A Tempest on the Track (Part 2)

Continuing yesterday’s dream, I’ll now pick which Tempest from the first three years I’d have and follow up with how I’d make it track-worthy.


Credit: Thomas A. DeMauro / High Performance Pontiac / Hot Rod

To me all three years of the first-gen Tempest (also known as GM’s Y-platform) have attractive styling details, but I’d prefer a ’61 for a few reasons: the split grill, the ribs down the center of the hood; the side “swoop”; the lack of rear fender fins; and it’s from my birth year. Honestly, though, I’d try to find the most rust-free example from any of the years.

On to the modifications. At the end of the last post, I shared that the stock manual drivetrain will handle the 352 foot-pounds that the 326 V8 was rated for. I also mentioned the ideal 50/50 weight distribution of the car, however, that was with the base 196 cubic inch Trophy 4. Bumping up to the V8 brought with it an additional 260 pounds (roughly 650 pounds versus 390 pounds) all on top of the front wheels. So I need a lightweight engine that puts out around 350 ft-lbs. Lo-and-behold the LS1 engine weighs roughly 390 pounds, and, depending on what vehicle it came in, puts out anywhere between 335 and 365 ft-lbs. So an LS1 it is. Hopefully, a bellhousing adapter and a custom coupler to mate the crankshaft to the torque shaft don’t add too much weight. I’m going to have to use the torque shaft as-is, so the engine mounting location may have to change, but this can be accommodated with the required custom engine mounts.



Okay, the GO has been dealt with; let’s turn our attention to the STOP. From what I’ve seen in photos and read on the web, Pontiac used Corvair-style car half-shafts to spin the rear wheels. The small nine inch diameter drums only accommodated one and three-quarter inch wide shoes. An upgrade the Corvair folks make to their first-gen cars is to convert to truck half-shafts and drums. This gives a two inch increase in brake shoe diameter and a quarter inch more width. I’m not sure if this is an option for the Tempest. With the swing axle rear suspension (more on this later), I’m very limited on swapping in disc brakes. There is a Corvair guy that’s making rear disc setups for the Corvair car, and the images I’ve seen of the Tempest brake setup look a LOT like a Corvairs, so maybe this is the way to go. The fronts should easily accept a disc brake swap, so I’m not worried about that. Stock wheels would not fit over the calipers, but the stock stamped steel wheels were going to be swapped out for something larger and lighter anyway. I’ll address that in my next post.

The other end of the braking system is the master cylinder. Back in the day, you could only get a single reservoir master cylinder. I’ve done the easy conversion from single to dual on Corvairs, so I’d do the same on the Tempest. Regarding power brakes, I don’t think it was available. The same was true for the Corvair, so I’m not surprised. The light weight wouldn’t really necessitate the added braking pressure.

That’s enough for today. The next post, where I talk about suspension and wheel changes, may not appear until Monday.

I’d love some feedback on what I’m dreaming about here, so feel free to comment.

How'd I Do?

It's VERY sad that it took me so very long to get to all the items on my to-do list dated nearly two months old, but here's how it went (original list in italics slightly reodered for clarity). Much of the following activities are available for your viewing pleasure on Youtube.

Episode 11 of 1965 LeMans Restoration
Episode 12 of 1965 LeMans Restoration
Episode 13 of 1965 LeMans Restoration

Interior:

• Bolt down the driver's seat. Done without drama.
  
• Bolt the column support to the underside of the dash. I couldn't find the support, so I just tightened the rope holding the column in place - very sketchy, but it's not permanent.

Brakes:

• Check the  fluid level in the master cylinder. A little low, so I topped it off with Synthetic DOT 3.
  
• Inspect the lines. As I slid around the underside of the car, I noticed some of the metal lines looked new-ish, while others were probably original. All the rubber hoses were changed out when I was working on the car back in 2003. At some point, I'll replace the original ones with new, but for now they aren't leaking so they'll do.
  
• Do a hard, harder, HARDER test on the brake pedal. To check for a weak spot in the system, I jammed the pedal and, happily, it did not yield.
  
• Check the parking brake. Liberal amounts of WD-40 loosened up all the e-brake bits, and it now works smoothly and effectively.
  

Fuel:

• Come up with a temporary, gravity-feed gas tank so I can bypass the existing fuel lines and tank. Instead of going with something temporary, I attacked the stock fuel system. I replaced most of the rubber hoses adding a third fuel filter between the tank and the pump, blew out the supply and return metal lines, checked the state of the fuel tank (just a bit of old gas), dumped in about three gallons of 93 octane, and called it good.
  
• Install the rebuilt carburetor. The original Carter with it's compliment of new soft parts was bolted to the intake manifold and the fuel, vacuum, and hot air (for the choke) lines were all mated.

Spark:

• Find the ignition key. For those that don't know, I've had twelve Corvairs pass through my life. About half were parted out since they were rusty beyond saving. Needless to say, I've accumulated quite a few Briggs & Stratton ignition and trunk keys.It only took about five minutes to find a key that worked, so I was good-to-go.
  
  
• Clean the points and re-set. Carefully, so as not to lose them, I removed the two screws holding the points in place. After which I noticed I could've just loosened them and the points would have been removable. A quick rub of the contact surfaces with some fine sandpaper, and they were put back into their distributor home. The gap, rather the dwell, was set using the dwell-meter while cranking the engine with the plugs removed. This required me to finally break down and spend the twenty dollars on a used battery from my favorite pick-a-part.
  
• Clean the spark plugs and check gap. All the plugs were dirty, but not bad, so a quick trip to the wire wheel followed by a gapping at the manual's 0.035 inch and they were ready for re-installation, but I left them out initially so I could spin the engine without compression. This would, hopefully, get the oil pumped onto all the lube-loving surfaces. The plugs were eventually screwed into place and the leads were popped into place.
  
• Check the plug leads for damage. They all looked fine, so were reused.
  
• Clean and install the rotor and cap. They both looked brand new, so I just reinstalled.  Here's where I hit a little hiccup. I thought I had the cap properly seated when I twisted the hold-downs, but I was wrong - it ever so slightly askew. The following fifteen minutes of frustration finally ended with me discovering that this had been the cause of the intermittent spark. Once the the cap was seated properly, lo and behold the engine started right up.
  

So the engine runs without any scary noises or smoky emissions and the brakes brake without drama, and, with the car up on four jackstands, I was able to confirm the transmission goes into gear and will spin the rear wheels both frontwards and back. The car is now mobile.

Back to the smoky emissions, I will admit a faux pas. The non-functioning, disconnected A/C compressor hangs off the passenger front of the engine blocking easy access to the number two spark plug hole. While I was struggling to reinstall said plug, I decided to remove the compressor. Only three (or four) bolts, so it was easy to get it out of the way. In my haste to get the last plug in so I could try to fire up the engine, I didn't realize that two of the bolts were head bolts (DUH!), so the initial running of the engine wasn't without a little exhaust gas puffing from the front. Once I discovered my foolishness, I reinstalled just the bracket and torqued the two big bolts to 95 foot-pounds. I didn't re-start the engine after that, but I'm confident (actually hopeful) that I didn't cause a head gasket failure.

I have been out to the garage one time since that eventful weekend of engine startup. I returned to bodywork mixing up a few batches of Bondo and applying them to the passenger door that I

This weekend the lovely Loriann will be away with her church youth on a winter retreat, so I'll be stocking up on kerosene and Bondo to finish the bodywork on the passenger door and starting on the next body panel (a fender perhaps, or I might go big and do the hood).

What Happened in Blacksburg?

One of my job changes occurred in 2003 and resulted in an extended stay at a rented home without my family. The lovely Loriann and I decided to keep the girls in school in NY, so they weren’t available to join me in Blacksburg, VA. With time on my hands and a single-car garage at my disposal, I moved the LeMans back to VA. For those of you keeping score, the LeMans had been built in CA, sold in VA, driven back to CA, moving-van”ned” to PA, driven to MD, driven back to VA, trailered to NY, and tow-dollied back to VA - but I digress.























With dreams of painting the car, I purchased my first air garage-worthy compressor and a basic set of accoutrements. With my new air wrench and the help of my best buddy, Bill, we tore down the car removing the bumpers, trim, lights, hood, front clip, windows, trunk lid, top assembly, doors, seats, interior panels, door handles, and the gas tank. Then it was time for some refurbishment. Since it’s been nearly 14 years, I’m a little fuzzy on all I did do, but I know I coated the floor with POR-15, coated the topside and underside of the trunk with POR-15, started up the engine, replaced exhaust gaskets and brake hoses, removed a bunch of Bondo off the tailpanel, and started stripping the paint and Bondo off the left quarterpanel. By the way, the Bondo was originally put in to deal with dents, not rust. It was at that point, I was informed the company I was working had been sold, and new owners were downsizing.

The family was living with me by then, and they all liked the area, so I searched long and hard for a replacement job, but it was a small market and there was nothing in the pay range that I had been enjoying. After getting a generous job offer back in MD, we made the decision to move again.





That meant I needed to put the LeMans back in movable condition. There was no way I could drive it the couple hundred miles to Baltimore, so I bolted on the fenders, hood, trunk lid, and top assembly and filled the trunk with doors and windows and the interior with boxes of everything that was left. She was rolled onto a U-Haul trailer and towed to a waiting spot in the garage at my current home.