Last Indian

You know DQ, not to be confused with the ice cream, it’s funny how we get our monikers, but they are most often relevant to something about us! Glad yours is Duel Quad and not “dude has gas”!😁

Can you take a few pics of the setup at the tranny & couple at the carb? That said, I would say you need to lengthen the cable. By what you described the cable is short enough that the mechanism sees hard throttle, so it holds in gear, I.E. doesn’t upshift. Lifting your foot relaxes the mechanism allowing an upshift. So by lengthening the cable you reduce the tension on the mechanism. This will allow an earlier upshift. This is how a vacuum modulator works. It sees Venturi vacuum when you accelerate. There are vacuum set points that trigger a upshift, but if you press down more on the accelerator you change the input signal, vacuum, which then holds the tranny in gear longer. Likewise if you lift your foot off the pedal some it will cause the tranny to upshift earlier.

Electrical is a good possibility, but my first reaction is carb. I love Hollies, but they a very temperamental carbs. In particular floats and power valves. And no, more often than not they don’t spit and spotter they just die. If it’s carb I would bet sticky float! Fuel bowls full, car starts fine, float hangs up carb runs out of fuel. Car sits a minute, float falls down because fuel is gone and residual pressure is pushing on the needle, bowl fills and it runs ok till the next hiccup.

Kiwi, presumably we’re talking about the same thing, there is a cable that attaches to the carburetor left side linkage. This runs to the tranny, but don’t confuse it with the gas linkage. This cable adjust the shift pattern of the tranny. The shorter you make the cable adjustment, the harder and later the shift. The longer the cable adjustment the earlier and softer the shift. This is to a degree the mechanical version of a vacuum modulator. Do not confuse this with a kick down cable. This cable will usually have a center wire that moves in a sleeve, like a choke cable. Changing the length of the center wire is the adjustment. There are many arrangements and variations of this cable and how it’s adjusted so I don’t know what exactly yours is, but I have no doubt you’ll be able to see how yours is done.

New ideas are not always good ideas! Single pour foundations being one! With block work if for some reason there is a problem down the road they can be fixed. Up to and including actually taking a block or blocks or bricks for that matter, completely out and replacing it. Redoing mortar, and more, poured concrete? You’re screwed. Once it cracks you will never get it to not be there! It’s a stress point & no amount of any of their fancy adhesives or poly bonds or the like will fix it let alone make it look right ever again! I’ve seen lots of poured basements that really became a nightmare for people.

Stupidity & being cheap! I had the “74” subframe on the picnic table grinding it down to good bare metal so I could start welding up the new back section of frame and then be able to paint it all up. So I was grinding up around the front shock/Upper Aarm area where it’s pretty congested with pockets & vertical gussets. I had just put a new 16 grit 7” sanding disc on the body grinder. I hit one of the vertical pocket areas & it nearly tore the grinder out of my hands! Now I have a new disc with a Pac-Man style chunk out of it. I’m pissed, the hell with it I’ll use it! I turn it on 4000 rpm shaken like crazy I go back in! Only this time it tears it out of my left hand & while holding it with right it throws it back into my left arm at 4000 rpm! The Pac-Man cut out acted just like a one tooth blade. Laid my forearm wide open. About 4” long, more than an 1” deep. They said 1/6 deeper it would have cut the tendon. Needless to say my wife was not impressed.

Any Pontiac is a good Pontiac & with enough love it can be a great one. Of a all the FWD’s the sixth generation was my favorite & the 2000 most of all, but I might be impartial?!

Oh the stories that pic-a-nik table could tell! Should have bought saw horses, but I have always tended to make use of what I have! Part of growing up dirt poor, literally! That table is where I built the frame for my wife’s “74” Camaro! Ripped a 4” hole in my arm and some other goodie’s! Not to mention built my shop on the back of my garage and my front porch. This a addition was a total of 755 sq. ft. Broke ground April 16 “96” had the whole thing finished on the outside & landscaped by the second week in Sept. Now I look back and say how the hell did I do that! Oh yeah I was only 45! Anyway. Kiwi not sure what all you have planned for your addition, but one thing I did that really helped, was I ran 4” pvc pipe from the second furnace room, that was included as part of the addition, out of the structure, which exits the building just a little below grade. So any thing I needed to bring into the building after the fact could come through there. Likewise I made a similar connection from that room to my shop that shared part of a wall. Then from the furnace room there was access to the overhead vaulted ceiling. Running down the center of the ceiling. There is a 10” wide oak plate that finishes the ceiling, but it’s removable. All the wiring cabling etc. runs down the center of the ceiling. Then to it’s respective place so a additional adds can always be made.

Welcome fellow buckeye! Thanks for joining, lots of good folks here.

Nothing like straight American iron, a set of five spokes & an arrowhead to brighten a day! Beautiful!

Hey! Wait a minute! That’s bloody cheating! When I put mine up in “96” I did everything all by my lonesome. Workin 10 & 12 hour days, 6 days a week at LZ flying around the country, Little Rock, Omaha, Wyoming, Chicago. No damn birthday party! I’m jealous. Oh yeah, looks great!😁

Obviously anything that involves oil could be responsible, but what you describe sounds like a none pressure side of oil! If this is the case the two things I described would tend to be my thoughts. Also both of those are technical service bulletins on the 3800 and well documented as a problem.

Steve, the 3800 is notorious for two places. The first was valve cover gaskets, but the more obscure place is the intake plenum on the front of the motor. Which is the passenger side. It leaks where it is sealed at the block. Look for a oily wet area behind where the serpentine belt is. Likewise do the same at the font and rear valve cover. If you can’t tell where it is for sure, spray the Motor down with Gunk engine cleaner, hose it down let it dry and then run it. It should than become obvious.

Ah, the memories! Close to the same size I added to the back of mine. I had to take out a load bearing wall for the upstairs though & reverse it to the outer walls of the addition. Even than it was one man, one leg, a hammer, trowel & a lotta sweat😔! Kiwi you guys clearly don’t have much, if any, of a frost line?! My footers are 48” deep. Have to be by code. Have fun! Always like building house & additions, but only second to cars though!

Frosty, Wow! That is BS! My guess would be the snow mound. Door seals can only stop pelting rain water that is draining away. What you have with the mound would just go right around the end of each side of the door even if you have vertical outer door strip seals! I can’t tell from the picture, but how does the garage floor transition past the contact point of the door? Does it slope immediately downward, straight or what? What is the driveway paved with? Concrete or asphalt? I have a reason for asking, as it might possibly help with eliminating the problem in the future.

I’ve been WAY!! behind, for about a year and a half! Anyone tells you to retire; smack’em right in dah mouth! Glad you’re pleased with Frosty’s generosity. The Indian Head is new, but the arrowhead is one that use to adorn the front nose of the Last Indian!

My two cents, can’t stand anything coming out of LA! Nothing but Woke lies & evil! If I had to pick it would have been Cinci but , anyone who thought Cinci could win hasn’t paid attention to the NFL! They wanted LA to win and would make sure of it, however gently they need to push it that why! (Can’t make it to obvious)! Just like they did with Seattle against Pittsburgh! LA bigger market, leans way left & the epicenter of; well you know! Other than NASCAR, I won’t watch sports anymore. All way to corrupt, all sellouts. Jason Whitlock explained it very well a few weeks ago and every word he said was dead on! Whether NASCAR goes that way or not only time will tell! If they do; they’ll be history too! JustA my friend, I know you are a patriot, as am I! More so than most people know! Unfortunately most people have no clue of history, I mean real history! I’ll stop here & leave it at that.

Actually Fitzy midline of the tire is not where you should measure for toe! Because camber has the largest impact on static toe, about 1” to 2”s off the ground is the typical point to measure. Since camber is an angle that accentuates with distance from the point of origin, that is where you measure. For instance, say you move the tie rod to see a millimeter.0397 of negative toe at tire centerline. If you now drop down to 1” off the ground the measurement, depending on camber angle could be far larger! And that point is near the tire tread so that is actually where the wear of the tire tread occurs. If all you wish to do is check that the rear tires are square to the front & check for a ballpark toe at the front. Do this take your jack stands or something similar and tie a string line longer than the wheel base. Move the jacks in towards the car, both front and back, but keep the sting taught. Do this until you get close to both tires. Than move back jack until the string touches the back edge of the back tire first. Now start to move the front jack until it touches an edge of the front tire. Now go to the back tire, pull the jack out so the string moves completely away from the tire, than move it back slowly till it touches the tire. If the back axle is square to the car the string should touch the front & back edge of the back tire. When you do this do it slow & watch carefully that string touch both edges at the same time. You can tell this by blowing on the string or lightly touching it, as when it contacts the tire you’ll see it doesn’t move freely. Now leave that jack where it is and go to the front and do the same thing! Unless you have zero toe you will see the string touch either the front or back edge of the front tire first. Now do the same thing for the other side.

Kiwi, that is dead on! If you go back and look at the first page of my FWD ground pounder progression post you’ll see I address this. End link structure, type and placement all have a substantial impact on the performance of the sway bar itself, which ultimately translates to body roll/nose dive. No matter how big or good a sway bar is, if the end links won’t let the energy be transferred because they are to weak and deflect than the energy is lost. This also includes the bushings, their design and material selection.

I can give it a go, but this is so involved that I will only touch upon basic segments. Then if there are questions I can do my best to answer them. The geometries of a suspension are critical! In handling as well as stability & safety. That simple statement is by far much more complex than the singularity of its appearance. Bump steer! In a nut shell! Positive toe on the load wheel! That’s it! But, what causes positive toe on a car that is set negative? That’s the very complexed question to discuss, because so many things effect suspension geometry! The simple basics for determining bump steer is knowing the centerline of both upper & lower control arms with respect to the ball joint centerline intersecting the centerline of the Aarm shaft centerline. This imaginary line is carried towards the center of the cars horizontal midline. When this is done to both Aarms these two lines should intersect each other at some point. Next a line is drawn through the horizontal axis of the tie rod centerline. This line should intersect at the same point as the two Aarm’s intersect, for a zero bump steer. While I’m at this point let me say that a good suspension setup not only strives for this, but if you draw a imaginary midline through the center of the car, (front to back) the point at which both intersecting lines, from both sides of all the Aarms & tie rods should intersect at the midline! Yet a near perfect setup will also find the intersection will occur not only at midline , but at or above CG! This is a truly balanced suspension. To a degree this is why bigger sway bars are very advantageous! The more front nose dive in a corner the more likely a change in suspension geometry could cause toe to go positive.

Kiwi, bump steer!? That’s a tough one! I don’t know the MK1 very well. I know it only enough to say I would have to differ to someone else who knows it’s geometry. But, as a basic rule, not many of GM’s cars were given to bump steer! Ford on the other hand, whoa. When I meet my wife she had a 1970 Maverick. Which when we married we kept at first, talk about a piece of junk, sorry to any fans I offended, but among many of the issues I had with it, it was bump steer. Once while driving on the freeway at about 65 mph I hit a small pot hole I didn’t see. In one instance I was in the other lane 100%! A whole lane and never moved the wheel! Bump steer occurs normally only when either the geometry of the suspension is not designed right, as was the case with the Maverick. The suspension is altered, either through physical changing components in such a way that the proper geometry is lost or through modification of components that in turn loses such needed geometry. Also extreme wheel alignments can also cause bump steer, but that is actually pretty hard to do.

I make up a mixture of pure silicone vacuum grease and anti-seize and coat both the bolt shaft and bushing. Than I paint the outside of the bolt head and nut.

There are lots of different ways to get to the same results! JustA case of what works for you. As I said I’ve done my own since I was 18, so I have change my approach more than once. Particularly when they moved to FWD & independent rear suspension. Whole different animal from beginning to end. Nothing is straighter than a string line & a good piece of ¼” x 1” steel bar stock! So for me I set the tires on some movable plates, not what you see in the pictures though, than put the steering wheel center straight, pull two string lines on both sides to see what the toe looks like with relationship of rear vs front. Than I start to look at camber. I drop a weighted sting line from the fender down past the lowest part of the rim, similar to what JustA said. With a machinist scale I measure the distance out from the top of the rim to the sting line and repeat for the bottom of the rim. The difference will give you the camber angle! A few years back I found a company that sold a relatively inexpensive alignment kit. With it came two plates for checking toe, which used two tape measures as Notallthere & JustA do, which I always did as well, but these made it a little more convenient. It also came with a digital angle finder that you could use with one of the plates to find camber as well as caster. I didn’t care for this setup, but it did work great for me for doing camber angle my way. You can zero the gage. So with a straight piece of ¼” x 1” bar stock that is as long as the wheel diameter I do a setup that gives me the angle I want on a given wheel. By putting a given shim size under one end of the bar stock I get the angle I want. That shim measurement gives me the difference I need to see from the top of the rim to the string line to the bottom of the rim to string line. Works the same front or rear. After that I adjust toe. The line that runs front to back gives me a reference to square the rear tires to the front. Once that is done I do a final check for toe. So for example in the one pic that shows the parallel line and camber line. If I have negative toe both front and rear I pull the string taught, move the string in jut till I kisses the first edge of the back tire than the same again for the front. If the the toe is set right for both & the axles are squared to each other, the string will just touch the back edge of each tire with a gap at the front edge that will be equal to your toe for that side. so in this case a .3125 shim over 18” equals 1.05 degrees in camber.

Question, how many of you guys do your own wheel alignments? If so, what is your practice? I’ve always done my own, but most folks I know do not do their own.

What prompted all this is a recall on what is called a rod link. Basically this link adjust the toe on the rear wheels. GM say that the link was over electroplated causing it to chip and corrode and break! Bullshit! The fact is they put a junk cheap black paint on the part so it rust just like the rest of the suspension parts, except for a few. The real failure is the stupid adjusting bolt. Zinc plated with two grooves that allow corrosive material into the bolt/bushing area that than rust the two together causing failure of the link. See pics. I plan to do my 2012 as well so I’ll try to take good pics of that build.