Fasten-ating (Post # 104)

Early on the morning of the Arizona Concours d'Ellegance I was talking to some of the other entrants when one asked a seemingly simple question: "What was the hardest part?" I started to say "The front suspension," but no, that was just the most frustrating part. Then I considered the process of stripping and cleaning the body and chassis, but no, that was just the dirtiest part. Finally, spontaneously, I blurted out "writing the damn blog!" That got a good laugh, but as I sat down to do this post that conversation came back to me, and I had time to give it some serious thought.  

So what was the hardest part?  Randy Davis.

The hardest part of the hands-on work was not one of the individual sub-assemblies like "the brakes," or "the wiring harness."  It was--and this time I'm serious--the fasteners.  Just to make sure you know what I mean, I'm talking about the nuts, bolts, washers, screws and other objects that hold the car together.  Every sub-assembly depends on some kind of fasteners, and when you start adding them up, they number in the thousands!  I haven't actually counted yet, but we probably have at least 100 different "types" of fasteners if you consider sheet metal screws and machine screws manufactured in both metric and British Imperial systems, with a multitude of head shapes, shaft diameters, shaft lengths, thread pitches, metalurgical properties, hardnesses, identification codes, and platings . . . and scores of different types of washers!   

By the time we got to final assembly we were sorting through hundreds of different fasteners.

Cleaned, photographed, and bagged Alfatross fastener
sets awaiting installation. 

So what makes fasteners the hardest part of the restoration? Well, consider the urban legend about the guy who took his car apart, carefully identifying each and every fastener as it came off so that he could put each one back in the hole it came out of.  Frankly, I find that hard to believe.  Not impossible, but highly unlikely.  Why? Well, if you just put each fastener into a bag and label it with a number that could be correlated to a map of the car with each fastener hole it would be a monumental undertaking that would greatly increase the amount of time needed for the disassembly phase . . . but that is just the tip of the iceberg.  

Vibratory tumblers for cleaning and polishing fasteners.

When it comes time to reassemble you can't just take them out of the bag and put them back where they came from.  Fasteners have an important job to do, so they need additional attention. Many of them will be rusted, bent, broken. Some cannot be restored and re-used; they must be replaced with an exact replica.  Many others will need "reconditioning" which means mechanical or chemical cleaning, sometimes even re-plating.  
For those readers who have never tried restoring an old car, don't even think about it unless you have a set of machine screw and bolt size gauges, the kind that can measure both fastener diameter and thread spacing. If you're dealing with a mid-1950s Italian car be sure to get both metric and British Imperial gauges.

Cleaning the threads is the worst part. First you have to use your thread gauges to determine if the part was created according to the metric system or the Imperial system. Then you determine the part's nominal diameter and thread pitch. Which can be coarse, fine, or "special." Don't forget that the pitch for Imperial fasteners is defined as the number of threads per inch, while the pitch of metric fasteners is the distance from one thread to the next. Armed with the diameter and thread pitch parameters you run the fastener through the proper die to recondition the threads to make sure it will fit.  Then, of course, you have to do the same thing with the threads in the nut or hole it came out of using the matching tap. Don't forget to use the proper anti-seize, thread-locker, or lubrication before you put the two together, and remember that although the majority of fasteners are right-handed, some are left-handed!

All this assumes that by the time you get to the reassembly stage you kept track of each fastener throughout the disassembly, bagging, cleaning, photography, storage, and tapping and die-ing processes.  

I think we need a 17 mm LOBO bolt with a castellated nut, a heavy beveled washer and a
3/32" stainless cotter pin . . . .

If I had it to do all over again I would certainly pay a lot more attention to fasteners.  It is easy to underestimate their importance at the beginning of a restoration project, but in doing so you make a lot of extra work for yourself in the end.  I have seen amateur "restoration" projects where the restorer just let the original fasteners fall to the ground to be swept up and discarded like so many cigarette butts.  How he expected to put the car back together again I don't know.  Conversely, I have heard of professional restoration companies going to great lengths to make their own replica fasteners to replace original ones too far gone to be reused. 

One area I am still largely ignorant of is "fastener engineering"--Why are there so many different types? Who determines where to use one type vs. another? What do those letters and numbers some screws and bolts have on their heads mean? Where is it appropriate to use castellated nuts instead of regular nuts with lock washers?  When did the Phillips screw head type appear for use in Italian automobiles? Is there any relationship between a bolt's head size or shaft size and the maximum torque it can take? When was the 14 mm hex head bolt and nut combination replaced by 13 mm parts?  

Yes, it's a fasten-ating subject!

Backstory 1 (Post # 103)

From Frontier Soldier: an Enlisted 
Man's Journal.

The Car Table Cavalry

Rewind to 23 days before January 24th, 2016, the day of the Arizona Concours d'Elegance. Trapped by a drop-dead deadline, badly outnumbered by the list of items still unattended to, hopelessly surrounded by the ravages of a brutal winter storm, Tim, Jeff, Dave, The Alfatross, and I were almost ready to bow to the inevitability of becoming a "No Show" when, miraculously, the Car Table Cavalry arrived to save the day.

I've mentioned the Santa Fe Car Table before.  It's just an informal group of car people, mostly men, who get together for lunch every Tuesday. It's a diverse group bonded only by a common interest in cars.  Simple as that. A lot of them know about The Alfatross and have seen it in various stages of dis-assembly. By the end of December the body, chassis, engine, interior and all the other bits and pieces were back at The Shed for the first time in 3 years.  

Among the guys who came to see the car was Terry Morgan.  When he saw the state it was in and learned of our commitment to showing it at a major concours in three weeks time, he realized it was time to call out the Car Table Cavalry. The next morning he showed up with his first recruit, Gerry Strickfaden.

Getting crowded under here!  Toni Carrell.

Tim's work fitting the window and door seals took first priority, so the rest of us concentrated on finishing the trunk and engine bay while the the car was off the lift.  

While Tim makes the door seals Jeff, Terry 
and Gerry work on installing the fuel tank. 

The hard part was recognizing when to stop.  Being congenital nit-pickers our natural inclinations were to spend however long it took to find just the right nut or bolt for a particular application. That's what we had been doing for three years, trying to get every detail right. It quickly became apparent that was our worst enemy and it would definitely defeat us unless we got it under control. Our mantra became "Will it keep us off the field?".  If not, it got the "do later after Concours" reduced priority.

The wiring harness is every car's nervous system, and one of the first things to go back in after cleaning and painting. The Alfatross' harness is very basic, but it has to go in before the dashboard. The hardest part proved to be getting 20+ wires through a tiny hole in the firewall to reach the fuse boxes in the engine bay. The wiring also has to precede installation of the engine. This is one place where we could have used a lot more time.

Terry, in his element.  

Yet Another List!

Weeks before this, realizing that a little advance planning could save a lot of time later, I created a punch list table to keep the restoration on schedule by improving efficiency.  The basic idea was to anticipate all the remaining tasks, place orders for parts and materials well in advance, group tasks according to their systems such as "electrical", "brakes", "steering", "suspension", etc., to make sure nothing was overlooked, estimate how many hours each individual task would take to complete, and figure out the order in which they would have to proceed to eliminate "re-dos".  The list turned out to be less than totally accurate, but it definitely helped.

The secret weapon: page 2 of a 100-item list of tasks to be performed, orders to be placed, priority, type of task, order of assembly, notes, estimated time required, and people involved.

Easy does it! 

The engine bay took a lot of advance planning and work to prepare. The wiring for the starter, generator, voltage regulator, electric horns, air horn compressor and its relay, oil temp and water temp gauges, and fuse boxes had to be laid in first, along with fuel, brake lines and the line to the oil pressure gauge.  The oil filter on the intake side of the engine had to be removed, as did the fan and exhaust headers and engine vibration mount on the exhaust side. Following Dan Allen's instructions we unbolted the transmission from its cradle and tilted it up to mate with the engine. It all went together smoothly (maybe we got lucky?) but it still took a few hours.

Getting the engine installed was a big relief--but would it start and run?  Just as importantly, would the car stop?  We hadn't got to the brakes yet.  And then there was the exhaust system that I bought 25 years ago but never had a chance to test fit. It would need cutting and welding and some kind of hanger system. By this time there was only about a week left before showtime.  

Even with the Car Table Cavalry on our side it was going to be close . . . . 

Engine wranglers Jeff Kramer, Terry Morgan, Tarmo Sutt (new recruit), Gerry Strickfaden, and the author. Toni Carrell.