The 1955-1957 combination shop manual and seals and other various parts showed up from Danchuk. The shop manual is very nice and descriptive! I was just reading through the carburetor section and it describes every possible piece of info about how it works, including different ways of talking about vacuum (as a point of low pressure) and on and on. Good stuff.

Since I had the car working perfectly, I took it on the freeway and when I got home I had the oil light on. Trying to find how to test the oil pump. Breona said her dad had a shop for me to take the car to for the engine, so I will probably do that to be safe.

I realized that the headlights already in the car are halogens. They are sealed though, so you have to replace the whole thing, as opposed to just a halogen bulb, and one of them had a chip broken out. It likely got oxidized or maybe just dirty inside the lens. I realized after pulling that headlight that I shouldn’t have messed with the adjustment screws, as you don’t have to. When I get the lights back in, I will have to adjust that.

To get the new, replaceable bulb, headlights in, I have to trim down the piece that attaches to the lights that then attaches to the headlight buckets. So I went looking for a sheet metal nibbler. I have tin snips, and somebody at the hardware store suggested aircraft snips, but both of those cause bad ripples from my experience, so trying to find the nibbler. I think I finally found a place that might have those in town, Graybar, which is a telecommunications wiring supplier. If not, I can order the thing. It’s just a $25 manual one (Klein 76011B, if you are curious).

Replaced the indicator and taillight lenses, which made me realize that I need to get some more replacement bulbs, as their finishes are wearing off. There were also two screws which didn’t want to leave their spots in the metal and snapped off. Trying to figure out a good way to drill those out and then pour something like JB Weld in to re-tap the holes for new screws. I think I need to make a jig and put the whole light assembly under a drill press, but then, of course, some of the screws holding the light assemblies are stuck. Didn’t mess with those yet. I put the new lenses on for now, there are just a couple screws I will have to figure out later. They look much nicer and I’m sure they wlil let through much more light. I’ll have to ask around to see if any friends have had to re-tap holes before. Might mean I need a tap and die kit. I think I need to find some car buddies to share a garage and some tools with.

As if I didn’t have enough to do, I ended up buying myself a 1956 Chevy Bel Air 4dr Sedan (that’s the one with posts in the center, ie frames on the upper parts of the doors, as opposed to the Coupe, which just has the roof floating above) a bit ago. I used to own a 1956 Chevy 210 4 dr wagon when I was in Boulder and I have missed it very much. This car should fill in the gaps a bit. I was about to just send a ridiculously long message to my dad and realized I’ll probably have a bunch of messages about the car, so I added a ‘1956 chevy’ category.

The car is about in twice as good of shape as my previous one. I drove it straight for a few weeks there and didn’t touch my Saturn besides to move it every few days so it wouldn’t get towed. Had to tweak the carburetor a little bit, which took more time than it should have. I’ll be getting the shop manual to help with that type of thing.

I’ve found that it leaks and I will have to replace some seals. I ordered the door and trunk seals, and realized that I will have to order the rear window seal as well. That should be fun. I really should grind down the rust under the rear window as long as I am doing that. Those are a few of the worst spots on the car, along with a spot on the back right end of the car and a bit under the headlights. Seems pretty good overall, but I now have to figure out how to keep the car out of the rain. Looks like I’ll have to get a car cover and potentially a garage spot somewhere.

I love these cars as they are, but there is one thing that could use some heavy improvement. The gas mileage. It’s about 10 mpg as is and not so great on emissions. Here are the current ideas:

Something like a Chevy Volt without the batteries, similar to how a diesel-electric train works. Or getting an engine from a Ford S-Max minivan European Turbodiesel and transmission. Should get easily over 70 mpg with better performance than my current 265 V8. The S-Max idea would be much easier, but I am enthralled with the diesel-electric idea. I’ve never seen it done in a car without batteries though, so I have no idea if components exist at this point to do something like this, compared to doing a normal electric car conversion.