,

I don't have $1,000 yet in the Beetle

and the junk that I bought.

I spent as much money feeding my buddy breakfast

and filling his dodge with diesel fuel

to go pick up the parts.

How is Terry?

Terry is doing well.

He is, he is alive and well.

Good guy.

And living in Chesterland.

And so he, we actually drove out to Pennsylvania,

you know, Western Pennsylvania,

just inside of Pennsylvania to grab the stuff.

So, but that's the next thing

and it's going to need like a full rewiring and everything.

There's nothing good, you know, left in the Beetle.

A Beetle is going to need, I mean, the frame is there

and stuff, the pan or whatever you want to call it,

the skateboard, whatever they call it in Beetle world.

I'm not a huge Beetle head.

I like them, but I don't know what they,

I don't know how they refer to it, but.

Don't know the lingo.

I do not know all the Beetle lingo.

I've been going to Beetle,

I've been going to Volkswagen shows

and I'm getting up on my lingo,

but I don't have it all down yet.

So anyway, so that's going to be my summer

is fiddling with that project.

That sounds like fun, and those go on that.

So you're going to use the Beetle chassis for this.

So yeah, that's what they were intended for?

Yeah, they are a bolt-on.

Like they were designed to fit on a,

that was what this car company thought you would do

back in the day is buy like a running driving Beetle

and immediately pull the body off of it.

So to build your, you know, to build your Bradley GT,

I'm assuming some people did it, did do it in the day.

It would have been nice to do it back then

because the floor pans wouldn't be rotted out

like they are in this one, but.

That's an easy fix.

So that'll be the summer.

I think they sell those, I'm sure they do.

They sell everything for,

you could build a Beetle out of a book,

just like you can like with a Mustang, you know,

60s Mustangs or Camarals or whatever.

You can get everything.

I was looking for their catalog the other day

because I was, it did come up that battery train.

I'm like, oh, I should probably just get one of those

and put that in while I'm doing all this other stuff.

Well, you can search, you know, if you do a search,

you'll find all kinds of places that do it.

There's some big ones like that are Beetle specific,

like J-Bugs and, you know, and V-Dub parts

and things like that.

But they're also like going to Amazon,

you need a Beetle carburetor, you know, search,

you know, Beetle carburetor and it'll come up

and it's, you know, $58.

You'll have it in two days.

You know, it's not, I don't know,

I don't know quality-wise what you're going to get there,

but I guess quality is an issue across the spectrum

in all car parts right now, it seems.

You never know what you're going to get, so.

Yeah, we've had some problems lately

and some things that we were, just this last week,

we've been inundated with some part issues,

which is kind of disappointing, but, you know,

we really, in our realm of the aftermarket auto repair shop

where we partner with auto value and, you know,

you can get these parts that are aftermarket parts

that are designed to work and so we were working

on this Chevy truck that had an issue with its stalling

or just really idling way down.

Well, this has a pressure sensor on the fuel line,

which tells the fuel pump control module, okay.

Tells the fuel pump control module to turn on

and off the pump that's in the tank.

So it saw the pressure at 90 PSI, so it said,

okay, we're not going to turn the pump on.

So it would sit there and run out of fuel and stall.

So we've followed the flow chart and looked at it

and checked the pressure manually

and we did not have 90 PSI and so we put a brand new part

on it and it was like, well, we plug it in.

I'm like, I'm like, Aaron, my tech was working with,

I'm like, it still shows 50 pounds, it should sew zero.

We don't have any, we relieve the pressure

because on the high pressure fuel systems,

you kind of got to be careful with.

Yeah.

That because it's 400 some PSI.

So they want you to shut off the fuel pump

and run it out of fuel so that you can change this sensor,

which that's a good idea, but it's on the low side.

So it really, I mean, so this brand new sensor

out of the box doesn't work.

So we chased our tail for almost, you know,

we rediagnosed it and we're like, this is bad.

So we got one from the Chevy dealer

and of course that one works.

Yeah.

Problem solved and it saw what the pressure is

and then it reduced the pressure based on what it wanted

and then so it stayed running.

Cause see, I thought the pressure was so high

that it kind of just turned the pump off

and it would just right up down so low

and that was one of his descriptions when he dropped it off.

He's like, it's really just idle's way down

and then sometimes it'll stall.

Geez, okay.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, across the board,

some of the parts you're going to get

and I've said this, I don't know how many times

to people that ask questions about why

when they get something and put it on and it doesn't work.

I'm like, well, it's not uncommon

and it's probably happened before.

And a friend of mine recently was grasping at straws

trying to fix his daughter's Cadillac

and thought that because of his Google search,

he decided that he'd put a mass airflow sensor

on this Cadillac.

Well, I'm here to tell you people,

some of the remanufactured mass airflow sensors

do not work right out of the box.

And our experience, any new one,

it's gotta say new on the box or be new or from the dealer.

And I know some of them aren't very inexpensive

and that's why, unfortunately, some people go and buy these.

Well, he created an issue by putting this on.

He's like, well, it doesn't start at all.

Okay.

And so we'll put the old mass airflow sensor on

and tell me if it runs.

So it did, so ended up taking that back.

You know, that's again, I would caution a little bit

on Amazon, but some things you can get away with

and like if it's a carburetor for a golf cart, maybe.

Yeah.

But any good restoration part,

you're gonna maybe get something that's not good.

So keep that in mind too.

Well, that sounds like a really cool project.

I'm gonna have to, we live four hours away from each other,

so we'll have to.

I'll send some pictures after we get off.

Yeah, but of course that would be great

because there's gonna be a weekend here over the summer

where I'm gonna need some muscle

to help lift that body onto the new, onto the chassis.

That's something too, it's like.

Yeah.

So Danny's like, well, how are we gonna do this?

Take this engine out.

Well, okay, so I backed the truck into the bay,

so we had more room because there's more room

in on this side of the hoist towards the garage door.

So I was like, all right, well, let's just turn it around.

And where I put my hoist was over off to the side.

And when I originally thought, when I put that barn up,

I said, well, how much room do I want in front

of my big Chevy truck before,

because I originally thought I was gonna put my toolbox

on the back wall, and then I decided against that

because there really wasn't a whole lot of room

after where it needed to go

because of where they poured the cement.

So when the guys came to put the hoist up,

I was just like, yeah, this is where it goes

and because this is where the thick concrete is

and so we don't tip over.

Anyway, so we backed it in and we broke a manifold stud

because that was one of the only places we had to jerk on it.

So we had to come up with something different.

I kind of found a bolt hole in the back and we put a bolt

so we had the chain and I got an engine crane.

And it was an entire Saturday, I think we spent out there.

We got it out and then what was left was the,

it was a manual transmission.

It's a manual transmission.

And if anybody's got experience

with this particular transmission,

you know that it's bolted on from the inside

of the bell housing and then the bell housing

is mounted to the frame with two mounts.

So it's not using the engine mounts

that are in the crossover underneath

between the front wheels as most transmissions

are just mounted to the engine.

And well, this was way different.

And so we struggled with getting the transmission out,

but we got that out too.

And that thing is not light, it was heavy.

And thankfully I bought a snowmobile roll around kit

for I just kind of lowered the truck down far enough

and kind of wiggled it out and it hit the thing

with castor wheels on it.

We raised the truck back up and we went, but yeah,

then it was like the bell housing has got to come out.

How does that come out of there?

And it's got to come out the engine side,

not down below, it won't fit down below.

So for being a 1968, that was a little challenging

as far as that goes, but we got her all out of there.

And then that frame piece that holds the...

So are the mounts already there

or do you have to do some fabricating

like the V8 mounts that you're gonna end up using?

Oh, so the mounts that were in there, I took out

and then they've, the kit I bought,

which is got a transmission cross member,

which I've mounted up under there

just to keep the frame from wobbling around

because there's that bracket that goes between,

that held the bell housing needs to come out

because there's no way that the transmission is gonna fit.

And then I posted that question in the C10 group I am in

and everybody was like, get rid of it.

I'm like, is it gonna fit?

Yeah.

They're like, what transmission are you using?

4L80E.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, you're gonna wanna move that.

Yeah.

So that had to come out.

So I was out there and those are, it's not bolted.

So those were riveted.

So that was,

I thought at first I was gonna be able to use the air hammer

and a sharp chisel bit to get those off.

Those rivets?

Yeah.

And after the first one, I'm like, this is stupid.

Nope.

So, the gas axe came out and I'm pretty good

at both blasting them off.

Thank you, Mr. Shively.

My shop teacher from high school,

his name is Mr. Shively and he was an awesome guy.

Anyway, taught us all that stuff.

So blowtorch, got,

pull the head off, try not to damage the frame too much.

And then just push them out with the-

Not the slag out, yeah.

With the nose bit, you can push them right out.

So, I know the neighbors were not thrilled with me

when I was hammering on that with the air hammer

because that gets pretty loud.

I know at the shop, it echoes across the street

and you know, that gets pretty loud.

And you know, wear ear protection.

Don't be the guy that says, you know,

oh, that's not a big deal.

Yeah, well, it's a big deal now

because my ears ring constantly.

Yep, constantly, yep.

Save your hearing for when you go to the racetrack

and you wanna hear the cars go by,

put your ear pro on in the shop.

Yep.

So-

Well, yeah, I did.

I brought those home, my ear muffs

and cause that thing is super loud.

Super loud.

And now that I'm older,

I almost wear my ear protection

almost the whole time I'm working on something

because you know, you might have the impact out.

You might have the, you know,

bang on something, you know,

a ball peen hammer hitting a brake drum is loud

like it hurts.

So, so you gotta, I almost wear,

if I'm not, I don't wanna have them on my ears.

I have them up on my head ready for whenever it gets loud

cause yeah, it's, when you get, you know,

when you're young, you know,

you don't think about those things.

But now that, now that I'm old.

Yeah, it's just not even,

I tell the guys all the time, I'm just like, you know,

my ears ring all the time because of crap like this.

I'm just telling you.

And just with your, the same thing with your eyes,

you know, like I told them,

make sure you're wearing your safety glasses too.

So yeah, so what are you gonna,

are you gonna put the, put that body on the frame

that you got from the-

Yeah, I mean, that's basically what the deal is.

I've got the shell stripped down and there's,

I don't know, 10 or so bolts aside that, you know,

run underneath the rocker

and you can pull the beetle body separates

and it leaves the pan, the floor pan

and the suspension and everything is all contained

right on the, right on the escape, the skateboard,

whatever you wanna call it.

It doesn't connect to the body in any way.

So it's not like a unibody car like my Dodge or whatever,

like all that's in the body.

You can't separate the body from the floor.

You can do that on the beetle.

And then the GT body was designed specifically

to fit on this style beetle.

So it should just drop right on and then it bolts,

you know, and then you bolt it together

and then you got a car.

Well, I mean, obviously you got some more work to do,

but then you've got, you know, the body,

you know, made it up to it.

So it's, it's-

Yeah, it sounds like a cool project.

It's supposed to be pretty easy

and it will be harder than I think it's going to be,

but it's not gonna be, you know, that hard.

I mean, beetles are so simple and, you know,

the whole thing, the kid car was even more simple

than the beetle, right?

Like, I'm not sure how these things were green-lighted

to drive around on the, you know,

that, I guess tells you what it was like

in the 60s and 70s when they were designing this stuff.

So because it doesn't look like you could,

particularly today with some of these trucks or whatever,

like, you know, the bumper on your truck

probably would be at my head level

when I'm sitting in this thing.

So, I'm surprised-

Yeah, that two new truck of mine is tall.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

Doing an oil change on it and I need a stool.

Yeah.

Not a very tall person, but man,

you can't even open the hood and I'm like,

oh, I gotta jump up to get the dipstick.

But, anyway, all my life,

all my life, okay, well, that's cool.

Yeah, I didn't know how that,

if it just bolted right on, I'm sure that was-

Yeah, no, it's supposed to be a bolt-up.

We'll see what actually happens,

but it was supposed to be a bolt-up.

Yeah, because Mike was, Mike's redoing a Carmen Guilla.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, he was doing the,

and it's, you know, he was talking about the skateboard

or belly pan like you were talking about.

Yeah, there's a fair amount of interchangeability

between them, but there's a lot of,

Carmen Guillas have a lot of specific parts to them as well,

but they're definitely all,

same engine in the back, you know, all that stuff, so.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, so the kit for the engine mounts on the C10,

if we get back to that.

Sure.

You know, I bought this kit from Holley,

you know, same place you buy the Sniper EFI systems,

they're branching out as well.

And, you know, again, that was something,

there was a lot of comments on a thread of what to use

and there's different stuff out there.

So we'll see.

I mean, they bolt in place to where the old mounts did,

and then it asks you a couple of questions

if you got a wide frame or a skinny frame.

Yeah.

So you figure that out before you order the stuff

and it's got the transmission mount.

You have to tell them what transmission

you're using and what engine.

And then they, because they've got kits

for regular small block Chevy.

And the big block ones are obviously

they had those engines back in that day.

So you could still get those from LMC

if you're putting a big block 396 or 454

and then or something like that.

There you go.

But yeah, we got the engines on the stand.

I got everything all on it intake manifolds on it.

And I was, I had bought also

because this one is not drive by wire.

It's drive by cable.

I just thought I was gonna use.

Yeah, I thought I was just use the original gas pedal

that was in it with a cable and attach a cable to it that.

So I'm like, okay, 2002 Chevy truck.

I looked up the part.

Of course, you know, it's discontinued and so.

Yeah.

So I was thinking,

cause that's what I did on the Monte Carlo.

I just ordered a throttle cable that fit through the firewall

for a newer, yeah, for a Caprice and it worked.

So I don't know, maybe that one would work too,

but it's gotta snap in or be kind of the right way.

But then there is a little issue with the,

cause I got an aftermarket Holly throttle body for it,

which is a little larger.

I don't know if that's gonna add any horse power

like it needs anymore probably,

but it's just the cable is gonna be a little skewed

so I don't know.

I gotta figure that out or either that or make a bracket

cause the original bracket that is up there for that

cause you snap the cable into that bracket

and then it snaps into the firewall

and you hook it onto the pedal.

So I bought a throttle cable and a pedal

that's supposed to bolt right in.

And then so we'll see if that's working on that.

Yeah, that's the other thing about restoration, right?

It's supposed to bolt right in

and then you get it and you're like,

well, I'm gonna have to modify this

because of whatever like it,

you think building cars is more science than art,

but particularly when you get off into like Mopar

and different things,

there could be thousands of combinations

and it seems like nothing ever actually fits exactly

the way that it's supposed to fit.

Yeah, and it's just a, and really it really,

it's the gas pedal, but still it's gotta work

and be able to, you know, cause the whole mentality,

this whole project is Danny's gotta drive it.

Danny's gotta be able to drive it.

I can't physically say I'm in Jackson at work

and the car show is tonight,

you get in the truck and drive to me

and then we'll sit at the show

and then, so I don't have to drive home, but.

That potentially could happen

or she could wanna take it somewhere.

That's, I don't want that in the back of my head

or anywhere that, you know,

there's gonna be an issue with something like that

cause that's, you know, obviously that's a safety issue

because you need to be able to accelerate

and just like the brakes.

You can decelerate, just like the brakes.

The throttle needs to close when you lift your foot up.

Yes, yes.

Well, the spring works on the, yeah,

I mean, it's spring loaded at the throttle body, but,

yeah, that was another concern.

So, yep, engine's all waiting, ready to go.

I went down a couple of different red holes

and that was one of them, the gas pedal

and then I was concerned about the cable

and how it kind of actuated itself

cause I bought a couple of different cables.

I'm gonna try and see if I can make one of them work

cause there's like a factory one that would snap in there

and be nice and I wouldn't have to get a different bracket.

But I think I'm gonna have to manufacture a bracket

and see what I got so that the cable is straight

when it pulls the, it's not crooked and come off

or whatever and I've pulled it back and forth

about 10, 15 times and it doesn't come off

but it's just that.

That one time.

In the back of my head, it's not aligned straight

and it would potentially cause an issue.

I don't want it to cause an issue, so.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, it's coming along

and another thing I would tell people too

is if we're like we were talking about before

was setting goals, it was like I wanted to get

that engine out by the end of summer

and we accomplished that and then it's been

super cold up here this year.

This winter has been, you know, not very easily.

You know, I've got a wood stove in the barn

and I can heat it but I was out there the last time

and it's, you know, it's around 10 or 15 degrees.

It's, I'm not going out there.

Yeah, you can't.

I've got a furnace and I've got some radiant heaters

but, you know, the building's not insulated

and so when it is seven degrees, there's no way

I can get it warm enough to be comfortable in there.

You gotta stand on, remember, you gotta stand on

the concrete like, you know, if you're fancy

and you have a heated concrete floor, you know,

that's one thing, I, you know, couldn't afford any of that

when I did my, you know, shop.

So, you know, you gotta stand on the floor.

You stand on a chunk of seven degree concrete.

Your toes go numb pretty quickly.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I had my heavy winter coat, you know,

one of my snap-on coats I got over the years

and I'm putting this wiring together and I had it

because you start the fire, go in the house,

go back out there about an hour later

and it's 50-ish but it was still,

you know, I don't have a ceiling in my barn

so it's kind of difficult.

So we're gonna work on that too.

So maybe next year we're not, heat's not going right out.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Amen.

And get my brother-in-law to come over

or my nephew to come over and spray foam for me.

There you go.

And then we'll be good to go.

But yeah, I agree, you know, if I had the funding

and could have spent the money on radiant heat

in the floor with however that could be accomplished.

Again, we still have to get like an outside wood stove

with a circulation pump and blah, blah, blah.

It's still a thing, right?

You still got to, you know, it's a couple of Cades things.

So.

So that's where we're at with that.

I thought I would give everybody an update on that.

I know I've been talking about that

for the last couple of different episodes

and we were trying to get Mrs. All Automotive

on the show today but there's some other things going on

in her life and being a teacher

that just got moved to a new building.

And so now all the three elementaries are now

in one building and they're having a wonderful time

getting adjusted to all that.

I can't imagine.

Yeah, so I tried to get her on here

but maybe we'll have her on one time

and she could enlighten us about how her vision

on what's going on with this truck.

And like I said, I enjoy it and I try to get out there

and do things, it's just difficult.

This winter it's been difficult because it's been so cold.

Well, life has still got to go to like, you know,

for me, for you, working on cars puts food on the table.

For me, it doesn't.

So I have to gauge, you know, making money

with the things that you want to do.

But yeah, it's all good.

There's no time limit on any of these things.

And you know, goals are a good idea,

but hopefully you can get it done in a reasonable amount

of time, but it's the process more than the completion

for me and so I just am happy to have it to do

when I have the time, I go out and I do it.

When I don't have the time, I don't go.

Yeah, and that was one of the things I was thinking about

as well was it's like, man, this is gonna take a long time

because I want to come out here.

Yeah, I do.

If it's warm or, or if, you know,

and once it's like 30, 40 degrees outside,

it's the furnace keeps it warm out there.

And it's not a problem to be out there,

but and in the summertime,

just got to get a couple of fans that gets warm out there

for sure.

And cause it gets muggy here in Michigan,

like everywhere else,

but so yeah, I mean, thanks for coming on the show

and telling us what you got going on.

I really intrigued about this Bradley GT kit car.

And how that's going to come together.

So yeah, I'll keep my eye out for some,

some Volkswagen parts for you.

Yep. If you run across some stuff, particularly,

you know, the running gear type stuff,

I'm going to be in need.

So all right, cool.

All right, that's going to do it for another episode

of the all automotive podcast.

I'm your host, Matt Clausen.

Big thanks to my brother for being on the show today.

It's good to see Jeff and to talk to him.

Like a project he's got the Bradley GT car.

And that thing's going to be cool.

I was glad I was able to update you on the C 10

and what's going on there.

So until next time, I'm Matt Clausen saying,

hey, keep that greasy side down.

Restoration Projects Update w/ Jeff Clawson

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