Last Indian

Sorry!! You need to make sure exactly what tranny you have before you buy any parts. Two Lane indicated you had a super hydromatic, that’s a good tranny. And from what I remember that should be what’s in the Bonni, but if by some chance it is a jetway than you need to rethink it as those are not! If you end up rebuilding it I’ll be here to answer all I can. As I said I have rebuilt quite a few automatics as well as 4 & 5 speed Manuals. Autos are pretty straightforward. If you take your time, have a manual or take lots of relevant pictures you’ll be ok. A manual on the other hand takes a lot more diligence! kiwi you can lean on us! Merry Christmas!

Kiwi, I haven’t nor do I have the time right now to read through all that I’ve missed here, but if you are pulling the trans to re- do all the internal seals I would seriously encourage you to take everything apart. I would , presuming you can get them, replace all the friction plates, both steel and fiber. I have built numerous automatics as well as manuals and by far I would prefer to rebuild a automatic. It’s not that hard. And the special tools you need, you don’t really need. I’ve seen your ingenuity, and I’m confident you can do makeshift setups as I always did. Some C clamps, some all thread and some aluminum stock and you can make all the spring compressor you need to get things apart and back together. You’ll need some Vaseline, some tranny fluid some lacquer thinner etc… All automatics need to be as clean inside as the plate you eat off of! Debris is a automatics enemy! So taking it all the way down will give you that chance to make it that clean! If you feel unsure just take good pictures as you take it apart so you can reference them latter. My two cents worth.

Think of it this way Kiwi. Everything that is active in the control of the ride control and not rigidly affixed to the car body. So in a rear wheel drive, the axle, springs, shocks or struts, sway bars and their link rods, control arms, but on a double wishbone type only the spring active Aarm, tie rods, spindles or knuckles, bearings, trailing arms, rotors, caliper & pads. In a front wheel drive though the engine transaxle is not included, the live axles driving the front wheel are included. But this gets tricky because the weight of those axles only accounts for a percentage of its weight. Oh I forgot rims & tires.

Frosty, I understand you thinking that way and that’s very understandable, but no. Lots of folks think of suspensions backwards, or more accurately, upside down. Springs, shocks, struts, sway bars, bushings etc.. Are all there to serve the purpose of keeping the tires on the ground not the car up in the air. Now do not misconstrue that statement! A lot of what’s on top, sprung suspension, effects what all of those components are designed like, because there are, as you pointed out, cabin dynamics that are effected by unsprung components and of course the body must be supported above, but the predominant goal of every suspension is to keep the unsprung suspension planted firmly on the ground! Thus the more unsprung weight the more difficult it becomes to control it. I can tell you that if you delve into suspension designs you will soon learn that the heavier the unsprung weight is the harsher the ride, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that can be done to compensate for that as well. In general the lower the weight, relatively speaking, the less harmonics are transferred to the chassis, which changes the resonance frequency. As a side bar, in the picture above that says buick knuckle, link rod & link rod dampener. That dampener is a rubber coated 1 lb. weight attach at the end of the link rod end to do nothing except absorb harmonic energy. Think of it this way from a physics perspective. A 4000 lb. accumulated mass motors down the road. The largest portion is sprung. It is exerting all it energy down on the unsprung suspension keeping it glued to the ground. Here comes a bump, the first thing to absorb the energy is the tire! This tire and rim weigh X, so f=mXa, if you want to find the acceleration it would be a=f over m. The point here is the greater the weight the more energy is applied to the rest of the unsprung suspension instead of being held to the ground. This transfers of energy generates more resonance noise to the chassis. There are other ways to control these harmonics and Buick better than any of the other GM brands did this through sound absorbing materials as well as the valving they use for their shocks, but the real difference was their tire selection. This is actually a very difficult topic to explain without visual aids! So if it sounds confusing I apologize, but I will answer or explain further to whatever I can. So ask away.

I hear ya Kiwi! There are many opinions as to what the multiplier is, but all agree there is more than a 1 to 1 differential for weight reduction of unsprung weight vs sprung. I believe the real facts, because of all the years I’ve spent building suspensions, including racing suspensions, are it depends on where the weight is removed from! In the attached pictures for instance it shows the weight of the rear knuckle, wheel bearing as well as the rear rotor. These three pieces, because of their location in the fulcrum have the greatest effect as unsprung weight. The rotor also has a major effect as a rotational mass. The more above centerline of the wheels the more effect. The farther out from the centerline of the body, (towards the wheel) the more effect. The father below centerline of the wheel the less effect, so to speak, I’ll explain is later. The closer to body centerline the less effect. The end result here is what I was saying, see pictures, the Lacrosse for one rear wheel side carries more than 23 pounds more weight than the Indian! That is huge! In racing we would kill for 1 pound of unsprung weight reduction. The lowest multiplier number I’ve ever see was 1 pound of unsprung weight equals 6 pounds sprung weight, but most say at least 10 pounds & some as much as 20 pounds. That means if I were to put the Indian suspension under the Lacrosse it would be like reducing the rear weight of the car between 300 lbs & 920 lbs. No matter which you chose the impact would be very noticeable. Which is why when her car is done, I well take those components, clean them up. Cut them up in a manner that will reduce their weight. Then rebuild them and install them on my Lacrosse. This is the buick knuckle buick rotor buick knuckle & upper control arm last Indian wheel bearing buick knuckle & trailing arm buick knuckle & lower control arm buick knuckle & link rod buick knuckle, link rod & link rod dampener buick knuckle with Indian rear knuckle on top buick wheel bearing

Dido from me Wrongway! The reason for posting is to give some information on some of the newer dilemmas that arise with more recent cars, since we don’t have new Pontiac’s to compare anything to. Some may be interested in this and some may think here we go again, but stupidity that I have to pay for irritates me. Especially when these are engineers that if they don’t know better should have been relieved of duty and if they do know better shame on them and the corporation that employs them. I believe most if not all are aware that unsprung weight is far and away the major culprit in underperforming suspensions and in the car in general! Likewise rotating mass always needs to have a high place in consideration for its weight control! Well obviously I can only speak for what I have physically seen and more importantly worked on in recent years, but I would be willing to bet this has become more of the norm in new generation cars than not. As I already stated the Lacrosse is a very nice car by today’s standards, but oh it could be so much better! My wife’s “13” Lacrosse has only 16,000 miles on it. But a recent recall of all those platformed cars for a link rod defect of the electroplated paint made me see what condition my “12” & “13” were in! So a quick look under it this past spring said two things. The undercarriage was immaculate, but the underpinnings were less than desirable for me. So with the exterior redo of the house ahead of me I decided a winter project for her car would be the plan. So here I’am a month after starting and I can tell you that the suspension of the Indian is far and away a more pragmatic, better engineered, straightforward & better performing suspension and not even half the weight of the Lacrosse, literally! With none of the down side of the Lacrosse suspension. I started with my wife’s because having seen in the past what these suspensions consisted of I knew I would ultimately modify components for mine. The plan was to by new parts for hers and keep hers stock, but I would gut the entire front & rear suspension, including subframes. Clean, sand & paint with my Hammerite glass impregnated paint, which is pretty much impervious to nearly everything. It was during this tear down that I realized just how over the top damn heavy these components where. I knew the brakes rotors were heavy, but this was ridiculous. To further add insult to injury the rod link recall had nothing to do with the electro plate painting! The problem lies with the frame side bolt that is used for alignment on this part. It literally corrodes inside the sleeve bushing. So no adjustment can be made, you can’t get the bolt out by any method other that to cut it out! This in the process causes undo strain on the flimsy link rod which can cause a failure. Which means this is like losing a front tie rod! That would not be pretty!

Ok,Ok so Frosty found me out! I thought maybe the insurance guy would by it and foot the bill for new pieces parts! No such luck! I got to tell you pulling this suspension was a lesson on stupidity! The Lacrosses are nice cars drive great and handle well, but you talk about a bunch of ridiculous over done components with multiple weak links that basically negated any benefit that’s what was here. Wow! And very pricey to replace as well.

Yup! It can happen. There are some tricks to starting threads. Most of them you can learn from a machinist hand book.

Snow cone was a complement! You know go to a fair everybody wants a snow cone! Refreshing, sweet & you have to give them your full attention or they’ll drip all over you! Dah! Off the car is easy, dismantle the column, pull the shaft. Chuck it up in a lathe. Cut the end of the shaft off at the spline. Drill a hole in the shaft about 1/2 inch deep, with a wall thickness from the bottom of the V of the spline of .100 on each side. So for example if the diameter at the bottom of the V is say .500 the hole size you would drill a .3125 diameter hole as that is the closes standard size reamer you could get. A stub piece would then be machined. The stub would be a step piece, the small end would be .450 long and .313 to .3134 in diameter. With the large end being about .050 larger in diameter than the diameter needed to make a new threaded end. To insert the stub piece into the shaft you need to heat the end of the shaft to about 500 F and put the stub end in either the freezer or dry ice. Once this is done you’ll never get it out, they are, as we say married to each other. Now you turn down the larger end down to the correct size & threaded. On the car repair. You need a steady hand a set of calipers or mics a good file. Carefully file in a round fashion the galled threads down to the next O.D. size to run a high quality adjustable die over this new diameter. You will need to keep measuring the size of the area you are filing in multiple positions to keep it as close as possible to round as you can, but the adjustable die will help you compensate for out of roundness. If you decide to do this let me know and we can discuss further. As far as the tilt column goes definitely the OEM. There will be a lot of nuance that may not be in the aftermarket piece. Like the channel that runs the length of the column for the plastic sleeve that houses the wire harness. The clip setup the holds interface of the column wires and the firewall harness. JustA my two cents!

Actually that’s pretty easy to salvage. On or off the car, but it sounds like the snow cone wants a tilt wheel?! Am I right? Go t to run, but I’ll give instructions as to how to fix it like new, and there are several option to it!

This is just wrong!

Wow! There is so much to say here but there is just not enough room or time! The short of it is JustA you won’t have to worry about recharging! Things will stay somewhat as they are right now, while getting increasingly more expensive to fill the tank & possible shortages. As this is occurring they, and you know who they are, will be steadily working behind the scenes to completely remove your personal transportation and move you into mass transportation! Fact! They are already working on it, read the whole 6 trillion proposal they want to pass and even if it doesn’t pass it’s one of those things they will keep pecking away at it! Frosty’s proposal is quite valid, but a century away because the cost of logistics is beyond the US current scope & as stated above you won’t need it because you won’t have personal transportation! Plus, humanity will not make it that long as we currently are. Take that as you will! Fitzy, sorry, but there is no global warming nor climate change! The first clue to you should be that they had to change it from global warming to climate change! Why because every study showed that there’s was no warming of the planet! By calling it climate change you can arbitrarily point to anything you want on any given day and say; “there that’s caused by climate change”. Think about this for a while. We are 21 years into this century and major weather catastrophes are far below all of the 20 century! Fact you can research it for yourself. There is the same amount of water on this plant as there was when it formed. It is in different states from age to age, but still the same amount. There is the same amount of carbon, whether dioxide, disulfide, coal, diamonds, crude oil and the list goes on for a long time. Yet again it’s form changes, which includes how it is sequestered and still none of this is the cause of the earths current woos. This is history they ignore because to admit it to the public would cause them to lose control of you! In the 10th century the Vikings were farming and raising cattle on Greenland 500 years later those settlements were abandon because of relentless winters! This was long before any mass petroleum use! Again if you do the research you will find tons of evidence that CO2 plays no role in global temperatures or weather. Through Arctic core samples they know CO2 levels have been as high a 9000 ppm in past centuries. Yet those same samples show that at those levels the global temperature actually decreased! Especially today people have little interest and even less knowledge of history or actually proven facts! If you tell someone something often enough and long enough it actually becomes part of their psyche. This is actually the oldest form of brainwashing.

That’s a shame Frosty! Wish I had known! Never ever put aluminum & steel together on concrete. Basically that a low voltage battery! Similar reason you should not put an aluminum rim in direct contact with a steel/cast iron rotor. Over time you’ll see the aluminum start to pit and see white powder. The Mahal is looking great Buddy! Hey by the way, that last picture, how did you get those rims stay on the ceiling 😂!

Sounds like made the original Imron paint! Tough Ass sh- -t!

Yup! I get that completely! I absolutely hated it when they moved away from lacquer & then phased it out completely! Never liked enamels, first, second or third generation! The urethane single stage or even the two stage are closer two lacquer than enamel, as far as blending re-coating, etc.. That said, a couple things to consider. Other than lacquer, all other paints over the last 20+ years have the same issue as I described above. Whether enamel, urethane, single stage or two stage! Their oxidation comes from nutrient loss! So traditional waxes do not work even when they appear to restore luster. So those paints really do need to have a product that restores those nutrients to them. Don’t misunderstand my explanation above. I’m not a big advocate of clear coat, other than for metallic paints! As it is nearly impossible to wet sand a metallic paint, buff it out and not have color fluctuations. So a clear coat will allow that, but a solid color no. I would never purposely chose a two stage system. A clear coat can definitely add to the depth perception of a paint! But nothing and I do mean nothing increases the shine or the depth of any paint surface more than surface finish, aka, flat, no hills or valleys on a microscopic level. My “69” Z was black lacquer, no clear of any kind, but I used a gallon and a half of paint which means it was about 3 gallons thinned. Wet sanded and buffed out! But when I wet sanded it in 1975 nobody was using anything finer than 600. I used 400 than 600 than 1000 than 1500 because I knew from the type of work I did that was how you achieved a very flat surface. More often than not most people who saw the car and knew paint thought it had clear lacquer on it. not the best picture to show a finish, but no digital in those days!

Well we got a little sun this past week. So other than some trim between the chimney and vinyl siding, soffits & gutters it’s done! Finally! Notice in the last pic the old front cover on the patio. Had to cut that all up to throw it out, taken up to much attic space.

IMO, take that for what you will, but while not a professional, I have been painting cars since I was 18 and I have painted a lot of cars and learned a thing or two! First off what Frosty said is often quite relevant, but #1 on the list is prep work and that can be difficult to follow for a lot of people! Why? Because in the day of lacquer all you had to deal with was cohesion! Simple! than came synthol enamel, which was different, but still just cohesion! Than came the two part system, hardeners, which are a combination of adhesion and cohesion! So it became more complicated for not just prep work, but how to properly care for the paint afterwards. And yes it is much more in-depth than that, but that’s way to long of a conversation. A primer is both cohesive and adhesive, but it must be adhesive twice! Both for the substrate of the car body as well as pigment color that will cover it. This adhesion is twofold. It must adhere to the substrate while wet, than dries. Then re-adheres to the color pigment without cohesion, (intermingling). Most of the time the failure of a clear coat layer over the past 20 plus years is due to one or more of several things. Contamination of the underlying substrate by some foreign material, improper surface prep, I.E. scoffing/sanding, to long or to short of set time and one of the largest causes, improper care of the paint afterwards! Only lacquer paint oxidizes in the manner we all related to removal of a portion of the paint to expose new vibrant color! All the rest oxidize by the removal of necessary nutrients through evaporation. These nutrients not only enhance the clarity of the clear coat to basically magnify the color coat, their being set above the base coat is for that very purpose, to magnify! A single coat system can not do that! When the clear coat losses it’s nutrients it starts, microscopically, to become more opaque. This opacity occurs at the surface initially, which is noticeable! If you have not waxed your car for 2 or 3 weeks or longer take a liquid wax like Meguiars Ultimate detailer or Turtle Wax Ice and apply it to just 2 or 3 inch area and than look at it! Now if the paint is light in color you won’t be able to see it very well, but if it’s dark; it will standout like a sore thumb. View the clear coat in this manner. It’s like a sponge. If you wet a sponge and set it on the floor and leave it to dry it dries from the top down! Likewise if you add a little water to the top layer it will plump up, but that won’t last long as the bottom layer, even though wet will wick that water away rapidly! As the whole clear coat layer becomes more depleted of its nutrients it will start to break its adhesion with the base coat. Once that happens no amount of replenishment can save the paint! That adhesive bond only occurs once during application! New paints need specific nutrients and they need to be fed way more than most folks think and if the paint is outside a lot, that need increases dramatically!

Ditto! Congratulations SCSRM85 beautiful car! Will always have soft spot for the “69” Camaro & Bird! Especially wen it’s in black!

& a little help my Milwaukee buddies! 18V fuel & his pal M4!

These pictures are about a month old, can’t get a sunny day to save my life anymore now let alone rain free!

Yes, I know! I’ve tried to use my big fan to blow it in a different direction, but it doesn’t work!😵‍💫 Sure are! Right back at ya buddy!

It would appear that SOMEBODY has been having a lot of fun while I’ve been gone & hanging off the side of a building! WAY TO GO! Life’s short hug your Pontiac daily! The weather is changing quick here! So I’ve got to tie up some loose ends with the house project and hopefully the snow won’t fly before I can get out and polish up some trinkets for you & Frosty!

F.1 GTX Grand Prix (The Last Indian)(ground pounder) explained elsewhere in this form. Heavily modified. Good Luck to All & Boo!

OH! Cool a swinging bed! I hope the bed & tv swing in unison! Otherwise you might get motion sickness! The place looks great Frosty! Any planes for heat!

Where are you putting the bed and tv?