BARNFIND Grand National Gets Brakes and BOOST!!

ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of junkyard digs today our goal is to finish the grand national and return it to its owner and we want to do this all preferably before the end of the week let's see if we can get it done so like i just mentioned our goal is to finish the grand national here in the next couple days i believe the last time we were on camera it randomly died on me uh but it did fire back up i'm gonna assume that's something to do with some component getting warm in the ignition system we'll see if that happens again hopefully not hopefully it's just good to go other than that nothing has changed now our goals for this episode are to change the brakes out entirely so we have good brakes on the car because safety is really important when you have a car that's fast next we'll vacuum out the interior clean everything up inside to the best we can make one critical change i did discover throughout uh visiting car shows through the summer and asking people about these cars and then hopefully get this thing back to its owner in a good condition without further ado let's get this sucker up on the lift and start tearing into it because we have a lot of work to do in a very little time [Music] [Applause] so with that everything is in the air now we just need to start taking parts off good stuff thank you bendpak for being the best company ever before we get started today i want to throw something in here quick this video is going to be a little dry for the first 45 minutes or so most youtubers when we're doing these videos leave out break system tech the reason is it's such a tedious long process however it is very necessary on older cars especially those lacking today's safety features the only thing you have keeping yourself alive is a lap belt and a good functional reliable brake system so if you've never done brakes before or you've done them only a couple times or even want some tips for those people that do it often i encourage you guys to stick around for the first two thirds of the video this car absolutely kicked my ass this week and it took three days longer than usual to do brakes because i filmed it but in the end we were still able to get this car out and do some full boost pulls all right let's get into it so let's talk about some brake stuff is something we don't usually do in this channel i usually gloss over this because at the end of the video instead of the pinnacle like point of the video so gm brakes pretty good i like these caliper setups i really like the uh slide pins and stuff i got going on here these ones don't usually stick they're pretty decent but we're replacing them because they're cheap as hell and we can so 3 8 allen wrench a couple whacks those bolts come loose all right there's our bottom pin all right there's a top pin roll this caliper out of place thank you yeah those are about half gone yeah you can see they're a little cracked up and embedded with stuff so they definitely were not providing the ideal stopping power wheel bearings are making a little bit of noise well i think i got some of them too [Music] wow look at that pin fresh grease in there it looks like most times when i pull those apart it's just an old rusty nail that somebody shows yeah that's that's some you work on a lot of chevys all the fours they got a new pin each time yeah that was literally a used pin that had broken in half probably could have used a little more preload on the bearing next step is to get this castle nut off this will be a lot easier to see when we're going back together right now everything's covered in grease next we got a washer and then our outer bearing ah yes the classic 80s bearing plastic carriers really i have seen this once before it was my fox body make sure you keep all of your old parts until you're completely done and you do like a couple hundred miles and make sure everything is good then you throw them away all right take our rotor off there is our wheel seal right here this uh black piece and then we got our inner bearing so i'm going to set this all off to the side because i don't want to throw any of this away until we know everything fits let's go ahead and get the spindle cleaned up and inspect a couple things while we're in here and then we'll go ahead and start reassembling all right spindle's looking pretty good got everything back here in our greased sling ring cleaned up uh now let's go grease some bearings all right so let's talk a little bit of bearings we've gone over this stuff in the past but it's been a while so no harm in doing a refresher right these are the new bearings and just like the old ones they have a plastic cage why i don't know they are tim can bearing so it must truly be acceptable to have a plastic cage on a bearing this is our outer this is our inner we're going to start with the inner because it's going to be a little bit bigger and easier for you guys to see this is what's known as the bearing race we already have these in our rotor so we will not be using him what we're going to do is make sure we got a clean hand good enough get yourself some grease you're going to get dirty so just commit to it get in your palm grab your bearing get a knuckle through that good nice tight grip there's some play in this cage right here so what you're going to do is push that away to open up this far side right here now you're going to use this gap in the bearing to bite into the grease just like a little hungry hungry hippo and as you're doing that you're pulling it back and it's pressing that grease into that gap they make tools for this that do this job way faster but i don't have one i've just always done it by hand as you go you'll notice it will begin to squeeze out the top and that means that's good right there so we're going to rotate a little bit press our cage back up again and start the hungry hungry hippo bearing chomping away more dots came through rotate do it again and if you're repacking old bearings you will see it uh push all the black grease out first and then your color of grease will come through the thing you can do is use this to clean your hand off and at least on the smaller bearings it works a little easier but repack it all to a new spot work that grease in we're going to continue this until we get these to come up all the way around and then we'll give it a spin and do it one more time all the way around so that we know we're full of grease just like myself everything's looking good only takes me one or two bites to get bubbles to start to pop through the top in each spot which means our bearing is full so this one's done i'm going to repeat that for this and all the other ones and we'll get them installed onto our rotor all right so we have everything greased up as far as bearings go at this point we're going to get more grease and sit down with our rotor for a little bit so flip this guy over we're gonna want to be as careful as we can about not getting grease on these surfaces and then before we install them on the car permanently we also want to clean these with brake clean because they put a uh sealant on here to help preserve this from rusting that needs to be stripped away before you start using the brakes so let's start things off with a good old glob of grease all around the inside of this guy i'm gonna just fill that whole cavity up with grease everyone greases their bearings different this is how i do it i just just the most grease you can get in there because i mean you can't have not enough if you put as much as you possibly can that's greased up drop our inner bearing in more grease smear it all around the top of this bearing to pack that in one more time the idea here is that these bearings if they lose enough grease they start becoming warm and then all the grease in this cavity will turn to a liquid and refill the bearings and then they'll cool back down all right so now we've got our wheel sealed before we put this on though i am going to verify that this is the right size wheel seal on the spindle this is indeed the right size wheel seal so we can go ahead and install this all right fresh bearing on the back side new wheel seal let's go ahead and prop this thing up with the car and do our front bearing and nut and everything else all right time to put everything back on off camera i've cleaned up our washer and are not get all the old grease off those no point in doing all this if you're just going to put dirty grease right back in it now we'll get our rotor with a fresh bearing and seal seat that seal there we go looking good now we grab once again our grease believe it or not and you're gonna try to get as much around there as you can just kind of squeeze it in there if you're able to if you get small fingers just pack that stuff in there grease is a lot quicker and cheaper than new bearing all right now our outer bearing you should push all that grease in a little further when we seat him okay there he goes we're good get our specialty washer in there and now for the nut and now this is the part where everyone disagrees how to do preload on a bearing three dougas [Laughter] everyone says something different i'm sure there's some book set torque load that you're supposed to yelp they say turn it till it gets hard to turn and back it off a quarter set it to a torque do do this do that i am not going to advise what to do google it i don't know so i usually go until i feel preload which is right there and there you can tell there is easy to spin and as you spin it will move grease out of the bearings so yeah there's definite force there so now i'm going to back off hopefully to the nearest cancellation all right now we put our pin back on fill our grease cap with more grease slap that on there replace our soft line our caliper and we're done with the front brakes let's make it happen all right and with a little bit of heat we're able to get our fitting loose and get our old soft line and caliper off now usually i want to stop this from dripping so we don't drain our master cylinder and have to rebleed it but we're replacing it in this case since we're switching braking systems so i don't really care today let it drain all right let's get our new components on there well phoenix is working on getting our rear drums broke loose i've got our soft line on i'm going to take this time to wash off or not wash but chemically strip i guess to do the appropriate turn all the sealant off the brakes it'll leave a little bit of your rag behind that's okay it's fine same thing for the back side now we're ready to go ahead and put our caliper on yeah that's what that's what came off so good stuff i'm going to take this time to put some anti-seize on our pads and our caliper on this piston right here there we go as well as any sliding points on the pads which will be these guys and if i remember right i think that's it for a gm make sure you're not getting it on any pad surfaces or the rotor or anything because believe it or not anti-seize is not really what you want on your brakes kind of fundamentally opposites now you want to make sure before you put this on that you have the right side so that when this is installed your brake bleeder is on the top so get this out of our way got our nice clean rotor we will work this guy into place and it may take a little work because he might have to compress the piston a little bit all right so there we go our calipers bolted on everything in here is anti-seized we got our new rubber line lines are tightened up good wheel bearings no wheel sill new pads new rotor everything right here brand new and good to go we'll go ahead and repeat this on the other side and then move on to the backs all right it comes time now to do everyone's favorite part drum brakes i actually don't mind drum brakes i almost prefer them working on them over discs but i'm weird one thing i don't like is taking off the drums and we've already done the other side and we know it's a freaking nightmare so we're going to show you a couple of tips and tricks for getting seized drums off of the vehicle and these are really truly stuck on there they're not going anywhere so first thing we're going to want to do is oil them as you can see we already have and then we're going to remove any surface in which it can bind to which is not only this center hub but all five of these studs thankfully we can pound the studs through to the back side so that's exactly what we're gonna do and then we'll oil everything again put some heat at it and start just beating it with hammers now i don't have new drums ordered so i do need to try to preserve these if you have new drums ordered honestly the easiest option right now get a five pound sledge beat the out of this rim of this drum until this thing cracks in half because it's cast iron it will not take much they will just split right open then you pull the pieces off put your new drum on after everything's cleaned up but since we're trying to save these we're going to pound these studs through to free up five more points of rust bigger hammers there goes one i also highly suggest getting a buddy to help you on this stuff at this point we can get some penetrance in the cracks between the wheel plate and the uh actual drum a little more right there and we're just going to continue tapping it and see if we can break those loose it looks to be a strong gnaw so at this point we resort to everyone's favorite heat i'm gonna go around this heat up the flat spots between all the holes here and try to increase the diameter of this center hole [Applause] that's all it takes a little calamity now if you're lucky this will slide right off but i'm just gonna go ahead and say we're probably not lucky nope it's the pads again so get your buddy get two pry bars watch your knee [Applause] get a hammer and pry against the back of the backing plate and shock that free it's not even moving anymore so this side's good um all right we're just gonna pull the wheel back on it still spins breaks you're done all right so it's already the next day at this point and i've decided this is not working and i cannot get this damn rotor off on top of that looks like we might have cracked it already so we're just going to finish this thing off basically if you can get something in between here and the backing plate you can try to work it forward with a couple of them and shock this axle and the actual drum and it'll work itself off until it gets clear of the front of this and then you can get in here and work it out you basically have to fight the ridge that the shoes build into the drum as the shoes wear into the drum they don't cover the entire surface they leave a little bit in the ends and since they're adjusted out which if your adjuster wheels work you can in theory roll them back in and it won't be a problem but usually they don't but you have to just beat on this and pull on this until it clears that ridge and you essentially make the shoes go like this against the spring tension and you can get that off i thought this would have been a good example to show you guys how to do that but it's not a slide hammer helps sometimes otherwise just a lot of prying but at this point we have misshapen this thing so badly that it's not even worth putting back on the road plus i see there's a little literal cracking starting so we're just going to finish it off and take it off the easy way oh holy you haven't really made some [Applause] drums yep just like that there we go so like i said unfortunately this thing is going to be out of round and all sorts of bent up and dented and unbalanced now so it will need replaced thankfully o'reilly's has new ones in stock for unfortunately 50 bucks a piece but they should be here at noon so let's go ahead and strip these brakes down show you how to do stuff with drum brakes hello there it's me kevin from about two days in the future i don't want to give away any spoilers but at the rate this car's been absorbing parts over the past few days we're not gonna make any money on this episode unless someone pays for all this which is exactly why we have a sponsor for today's video but before i say anything about them those with small ears in the room here's your morning to skip ahead let's just give them a second to do that all right they should be gone are your balls hairy and stinky your stinky balls need a trim according to your significant other are you a stinky hairy bastard much like myself stinky balls nobody likes them today's video is brought to you by manscape specifically their new body wash if you've watched our channel in the past you already know that i'm a huge fan of the performance package 4.0 which of course includes the amazing lawnmower 4.0 with its wireless charging and skin safe blade technology the manscape weed whacker for those pesky nose hairs the crop preserver anti-chafing ball 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manscape.com junkyard digs for 20 off and free shipping yeah that's right 20 off and free shipping manscape.com junkyard digs and remember your balls will thank you and your back and your nose and your ass pretty much everything at this point they've got you covered all right let's get back to the video all right the time has come to redo our drum breaks i already have the other side done so i know what i'm going to talk about and let me tell you there's a lot to talk about these g-body drum brakes are a bit of a pain in the ass not going to lie they're probably top three most difficult drum brakes i've worked on but there's a couple tips i can give you guys to help with any drum brake system that's going to be a huge advantage at you getting this done with minimal swearing and throwing of tools number one absolute most important thing about drum brakes when you're starting this go ahead and pull both drums off at the same time get the car up on jack stands a lift whatever you have pull both drums off inspect everything in here decide which side has less broken components or is more thoroughly assembled and don't touch it go to the other side and start to disassemble it leave one side of your drum brakes completely assembled so you have a reference of how it goes back together even if you have two people working and you think you're super smart and you got pictures don't do it trust me i've screwed myself over on this way too many times do only one side at a time and when this side is done and properly adjusted and functioning and you know it's perfectly right go do the other side because now the side you just did will have all new hardware and it will be fully assembled for reference to the second side so that is my absolute biggest advice i give about drum brakes and probably where most people go wrong is they get confused how they go back together like i just said i just did the other side i literally had to come over here and look at this about 15 times to make sure that all my springs were correct tip number two is about parts when it comes time to get new shoes and or drums you also want to buy a hardware kit trust me it's a lot easier to just spend the like eight bucks for a hardware kit and replace all this hardware than it is to do all this and then have something break and then you're stuck for half a day trying to find hardware the other thing you want to buy is a self-adjuster kit now this is the star wheel and whatever is incorporated in the brake system for the adjusters fords have a steel cable that goes right here that loves to break like they all break this will literally save you time not having to clean up the star wheel or this linkage or this linkage and it gives you a few extra parts it should go without saying that some brake systems in the rear are a lot simpler than others and use fully symmetric pads and hardware which it doesn't matter which side it's on left or right but this car is one of the examples that does not the pads are symmetrical so the front and rear there's no difference they're literally stamped the same part number which is a good way to figure out if you're going to have an issue front and rear but when it comes to hardware you're going to want to look at either the part number here it's going to have an l or an r sometimes at the end of it or sometimes stamped on the hardware itself you'll have an l or an r another way since it's still all together on one side is to take the hardware you've taken off on the side you're working on and literally hold the new and the old piece next to each other and see if it's the right side same goes for springs on a g body some of these springs are left side and some of these are right compare them to the old hardware don't throw your old hardware away until everything's working i know i say that a lot but that's how important this is carburetors brakes whatever you're working on keep the old stuff until it's properly proven to be functional so yeah real quick before we take these off recap leave one side together get a hardware kit and verify left and right get an adjuster kit verify left and right with that it's time to take our brakes apart here's what you're gonna need a screwdriver preferably one that you happen to bend in high school and it's just the perfect bend for doing brakes and a channel locks that's it that's all i've ever used to do brakes for disassembly there's like two more tools for reassembly but oh and safety glasses i don't wear these things nearly as much as i should in the shop but i will wear them for breaks because when you're taking these springs off dust and dirt and rust and goes flying and springs sometimes go flying so safety third all right let's start taking these apart like i said these g body brakes are a little bit more difficult than most brakes so this is going to be a g body specific example but the premise is still pretty much the same so even though your other side is still assembled that doesn't mean now is a terrible time to take some few photos of which direction the tongs on the springs are facing if there's any special hardware here or here or here or anything so on and so forth one thing i do is when i take them all off i lay everything on the ground exactly how it's oriented here so that i can just look down and have a second closer reference first thing we're going to do is take off the spring that is further out on this upper pin second thing we want is the spring holding this pad forward that one's best with the channel lock now we're going to open up our channel locks and start taking out these retainer pins on each side just grab them press them in get your fingers on the back spin that pin pop that guy right out same with this side press it in turn it with your fingers on the back the way she comes okay a couple things fill up i'm gonna stop i'm trying to figure out where those went this conical one was sitting right here so put him on the ground uh this is the pin retainer for this guy so that's not a big deal that right there is something i need to pay attention to this side in the back has this cap and i should probably mention when you're looking at the other side for reference they are a mirror image of each other this will always be on the back that's not going to be on the front over there it's going to be on the back that spring will be on the front that one will be on the rear so remember don't get it mixed up their mirror image left to right at this point i'll pop this whole assembly off and just like that we're ready to open up these shoes pull out this center bar keep him there's a few things in here we need to keep that are not getting thrown away because we don't have new ones this bar minus the spring is one of them but we'll leave him on so i remember which way he goes open the shoes up there's a little piece right here that is the emergency brake pawl you will need taken off and there we go our brakes are off uh at this point i will remove the wheel cylinder which on these g bodies is really weird um it's a like clip on the back that holds it in i don't i'm not not entirely fond of it but whatever either way i'm going to turn the camera off for a moment and get the torch out and heat that line up and try to get this guy off without snapping our brake line and then we'll be back for some cleanup and reassembly all right we've got our wheel cylinder off i ended up snapping the line so i get to build two new lines yay either way before we get our new wheel cylinder in there we want to clean up our backing plate and get everything ready for breaks so there's seven spots we need to clean on the backing plate and one up here these are going to be the contact points for the brake shoes on the backing plate i like to use a drill with a little wire brush on the end you got one here yeah one here and there's supposed to be a checkered pattern but these things are worn down wow one here tell me what they got their money out of this car and the last one here now that your six contact points are cleaned off and you can see the checkered pattern and this one that's what they're supposed to look like not all worn down like this go ahead and clean your center post up top while you're here i like to just give everything a light brushing [Music] and we should be good to go uh one thing i do like to do when the brake drums are really rusted on such as in this vehicle is i'll take a sharp screwdriver and hit all the way around and get all the rust and metal that's flaked off in that cavity out and then go around with this and clean up the face that will keep the next set of drums from seizing so now that we got all that clean i'm going to take a couple moments and put our new wheel cylinder on all right at this point everything's cleaned up here i've gone to the wire wheel and cleaned up these two pieces as well which we'll be reusing we have one last step before we start putting all of our pieces back on we need to get our anti-seize and put some goo on those six points we cleaned off as well as the ends of the pistons on the new wheel cylinder and the center post up here on both the spring mounts and where the shoes sit while we got it out we're gonna go ahead and put a little bit right here all righty it's officially time for the real fun to start first things first grab your brake shoes like i mentioned earlier some are symmetrical some are not these ones are you can tell that because they have every hole on each side and they also have the same part number while i'm on the subject these are power stop brake pads from rock auto they are pretty much what i run on everything i've been running these for years and never had a pad or a shoe fail or scream or make a lot of dust they've been excellent brakes i love power stops and they are inexpensive as hell because they're from rockado at this point we need to make sure that we get our springs and retainers ready uh the grand national has two different length retainer springs for here and here the long one will go on the front and the short one will go on the rear and the short one is going to have a special setup with a cup on the bottom for holding a thing i'll show you in a second and here's that thing now we are going to anti-seize the back here and and i see is the front where this guy will sit so that he has good lubricated range of motion let's stick our pins in here so i don't lose them this guy is going to chill right here on the rear brake shoe i have to be careful not to get anti-seize on the shoes itself by the way before we put this on we need to take our emergency brake lever and get him situated in this little triangle hole up here there we go just like that he's going to chill out back there and hopefully never get used uh pretty much anything older than 15 years don't use the e-brake if you live in the north it's going to stick and then you're going to be stranded wherever you used it now at this point either grab eight pliers and compress this or if you have strong thumbs and press it like such and reach through and give that pin a little twist with your finger on the back side and there you go that one's ready to go at this point we need to take a break from the shoes and get this bar in here there's a wide side and narrow side on this car our spring is going to go on the narrow side it also has a jog over we're going to make that face out with the spring forward and the wide side is going to grab both the shoe and that parking brake pawl back there we also want to put a little bit anti-seize on this guy on either end because he's making contact with moving parts all right he's looking happy let's get him installed [Music] now he's just gonna chill there he's not getting fully installed yet now we can grab our front shoe and get him on there and i'm more so worried about just getting this guy aligned and installed right now okay got it that sucked now we need to make sure this spreader bar gets reinstalled because of course he fell out during that perfect next up this retainer plate he's gonna go right here now this guy is gonna loop into the end over here and come up around this center post nope no he's not okay well he's supposed to all these springs we're about to install now are going to be high tension so remember safety glasses now this little curl right here is what holds these in place to know that you have installed correctly stick that end straight in the hole and let it hang it should stick out straight at you and then you just loop it over in the direction it's supposed to go and that spring should be pretty close up against that shoe now it does want to stay out a little bit but that's totally normal ta-dah and there we go we got one shoe hung and sprung in place make sure that bar you can't see behind this is still in place grab your rear spring i will admit this one is a good bit trickier [Applause] there you go all right everything up top is done we have shoes that are staying centered now we're going to take our star wheel and unscrew this guy all the way so we can anti-seize all these threads and i just use your threads and i seize the ends and i seize the button up top put the little thrust washer on put the cap on and screw it all the way down grab our spring this side is red the other side is white get him hooked into place grab our channel locks because that's gonna be the easiest tool for this one and pull him over to the hole sometimes it's actually better without that in last but not least our honeycomb springs gonna go right here and there you go that is how you put together a set of drum brakes in the least painful way possible remember leave the other side for a reference wear safety glasses take your time study it all well before you take it apart or at least study the other side before you start this because stuff needs to be in order from back forward on like this pin at this point i will adjust these brakes until they're touching the drums just right we'll put our new drums on bend up some new rear brake lines and we'll be ready to move up to the master cylinder and pedals all right we got our brake lines fixed everything's replaced behind there it was time for me to adjust the drums and i immediately realized that i made a mistake thankfully i went over to the other side and verified i have this spring in backwards it needs to clip in from the front not from the rear so it doesn't bind against the star wheel also you may have noticed in the video that that thing slipped off but i didn't notice so that's why you keep the other side for reference and you double check your work i've come this far we might as well go all the way new drums same as discs up front you clean the surface off of the brake clean uh if you want to go the extra mile then you can do this on the spindles up front get some caliper paint and paint these so they don't rust basically all you're doing when you're adjusting drums is removing that so you have access as you can see then putting the drum on and reaching through here with your screwdriver and turning this wheel and what this is doing is spreading that bottom linkage therefore spreading the overall dimension of the brakes and you want to do that until they just drag and when they just drag and you reach with the screwdriver and push the brakes left and push the brakes right by prying against whatever you can land on and keep doing that again and again because what might be happening is that you're all the way over here and you're just dragging when in reality you still have an eighth of an inch over here so do this with the shoes behind the drum until you're dragging all the way around if after you do your brakes your pedal is firm at the bottom but soft up top like your brakes feel good but you just have a lot of pedal travel that is an adjustment that needs made in the drums you need to spread these out a bit more and eat up more of that petal travel all right now let's get these finished and move up to the front all right there we have ourselves some painted and properly adjusted rear drums and not to look pretty more so not to rust some painted drop rates so as many of you pointed out in the comments and have said online and la dee da the hydro boost system in these cars is trash it's it was like the first attempt the hydro boost and it's an electric over hydraulic system and their sensors and accumulators and they all love to go bad and i'm looking at that motor and i think it's just a big pile of rust i'm like there's no way that's going to work so what everyone suggests is well just get regular vacuum breaks from a regal which should work just fine i mean the only reason they have hydro boost is so if i had a guess you can break stand under boost but if you ask me you use the vacuum at idle to get the brakes set and then you just hold it while it builds boost i mean you're not applying more pressure it's already there so i think vacuum brakes should be just fine with that being said i need to source a set of vacuum brakes which means we need to change pedal assemblies she's going to suck and put a vacuum booster and vacuum master cylinder in and probably now i'm thinking of it probably reduce some lines as well the hardest part for all that is finding parts an affordable price which is where my buddy brian from classic g body garage stepped up to the plate and hit a total home run and male does this now in here it should be a used oops i cut the sticker no the brake pedal assembly and vacuum booster we need to convert this car over to vacuum brakes they're well packaged too yep there's our booster there's a t-shirt hell yeah bonus point here's the hose to run the booster here is this a giant brake pedal so it goes without saying absolutely massive thank you to brian from classic g body garage uh he's been a good friend of mine for a long time he has an instagram page you can follow and a youtube channel you guys can follow if you're into these g bodies and want more uh g body content tips how to and restoration videos he's got a pretty sweet collection of these things either way let's start taking all the old stuff out so the new stuff can go in all right so there's the big sad that is currently on the car and a lot of times the problem is this hydraulic accumulator right here we already replaced this switch it didn't do anything uh sometimes the motor goes bad and like as you can see like i mentioned that thing is a rusty pile of dookie we're just gonna assume it's all broken and throw it all away so that the family does not have any more problems with this car because remember this is not our car it's going back to the owner at the end of the video and i want them to let this sit for a year get it out and be able to drive it reliably and one of the most important aspects for them to be able to do that is the brake system just why we've redone everything because if it doesn't build all the boost or it doesn't run quite right that's okay they're not gonna get hurt if they can't go fast enough they're gonna have problems if they can't stop i don't really know anything about what i'm about to do so i have no advice to give to you guys so i'm not gonna film it i'm just gonna snap my fingers and hope that it magically all disappears and we get a break booster installed and then when it's done i'll tell you what i learned oh no i've been spotted what's up moog i'm here supervising good supervisor oh we're dumb hey there's some under dash work that needs done do you want to do that absolutely not i'm supervising get to work get under that dash alrighty this went pretty well uh there were a couple things i would have totally forgot about like the internal rod between the master and the booster and the hose to run our vacuum booster so thank you very much brian at classic g body garage for thinking about that for me he included everything we needed in that box so once again check him out on youtube and instagram classic g body garage either way i've got our master blood so we'll get these hoses hooked up and bleed some breaks all right at this point i have the front bled and the other rear blade i'm down to the last one i'll use this one to show you guys what you're gonna do first thing you're going to do as you can tell is open it up and let it gravity bleed and you can see we already have fluid moving what you need is just a pop bottle with a piece of clear rubber hose the clear part is crucial so you can see when the bubbles are done flowing down the hose you're not going to be able to look at the pop can or pop bottle and tell when that's happening it needs to be right up here at the source so what i'm going to be doing is i have mook inside controlling the pedal she's going to be pushing it up and down i am checking the reservoir level often so the last thing you want to do is get air in that master after you've bled it and have to re-bleed it so keep an eye or have a third person keep an eye on that reservoir level all i am doing is acting as a one-way valve i'm going to say down she will go down i will open this let fluid out i will close this and say up and she will go up and then we will repeat this will be just moving fluid down the line down she'll call out when she's all the way down up down up down what we're looking for is bubbles up all right we've done that a few times i got a bunch of brake fluid dripping on my pants how does it feel moot give it a couple bumps go down hey those are brakes go back up and down feels good all right and that's all it takes to bleed brakes just remember keep an eye on your reservoir and just continue doing that until you see no more bubbles it will take a while to do all four cylinders especially when the lines are dry if you don't gravity bleed them first which i suggest it doesn't always work you won't always get fluid it's actually on older it's pretty rare you get fluid to move with gravity bleeding but it does at least give that first eight inches of line some fluid so you're not immediately pulling air back into the reservoir all right we should have a completely replaced brake system with the exception of a few hard lines but i have inspected them all and they all look good so at this point let's put some wheels on and move on to see if we can make this thing finally make boost alrighty so with the exception of the asheville vacuum line for the booster our brake system is finally done now for that line they make a plate that sits right here on top of the throttle body that is basically this guy with an extra fitting well now so is this i drilled a hole threaded it in there and for good measure cover everything in jb weld you can buy these actually manufactured out of metal for 55 bucks online or if you potentially you can do this we'll see so like i said our next step is to chase down the boost issue which over the course this summer we went to a lot of car shows and i asked a lot of questions and i think i've got it figured out as we know from episode one we do have a pretty good size vacuum leak on these throttle shaft seals so i am going to go in here and replace those but that is not our problem a lot of people in the comments said they think the wastegate is the issue and they think the turbo is bad well the turbo's not bad it's clearly building boost and it turns out i believe the waste gate is actually also working properly our problem which a few people nailed is actually this guy right here this right here is the essentially the boost controller for the car this goes on the passenger valve cover as you can see and tees into the wastegate line it runs off of right here basically whatever psi this compressor housing sees gets sent to here and to the wastegate and anything above seven psi our wastegate will open and we are only building seven psi boost which means everything here is functioning properly what i believe the issue with this car is is that right here we have a 22 bullet stuck in the vent tube for the controller what this does is bleed off the pressure in this line to the wastegate so even though this is above 7 psi the feed line to our wastegate is getting vented to atmosphere and bleeding off that charge so the wastegate sees zero pressure now once this controller says hey 14 that's enough and it closes down that wastegate will then see the pressure because the valve in here closes and the wastegate will open but if this is unable to vent off that extra pressure because someone stuck a bullet in it it's not going to build any boost so yeah there you go i think this has been our problem all along i mean we definitely fixed a lot of issues because i think initially this had four psi we got all the way up to seven so we definitely fixed a lot of issues along the way made it spool a lot faster and more reliably and build better boost but this is our upper end limiting factor like i said i went to a lot of car shows this summer and asked every single person i could that had a grand national at a car show if i could look at that and where that went to and the funny thing was no one had any answer what that did besides one dude my age was like that is your pressure relief valve for the wastegate and it needs to be vented to atmosphere or else this will happen every single other old dude that swore their car was the fastest thing ever had that port hooked up to just the most random i was seeing cars where these two were looped together and this thing was chilling out doing nothing this was put the vacuum this was stuck on a bolt somewhere it was just a complete crap shoot of where that hose went so unless these guys had some form of adjustable wastegate and just left that chilling on the valve cover for no reason none of these dudes were building any boost beyond seven psi no matter how fast they told me their car was which i thought was hilarious either way i'm gonna take that throttle body off and get those new seals in there and then our jb weld should be about ready put all that back together put some tires on this thing and see what happens all right we're getting everything stripped down to where we were at the shaft now look at the amount of play on that uh that shaft right there yeah this thing was definitely not sealing after 140 000 miles believe it or not i'm going to pop that the rest of the way out and get some new seals on it alrighty we've got our throttle body all cleaned up and got some new seals in there looking pretty good while i was here i took the liberty clean out the inside because it was nasty in there either which way um a little tip there those screws are knurled on the back they are a nightmare to get out they will want to strip be very careful with them take your time and when you put them back in make sure you lock tight them and tighten the hell out of them because if those fall out you're gonna have a bad time another thing i learned um if you order throttle body seals for one of these cars order like four they are not very strong and their panty has to get in there's a good chance you might hack them up at this point we need to wait for our jb weld to set up and then we'll be good to go all righty there we go our jb weld set up everything geared up really nice there seems to seal up just fine got a new vacuum hose ran to our vacuum booster while i was working in there i found this little guy check him out what's up little buddy he's definitely seen better days he looks like he might need some water which we now have plenty of because today is kind of a rainy poopy day we got our wheels bolted back on everything should be good to go i'ma hop in this thing hit the key and see if she lights off again it's been a little while since it ran it had a dead battery and i pushed it all the way over here so yeah let's see if she uh comes back to life [Music] [Music] it's actually sitting here idling and it's not jumping all over the place i think cleaning up that throttle body really made a big difference all right so the big question even above do we have boost is do we have brakes and do we have boosted brakes yeah that runs way better i i did spray a good amount of brake clean in the intake and try to clean a bunch of the crap that was built up in the intake and i literally pulled chunks like this big out of the intake and i think that cleaned up some valves and cleaned up some runners and the car is a lot happier now hell yes finally brakes in this car it's going to make it so much less sketchy and they work great i will have to do a break in period on those pads power stop requests that so oh no why did we die okay paso [Music] what the hell car i hear a fuel pump [Music] what is it with every g body we have at the shop the second i try to pull it out it breaks like what the hell booster works good though so all right let's figure out what's wrong i swear sometimes universe does not want me to be a youtuber i just replaced this this is a brand new lens windy ass iowa knocking the stupid ass tripod it has been a rough summer for camera lenses i've never even dropped or damaged a camera before and then sure enough i say that out loud and i break two in no time at all so thankfully i think and i mean think these are repairable so if anyone knows anything about these panasonic lumix uh 12 to 60 lenses or if anyone has one that they don't want please email me i apparently need a pile of them i'll try to fix these but for now i'm using moocs lens thank you mook thankfully everyone who films here uses the same camera so we can interchange parts it's kind of part of the plan so you can pick up any of the three cameras and film at any time and interchange parts between them if something happens and if you're keen you'll notice that i said three cameras you'll see why next week-ish all right let's see if we get this damn carter on without breaking another lens all right got the car pushed back inside a little bit of diagnosis that showed we have no spark at the coil packs this is the same thing to happen at the end of the last video i let the car cool down and started working again uh the car is not hot this time so i get to go through and check like crank and cam sensors and supposedly those ignition boxes love to go bad and all sorts of goodies alrighty so i went into the office got myself this little doodad right here this is a no start tree or basically a very very well written uh chart that you follow to see why exactly your car is not starting this exists for a lot of fuel injected cars especially easy to find for ones that are very problematic yet popular and forums and such just like this grand national i literally googled grand national no start free and printed off the first document i found now with that being said all you have to do is follow these directions and understand everything that is saying here to diagnose everything like the crank sensor cam sensor ignition control module all that good stuff however once you know as soon as i get that printed off the car has been sitting for a little bit i walk over to make sure we still have power and start diagnosing everything and it runs again and if it ain't one thing it's everything i've never been disappointed by a car starting before but that is a first right there all right well let's let it sit here and heat soak all the sensors and then we'll try this again see if it doesn't start then the chaos continues currently in the middle of diagnosing the alternator which in the stock setup is ran through that upper right light bulb which is the volt light in case the alternator stops working that should come on which is not even though it's hooked up so i don't really know what the hell's going on here but it's known that if that ball burns out the alternator will stop charging which is what i was checking uh they sell an aftermarket harness to bypass that in these cars i'm learning more and more that these cars are like you know renowned as being some of the coolest fastest best 80s cars when in reality they're big piles of with a turbo like seriously i mean that is the second g body i've ever worked on the first one being the diesel and they were both horrible to work on and neither of them would make it out the door they kept breaking constantly and the diesel you'd be like well yeah that was the that was the 5.7 diesel the engine never had a problem once it still runs today everything attached to the engine to the extent of the paint was what was having problems so much and this car is doing the same these are horribly in ergonomic and just a massive wires and old sensors and rudimentary bits and pieces of technology i mean that's what they had for technology at the time but they just suck the brake system's known to fail the alternator is known to fail the ignition system's a pile of junk and known to fail the amount of major systems on this car that are common known failure problems is mind-boggling like you just start searching something on google and the rest of it pops up in a like 20 forum posts about yep here's the entire write-ups of how to go through everything you're about to do because everyone has these problems because these cars actually kind of suck i'm excited to see it running if we can get it running and charging and working properly excited to see it perform but uh yeah no so far that ain't happening what do you think mook oh i've been spotted and on that note i was in the middle of diagnosing the alternator when sure enough what now but [Music] we've lost spark and the car doesn't run anymore so which means i cannot diagnose the alternator because i need it running to do that but i can go back to diagnosing the ignition system which is where i started yeah so i'm gonna go get that no start tree and start working my way through that hopefully by the time this cools off and magically runs again i can have it diagnosed prior 1980s technology was rough i know all right so according to this uh no start tree does the service engine soon light come on with the key on and are the injectors firing and the answer is yes because i already know there's no spark on any plugs so i can go yes yes yes blah blah no spark on all check connection 839 to the terminal m for open circuit if the circuit is okay it's a faulty module or connection so module m is the third it's a pink and black wire and we can come in here and find our pink and black wire right there as you can see and i tested this circuit for open and it was not open and just to verify that i was reading that right i've tested the third from this side and it's also not open all our circuits appear to be okay which according to that tree has a bad ignition module i would have to agree this thing is right here right next to intake it's getting cooked it's probably done i have no idea why the hell they would have one of these in stock but o'reilly's has one of these in stock in town so let's go get it put that on there and see if that fixes it all right we got our ignition coil pack and our old ignition module off and separated before we put the new ignition module on we need to verify that our coil pack is good we're going to go to the bottom of the coil pack here and test our primary windings and we should be between 0.4 and 1.1 ohm everything looks good all right we'll flip her over and test our secondary windings and we should be between six to twelve and a half a little high definitely high and a little high they're all almost somewhat equally high so i'm gonna say they're probably honestly still okay but we're gonna keep that in mind because if we have any more troubles with this this is gonna be the first place we look i'm really missing carbureted cars right now like if this thing was carbureted it would have been on the road everything fixed for a month and a half alrighty our new module is on let's see if this sucker fires up let's find out [Music] trying to figure out what that ticking noise is it's like we just had a lifter tick develop be real shame if i was almost done with this damn thing [Music] she's running better and better i think that uh module is definitely on its way out we'll find out hopefully we have that sorted out now uh we still do not have an alternator so i need to play with that a little bit i don't think the alternator is bad i think there's some weird going on with the circuit so i'll let you guys know what i find well the test i just did off camera says our alternator regulator at least internally is kaput basically this is what's inside gm's cs series alternator we have obviously our case ground and then one big wire going to the battery ignore that little red one to s on this car all we have is l is our charging indicator light what i did was took a jumper wire and touched s and f at different times with 12 volts and still got no voltage out of our alternator so i think it actually is shot unfortunately much like the ignition coil that sumbitch is a spendy alrighty once again it's the next day we have parts we've got our old alternator off and instead of replacing the regulator i decided you know what i'll spend the two hundred dollars and just get a new alternator because of this yeah those bearings are quite unhappy i was able to save a little bit of money because it turns out you don't have to get a grand national specific alternator you can get a 93 to 6 buick roadmaster or chevy caprice and this should fit right on there with that being said i did have to pay the full price of the core charge because i'm going to leave the numbers matching alternator with the car for the owner so let's go ahead and get that bolted on and that should be about it we should be ready to drive this if two things hold together one being what's left of this radiator hose it leaks like a hacker so it's going to have to get fixed before it goes home thing number two is the weather it's been raining for three days here in iowa and i'm not about to take someone else's boosted grand national out for its first full boost pull when it's raining that's a recipe for disaster and i don't like disaster and yes i realize how ironic that is seeing that i'm working on this car aka a disaster so let's put that alternator in put our dash back together and then wait the rain out like friday three o'clock alternator still doesn't charge radiator still leaks belt probably still slips but it stopped raining so we should finally be able to take it up and down the road once let's make it happen all right mr grand national let's see it [Music] all right ain't bad like actually idled good let's take it on the road and see if we have any boost oh my gosh brakes they work amazing oh that is so nice just the slightest application of my toe and we're rocking to a stop oh it seems a little more eager to throw a boost into it earlier now which makes sense so this could be uh this could be it let's see if it'll do anything here all right there's seven at a little light pole so it jumps right up to where it used to be let's see if it'll go higher when we get out on the open road all right come on let's see one seven [Music] i saw a nine the slightest little improvement but you know what everything's functioning properly because that made a difference and it spools quicker and harder now so i think everything is where we need to be this sub bit's just so old and so worn out that might be all it can do to muster up 9 psi that was still pretty quick all things considered it's that's the fastest this car is pulled let's see if we can break boost launch this that's that is pretty fun you know what i saw 10 psi for a second i think that's all this turbo has left in it and all this car has left in it with all the just the wear that's on it it it ran hard for that 10 psi though so i don't want us we're not at full boost but i think for this car we have full boost finally that's just we fixed so many things that is all she's going to give us this car has put me through the ringer to bring 10 psi out of it but now when the 10 psi hits it's here now and it's here hard versus before it was stand in the throttle and wait and wait and wait for just nothing to eventually to evolve [Music] now as soon as we start building heat we're building boosts that's that's fun that's impressive for a 40 year old v6 and i i could spend more time and way more money and try to fix this boost issue to bring it to a factory 14 psi or whatever it should be reading but at that point we're going to be putting so much boost through an old worn out motor that it's going to be doing more harm than good it's going to drastically shorten the life of this car and probably end up melting the top end of this motor that's remember that's not what we're trying to do we're not trying to make a stupid fast car we're trying to bring a family's grand national back to life so they can enjoy it and in order for that to happen it needs to be reliable in order for it to be reliable i need it to not be running as hard as it possibly can so this is honestly about perfect at this point it's just a matter of fixing the exhaust fixing this damn headliner and cleaning up the interior cleaning up the exterior fixing the alternator fixing the radiator and finally getting to see the owner do some boosted pulls in his car once again and some real boosted pulls at that not whatever he was doing before which would have been i think 4 psi and now we're at pretty much 10. and with that we have to return as you'll notice much better idle quality i mean much better and it's well up to temp now and it has not shut off or stuttered or lost power once so i think that ignition control module really truly was the problem which is great [Music] that thing sounds awesome that is too fun so unfortunately my plans for this video fell through because you know g body things so like i mentioned we're going to extend this into a fourth episode where we will finish all the little odds it ends on the car to make this thing reliable and clean to the best of my ability it's it's gonna be a lot of work this thing is disgusting but once that is done we will be returning this car to its owner and we'll get to see him enjoy his car once again which i am really excited to see i've been talking to the family uh the entire family is totally jazzed about this and they're so excited to see their car up and running again i'm gonna go edit this video put it together get it out for you guys to see and then start pulling parts off this and get it ready for hopefully next week episode four the grand national goes home so make sure you guys subscribe to see that if you enjoyed this video uh leave a like for all the suffering and torment i had to go through to get this one done it sucked but they always do so it's it is work this job is work but it has its benefits by getting to meet our fans and see the impact we've made on the car culture it's amazing we love it so yeah if you guys enjoyed this consider subscribing leave a like leave a comment we will see you guys right here next week for another episode of grand national boosted goodness on junkyard diggs peace foreign

Channel: Junkyard Digs

Views: 469,969

Keywords: abandoned, revival, first, start, first start, run, drive, and, will, it, can, we, junkyard, digs, mook, BUICK, buick, grand, national, 1986, turbo, barn, find, barnfind, brakes, diy, how to, drum, disk, breaks, repair, rebuild

Id: _Pz2v1pZTWU

Length: 70min 30sec (4230 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021