1974 Plymouth Valiant Scamp - Restoration is a strong word

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My trip back to the third party MVD was pointless. They said they could not make any changes unless the car had current registration, which isn't possible until I pass the inspection, which they wouldn't do because the VIN on the title doesn't match the car. So, yeah. Fun. I'm going to a state MVD office again today to see if someone with a brain can help me sort out what is obviously a typo.

I got barrel clips in for the emblems...

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And I found a small puddle of trans fluid under the car after the most recent drive. I cleaned things up so I could figure out where it was coming from. Then I added a little trans fluid and found a new puddle...

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It looks like the shift selector shaft seal is garbage. New seal incoming. Oh, and another seal for the PS input shaft. I thought I had straightened it out good enough, but it's leaking already.
 
So, about the trans fluid leaks, I knew the selector shaft seal was bad, but I also discovered leaking at the tail shaft, so I pulled that seal and ordered a new one.

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Then I attacked the shift selector seal. When I realized how tight it was under the car, I decided to pull the crossmember and lower the transmission a bit. That's when I remembered that in the box of parts that came with the car was a transmission mount.

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I bought the tool that is supposed to make removing the shaft seal easy, but it didn't. I finally decided to cut my loses and drop the pan again, and remove the valve body. I had the seal out 2 minutes later.

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Now waiting on more parts and more time to put them in.
 
Oh look, shiny copper coming off the alternator feed!

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I didn't get pics under the car, but I got the trans shift selector seal and the tail shaft seal replaced. So far, so good. I got another new power steering shaft seal in and replaced, that seems to be holding too.



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The air cleaner was rattling while the engine was idling, so I decided to gut the moving parts. I'm in Phoenix and I'm missing the heat stove section anyway.



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The thermostat housing kept leaking on me. After a couple of gaskets and sealer attempts, I placed the housing on my phone (carefully) and could see a 3mm gap on side, so I bought a replacement, which seems to have sealed much better.

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While doing the trans seals, I replaced 4 of the plastic bushings/grommets on the shift linkage. I still need to replace 2 more, but the shifter feels sooooo much better already.

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Friday is my AZ MVD inspection. If all goes well, the car will be registered and legal by this weekend.
 
My inspection is tomorrow and I’ve been watching the Phoenix weather forecast creep up daily and they’re now predicting a high of 107°. I’m running a 26” radiator with a shroud so I think I’m good with engine temp, but I have seen the fuel in the carb boil while in my garage. So after some research I thought a heat shield and doubling up on the thick base gasket couldn’t hurt and might keep some of the heat out of the carb. Maybe not, but regardless, it gave me an idea for a fun, free project.

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I think that plate would heat up real fast, and make the problem worse.
 
sireland67 said:
I think that plate would heat up real fast, and make the problem worse.
Click to expand...
I disagree. The plate has no contact with the carb - there’s a gasket on top of it - so conductive heat from the plate isn’t an issue. And even if the plate gets hot, it can still direct hotter air around the carb.

That said, I don’t the think the plate acting as a heat shield will have any significant affect. But it was fun and is pretty interesting under the hood.

I do think that doubling up the base gasket and sandwiching the plate in between will insulate the carb from engine heat better than one gasket though.

Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, it’ll take 4 minutes to undo. Regardless, I’m having fun with it.
 
If you had access to a 5-gas analyzer, the NOx would tell you the ultimate answer. If you were experiencing knock, or vapor lock before, decide for yourself if it reduced carb temps.
 
add some self adhesive underfloor heat shield (like you put to keep exhaust heat at bay) to the underside of the plate. just leave out the bit where it contacts the gasket/manifold.
neil.
 
This is not the update I was hoping to make... I didn't pass my inspection, but I didn't fail it either. There were two super nice officers who explained right as they started they were skeptical they'd be able to complete the inspection. They said they needed to match "secret numbers from the factory. That could mean putting the car on the lift to inspect above the frame rail with a dental mirror, or removing the blower motor." They sent me inside the office while they started the inspection, but one officer came out 10 minutes later and said I'd need to come back next week. He was very nice and tried to be accommodating and said I could come in whenever they were open, so that was cool. He said it could take up to an hour to do the inspection though. I'd never heard of anything like this before and I can only assume it's because of the dismantled title status, rather than salvage.

Oh, shortly after I popped my hood open, one of the officers said "I like that engine bracket!" referring to my license plate heat shield. Hahaha

The car drove great again, and the leaks I addressed since the last real drive seem to be fixed. Power steering shaft seal, thermostat housing, trans shift selector seal and tail shaft seal looked good, no drips on the ground.

So, I wait until Tuesday. Again.

While I wait, I'm going to redo my kill switch. I originally set it up to interrupt the ignition run circuit feed. I was concerned the wiring on the switch and the switch itself may not handle the current. After I discovered the car was charging at 16 volts, I removed the kill switch and checked again, and it dropped to 14 volts. I'm going to instead use the kill switch to trigger a relay that will open or close the ignition circuit.
 
Before wiring in a relay to my hidden kill switch, I thought it out, made sure I understood how the relay worked and even made this cool diagram.

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Then I got impatient a couple days later when actually installing the relay, ignored my drawing, hooked everything up, turned the key and watched smoke pour out from under my dash.

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Smart. Fortunately, the kill switch I bought came as a 3-pack. It took me awhile to remove the fried one, cuz of melting, but I eventually got it back together, wired the switch and relay correctly, and it works great! The wiring mess looks worse in the pic than it actually is.

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While doing electrical stuff, I fixed the parking brake switch.

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I also realized my oil light doesn't work because the oil pressure switch is either broken off or there's only a plug in the filter housing. Plus, I realized when I was cleaning up the wiring harness, I removed that wire and stuck it in a box. I pulled it out of the box, cleaned the terminals and put it back into the harness. Temporarily grounding it out makes the light work. I have a new oil pressure switch on the way.

Tomorrow will mark my seventh trip to the DMV to try to get my title sorted and get the car registered.
 
DigitalRelay said:
Then I pulled all the plugs to remove the crush washers.
Click to expand...
Does you head have the spark plug tubes? If so, removing the crush washers is correct. If you DO NOT have the tubes, your plugs will need the washers. It's not clear what you were doing, just wanted to make sure you don't have a mismatch between plugs/crush washers/head style.

PM coming your way on your LCA's.
 

halfafish said:
Does you head have the spark plug tubes? If so, removing the crush washers is correct. If you DO NOT have the tubes, your plugs will need the washers. It's not clear what you were doing, just wanted to make sure you don't have a mismatch between plugs/crush washers/head style.

PM coming your way on your LCA's.
Click to expand...
Yes, plug tubes are installed. Thanks for checking!
 
“OK to remove the DISMANTLED brand”

New title and plate coming in the mail. In the meantime, I have a temp plate and I’m totally legal!

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Okay, back to work!

I think this oil pressure switch will work better than what was in there.

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Yep!
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I also started the bigger job of dropping the transmission to fix the leak at the front.

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The transmission came out yesterday.

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It was filthy. After a long amount of time scraping with a putty knife, a wire brush on a drill and several cans of brake clean, it was much better.

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I told my girlfriend the other day I think half of working on old cars is just cleaning dirt, grime and corrosion.

I pulled the pump, which required a run to Home Depot to grab parts for a diy slide hammer. Then it took my longer than I care to admit to replace the snout seal. I also replace the o-ring, gasket, and bolt washers. I pulled the cooler line fittings and cleaned them up with a wire brush before reinstalling with thread sealer. The torque converter went back in without any drama. I slid back under the car and installed the only two plastic linkage bushings that hadn’t already been done a couple weeks ago. I’m gonna start putting the trans back in after I finish my coffee with a sode of ibuprofen.

In addition to the trans, I also started installing headlight relays. When I decided to modify my Killswitch to include a relay, I bought a 5 pack so I could also do headlights or some other idea in the future. I need to clean it up a little more with some e-tape, but it looks pretty darn good.

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The greater part of fixing anything is taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it back together. If you're still working on the hood adjustment, a new set of bumpers might be worth buying.
 
You go boy! Great progress. She'll be a driver yet!
 
It’s all back together, but…

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Leaking as bad or worse as before.

Blah.

At least the headlight relays work.
 
I ripped it back out in 90 minutes this time, which I was pretty proud of doing it on my own. I pulled the pump and the gasket seemed suspect. When I installed it last night, I used a little gasket sealer to hold it in place, but I wonder if that jacked me up because I didn’t coat all the way around. Anyway, I cleaned the gasket and mating surfaces again and torqued the pump down. Trans is on the trans jack again and ready for install, but I need a break.

Also, I inspected the torque co better for cracks in the about and didn’t spot anything. I also rigged up a nitrile glove over the snout so I could apply some shop air pressure to see if the weld was leaking. No leaks and it held pressure. Pretty sure the torque converter isn’t the source of the leak, but I wouldn’t bet my life on that either.

If this still leaks, I’m gonna pull it again and do a full rebuild kit. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I’d prefer to be able to drive it for awhile first.
 
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