1968 Coronet 500 Project

[showard]

Beautiful pictures of your car with a beautiful background.

 

[JimKueneman]

Playing around with iMovie last night... I know these don't work on phones for some reason, sorry.

 

[Glenwood]

cool video Jim!

 

[BeeKool]

Cool video. It worked on my Galaxy 7.

 

[JimKueneman]

I am going to a show and plan to have the participants use this URL so they can watch this video when they look at the car. Can everyone see if it works on their phone/iPad/etc....

http://tinyurl.com/coronet500

Thanks, I think this will be a really cool fun thing for the participants other than I may start to hate Boston by the end of the day!

 

[oldbee]

Good to go on my iPhone! Great video

 

[Brandy]

Nice vid!!

 

[JimKueneman]

Well, well it only took 2 shows to bring home the "Best of Show Award". Even beat out a Roadrunner and Hemi R/T!

That orange glows so bright it makes the white Thunderbird look orange

 

[Glenwood]

Congrats Jim! Although it's not really a surprise given the high level of detail and quality work you did.

 

[JimKueneman]

Tried to work on the vibration some. Jacked up on stands and ran it at 3000 RPM in Drive. I rotated the bands a bit at a time until the mufflers got hot and burned my arm. Swore and called it close enough. It is smooth enough that I will drive it at 75 on the freeway now but it is still not quite right.

 

[JimKueneman]

Sometimes just the little things are all I need to be happy Absolutely mint original condition with the perfect yellowing of the pages.

 

[jfreakofkorn]

one heck of a build and a beautiful end result .... congrats

 

[moparnation74]

Beautiful, Jim....

 

[JimKueneman]

Ok so I finally got to go to the store and buy a 180 degree thermostat. I also stopped at Auto Zone and bought a Clay Bar polishing kit. Whoever invented this synthetic clay for polishing paint should have a gold statue of himself erected on the Capital lawn or something. I parked under a tree at work last week and it dripped microscopic blobs of sap all over my paint. I tinkered with the buffer and various things and it was useless. I used the clay bar and spray shine as lube and it just put the luster back in the paint and made it smooth as glass. It was so easy and works so well it I am still amazed.

I installed my 180 degree thermostat with the 4 small holes drilled in it to bleed the air. I ran it for a long time with the cap off burping the hoses. I may take it to work tomorrow and see how it works. Only suppose to be 84 tomorrow so it won't be much of a test I guess..

 

[Billccm]

I believe 101 is in the forecast for Sunday. Keep us updated on the cooling; many motorheads at my work keep asking for updates.

 

[munger77]

Incredible job JIM, you are a true inspiration!
A+ Love it, especially the body style and color

 

[JimKueneman]

Think my no heat problem is fixed. I have complete linear control of the temperature last night on a test drive, it is not binary (full hot or full cold nothing in-between) anymore. Although I noticed that the AC compressor runs on Heater and Defroster, guess I need to pull the controls out of the dash and see why the switch is engaging with the heater. There is one interesting little feature of it but I will wait till I post photos and what I did to fix it. 101 in Tucson today, I am going to drive it for a test on burping and the 180 thermostat. Wish me luck.

 

[JimKueneman]

Been driving more than working on it these days. I did get the starter shield and front strut shields restored and installed.

She also now has the correct wire routing into the left fender since the crash in the 1970's. The factory replacement fender did not have the right hole and a missing plug. Took me months to find a plug but I finally did and I drilled the 2" hole and ran the wires the way the factory intended.

I was having cooling and heater problems. I finally pulled out the valve I had restored and found that when it is hot the spring in this goofy valve gets really weak and the water pump was pushing the value shut and the temperature control did nothing. This is clearly a mechanical engineers PhD thesis of mechanical feedback loops... Since the expansion part of the value is cut off I stuffed a piece of hose under the lever so it would actually work as a fulcrum against the spring instead of moving away from the expansion piston (that does not work). Now the lever has control over the value all the time.

I also did the final fine tuning of the driveshaft balance. I added 2 hose clamps last week and made it better. I added another after jacking it up on stands.

It runs about 3000 rpm at 75 so that is where I started. I slowly moved the third clamp around the tube in 1/2" increments and found the sweet spot. It is amazing the sensitivity of this. I had to get the clamp screw to within one half of the width of the screw bulge for the best result. Basically about 1/4" increments you can feel the difference. Took it for a short run at 80 and it seems smooth as silk (need to get on the freeway to really prove it out but it feels way better).

I also talked to Bob at GlenRay and we put in a 180 degree thermostat. It now will stay around 200F in modern street grids in a 100 degree Tucson day with the AC on. If I get into the older street grids with slower speeds and shorter distances between lights it sneaks up to 208 and the AC starts to struggle. Once I hit the more modern open street grids it dropped right back down to 200F-203F.

 

[JimKueneman]

Little walk around for Accurate Exhaust, they wanted a video for their 318 dual exhaust with Hemi Mufflers.

 

[HawkRod]

Car looks and sounds fantastic!