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S 4 : Ep 57

Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

The 1950 Chevrolet 3600 currently hogging the Redline Garage has proved time and time again to be in rough shape. Davin will not give up on it though. He is a surgeon and no vehicle will die on his operating table. The next fix on this pickup would be akin to an Achilles tendon replacement—critical for operation and crucial to get right.

The operation in question? The brakes. Davin is undertaking the assembly of each corner of the system, and even a truck as popular as this Advance Design Chevrolet can still have some parts availability troubles. One would expect to find long-since out-of-production parts on a Studebaker or Diamond T, but just about every vintage car will have some small part on it that modern manufacturers don’t find worth manufacturing. So you have to get creative.

Not too creative, though. This is the brake system, after all, and it needs to work correctly—every time. The brake shoes get a fresh lining on the original backings. Nothing crazy there. The pivot points present a bit of a conundrum for Davin, however, since the existing retaining clips are in tough shape and replacements are nowhere to be found.

So, the man known for creative fixes and penchant for modifying his tools goes to work scouring his creative mind and the hardware store bins. The pair of pivot pins for the brake shoes each had a small groove for a retaining clip, which kept everything in its proper place. The diameter of the smaller pin was just right for a newer design clip which pinches closed. The larger pivot pin had just the right diameter for a metric-sized E-clip. (Luckily, it doesn’t matter if parts like these are SAE or metric, so long as they work.)

As Davin says in the video, let this serve as a reminder to think outside the box for every problem that crops up when working on a vintage car or truck. Every problem has a solution, and as a mechanic it is your job to find the best one. Thanks to Davin’s experience and creative thinking, this truck will be back on the road soon. Now go put the same thinking to work on your project.

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If you’ve been following our Redline Rebuild on Hagerty’s Buick straight-eight engine, things got interesting at the Thirlby Automotive machine shop as the engine had its hardworking bores trued in the boring machine. If you’re not familiar with this engine, it displaces 263 cubic inches and came from a 1951 Buick Super. (The engine was the subject of a previous Redline Update that can help you get up to speed.)

After the teardown that was highlighted in that previous video, and its follow-up, things weren’t looking great for our Buick. Despite being a running engine that was relatively free of sludge and gunk, the cylinder bores were badly tapered and also pitted. We had hoped that the cylinder wall would clean up with a .060-inch overbore, although even early on our Redline Rebuild host and chief wrench swinger, Davin Reckow, thought the engine was in need of eight new sleeves, especially considering it was already at .040-over.

Because we’ve had so many questions about what goes on at the machine shop and some of the processes they use, Davin decided to show some details of the block sleeving process. It turned out that the thick cylinder walls of the Buick would have allowed for a .0120-inch overbore, but even that wouldn’t have been enough to clean up all of the bores. Instead, Davin opted for a full set of sleeves to bring the bores back to their factory size.

The process for sleeving a block is similar to an overbore, except a ridge is left uncut on the bottom that prevents a new, cast-iron sleeve from dropping into the crankcase. The bores are left .001-inch undersized compared to the outside diameter of the new sleeve, which is pressed, or, as was the case of this Buick, hammered in place after being slathered with Loctite. It’s a procedure that involves brute force as well as a level of finesse, and sometimes things go awry, as they did when installing one of the Buick’s sleeves. The small setback gave Davin a chance to show how a machine shop repairs a cylinder that already has a sleeve. In the end the Buick block is now as close to its original dimensions as it has been in 70 years.

If you’ve got more questions about engine rebuilding, leave comments below or in the YouTube video and we’ll know what subjects to tackle in future Redline Updates.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

The straight-six from our 1950 Chevrolet is looking pretty awesome, but now the rest of the truck is playing catch up. Davin Reckow has been cracking away at the remaining projects keeping this three-quarter-ton pickup off the road. Not one to leave the viewers out of the greasy fun, Davin tackled rebuilding the transmission and inspecting the rear axle in the latest Redline Update.

The 215-cubic-inch straight-six was in surprisingly workable condition when Davin and crew dragged the Chevy out of a yard. It sputtered to life right away, but even with the engine rebuilt and turning under its own power the truck was a long way from driving.

“The rest of the driveline was grimy, but I didn’t see any reason that it would be in as rough shape inside as this transmission is,” Davin said when asked what he expected to find inside the gearbox. “But after I looked into this and tried to find a used gearset, these gearboxes are just prone to this rust forming inside.”

Each of the three gear pairings inside the transmission was heavily pitted and rusted. With only a slim chance of finding a better set of used gears, Davin elected to clean up the existing set the best he could and assemble them. His rationale was simple—this is not a restoration, and function is the goal. The damage to the gears may make them noisy when driving, and their useful life is significantly shorter than a clean set, but they will do the job for the time being.

Luckily, the rear end was a happier tale. Davin removed the rear cover and though the oil that came out was extremely dark, it was not nearly as contaminated as he expected.

“The gearset was in good-enough shape based on a visual inspection that I decided to seal it back up and fill it with fresh oil,” he said. “Didn’t see anything that needed more than that.”

Some fresh grease pumped into the rear wheel bearings, a bit of reassembly, and this vintage Chevy is one step closer to making parts runs. If you want to keep up with the progress on this truck and the rest of the happenings over in the Redline Rebuild garage, subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to get notifications with each video that goes live.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

In the Redline Rebuild garage, any time we’re tearing down an engine we start with disassembly before making a trip to the machine shop. Davin has done this routine enough times that he often has a good idea of what the experts at Thirlby machine shop in northern Michigan are going to tell him the engine will need once the parts cleaned and inspected. The 1951 Buick straight-eight we’re working on came apart easy enough, but it was hiding some unsavory secrets that led Davin to believe that this trip to the machine shop was not going to be a simple in-and-out process.

Though this engine was in significantly better shape than past Redline Rebuild candidates, the overall condition was grimy at best. Once at the machine shop, Davin took a break in the action to talk us through the four-step process that both the engine block and heads experience before the real inspection begins.

The Buick straight-eight had heavy pitting and taper in one of the cylinders, and the others were in only marginally better shape. Davin assumed all eight of the cylinders would need to be bored oversize and have sleeves hammered in. Before that diagnosis took place though, the block needed to be cleaned.

Each of the large green cabinets presented in the video serve a separate purpose. The first is essentially a dishwasher, which uses detergents to break down and wash off the majority of the grease and oil on the parts. Then a hoist snatches the block up and moves it over about 10 feet into the second cabinet, which is a furnace. The goal is to cook off all the paint and remaining grease. Then the block gets assaulted with steel media that polishes away any remaining imperfections. Of course, as Davin notes in the video, you want to get absolutely all of that steel media out of the nooks and crannies of the engine before reassembly. Which is why the last cabinet rolls the block at various angles and blasts it with compressed air to break up those lingering pockets of material.

Then, only after all that, was the block ready for a real inspection. A magnet and iron filings confirmed the block is crack-free, but Thirlby’s resident bore expert Mike still had bad, if not unsurprising news for Davin and the Redline crew—they’ll need to bore the cylinders out and place sleeves in all eight holes.

On the bright side, for you engine nerds, it’s a process that a future Redline Update episode will walk through step by step. Hooray! Of course, if you don’t want to miss an oil-soaked minute be sure to subscribe to Hagerty’s YouTube channel to receive updates with each new video that goes live.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Finding engines for the Redline Rebuild series has never been an issue. However, the mechanical diagnosis of those engines is usually more complicated; Davin often discovers the engine to be in pretty rough shape during the tear-down process. The new Redline Rebuild candidate wasn’t the healthiest he’s taken on, but the Buick straight-eight was far from the worst. Of course, we documented the whole process in the second Redline Update so you can dig into all the details.

This engine was running recently—though not perfectly. The 1951 Buick Special this straight-eight was originally in is now undergoing a thorough resto-mod, and a “good-enough” engine was not going to cut it. Davin yanked the long engine from the Buick chassis and hauled it back to the Redline Rebuild garage. Now, he’s breaking down the motor bit by bit to evaluate the tools and the work needed.

“Since this engine was a runner, I had pretty high hopes that it would need minimal work,” says Davin. “Little did I know that the few small things that stood out were indicators that this was not going to be so smooth.”

Among those tell-tale symptoms was the rust forming from the leaking freeze plugs on the side of the engine block. In addition, the pulley on the nose of the crankshaft had a slight movement when it shouldn’t. Once the cylinder head came off, Davin made a more interesting discovery: the pistons were stamped .040, signifying this straight-eight had been to the machine shop at least once in its life, where it received a .040-inch overbore and accompanying larger pistons.

The worst news of the whole adventure, though, is that those already-bored cylinders are in pretty sad shape. With any luck, the team at Thirlby machine shop will tell Davin that it’ll clean up by going to .060-inch overbore; but in that case, Davin is more worried about finding properly sized pistons.

“We probably have enough meat left in the block to go to 60-over, but if I can’t find 60-over pistons to match then it doesn’t really matter. It might shape up to be eight fresh sleeves getting hammered into this block. Not the worst, but not great either.”

The machine shop is the next stop for the block and cylinder head. If you want to be the first to know how it all shakes out, be sure to subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to receive notifications as Redline Updates are posted each Monday.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Davin Reckow is a man who cannot have idle hands. It’s just not in his nature. That means before the gasket silicone had dried on the Stovebolt Six, he had another project lined up. That project happens to be one that has been hanging around the Hagerty Garage for quite some time—meet the 1951 Buick Special, the star of the newest Redline Update series.

“I found this Buick seven years ago at the Hershey fall swap meet,” says Davin. “It was a good-condition barn find, with all the barn-find problems.”

For example, the Special’s convertible top is long gone, and the floor metal is on its way out. What did weather the perfect storm of terrible storage, however, was the ’51’s straight-eight engine. With some attention and a light tune up, it proved it could run a few years ago. Also used in Hagerty’s employee restoration program, this Buick even sat in on a seminar in 2014 regarding the debate of preservation versus restoration.

Just running isn’t good enough, though. The whole car is getting a makeover and will be used for future events as part of the Hagerty collection. The engine is due for a full refresh—and who better to tackle the project than Davin?

“I am curious to get inside this engine and compare it to the 1950 truck engine that we just did,” Davin says. “I expect a few differences between the heavy-duty application of that Chevy and this smooth-running Buick. I expect a few interesting assembly quirks too, but we will have to wait and see.”

Now that the engine is out, it’s leaving one garage in a truck bed and headed for another, where it will get bolted to an engine stand and teardown will begin. For those who can’t stand the anticipation, be sure to subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to get a notification with each new video, so you don’t miss an oil-soaked minute.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

The latest Redline Rebuild has been one of our most popular builds yet. The Stovebolt inline-six yanked from a derelict 1950 Chevrolet 3600 roared to life before Davin pulled it, but it still deserved a rebuild. The whole process was captured in a time lapse seen by millions, but behind the scenes there was a lot going on. Davin and Ben sat down to talk through the process and interesting points, and their debrief is worth the watch.

Of course the time lapse is beautiful and fun to watch, but why did the connecting rods come out with babbitt bearings and go back in with insert bearings? Ben clicks through, frame by frame, while Davin explains a few of these finer points—like those babbitt bearings, which he chose to swap for insert bearings due to ease of assembly and machining.

Another step in the process that Davin addresses—one that’s often marked in the Redline video comments—is his use of Glyptal, the heavy red coating brushed onto select parts of the engine block during assembly.

“I use it to seal up the metal, preventing any rust from forming during long periods of storage where the engine oil completely drains back to the pan,” said Davin. “It also helps the oil flow back to the pan a bit quicker, which can help these older engines shed heat better.”

Did you catch the odd oil-line routing in the time lapse? Probably not, but it was one of the things that stuck out to Davin during disassembly. He talks about that hard line and so much more, making this rundown well worth a watch if you are curious about the process or some of the intricate bits of the Stovebolt series engines.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Are you still coming down from that Christmas Day high of package unwrapping? Want to see some unboxing that involves automotive treasure rather than plastic toys? Maybe your 2019 New Year’s Resolution was to get caught up on your favorite YouTube shows—an honorable endeavor, indeed. If any of those apply, Barn Find Hunter is running 70 episodes back-to-back on New Year’s Eve starting at 2:25 AM EST on December 31, just in time to get all of those episodes in before the New Year.

Of course, if you’re asleep when the stream starts and you miss one of your favorite episodes, like Episode 3 and the trip to Turner’s Auto Wrecking in Fresno, California, or the stash of big-block first-gen Camaros Tom Cotter uncovered in Arizona in Episode 11, you can watch them any time, of course. But why not tune in for a bit and be a part of the live conversation?

Happy New Year and happy barn find hunting from everyone at Hagerty!

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

While we can’t quite pinpoint when a building full of cars becomes a collection, the selection toured by Tom Cotter in the latest Barn Find Hunter episode tours a collection that is wildly eclectic—a place where Tom gets to geek out over Volkswagen Rabbit pickups in the same building as a Daimler SP250. It’s also a building full of cars that you can easily purchase, as the tour is led by a dealer who purchased the entire group and plans to list them all for sale.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. Window shopping is often just as much fun as real shopping, especially when it comes to cars. This grouping of cars is a lifetime collection from one gentleman who unfortunately has fallen ill, and the family needed to liquidate the cars to sell the property. That’s where Mike stepped in and came to the rescue with three trailers in tow. Before he started loading up the cars, however, Tom got a tour and took us along for the ride.

To call the collection “eclectic” would be a bit of an understatement. From Porsche 356 Speedsters to diesel Volkswagen pickups, the first building ran the gamut of post-war automotive cars of interest. Mike purchased 44 total after walking through and investigating a few of them, but Tom is digging into more than Mike did.

The storage has taken its toll on some, with mildew visible on door panels and steering wheels. However, a keen eye and willingness to do a little work makes these cars stand out as great potential projects. With a few still holding their secrets, even with Tom’s deep well of car knowledge on tap, it will be interesting to watch these go up for sale and head to new homes.

If you are interested in one of the cars, you can contact the dealership directly at AsheboroFord.net. Better yet, go out yourself and find a classic hiding in a barn. This Barn Find Hunter episode proves they’re out there and worth looking for.

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Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

In the hunt for classic metal, the Barn Find Hunter feels that no distance is too far to travel. This might explain why he happily hops in a pickup and motors eight hours to visit a pair of brothers who inherited a shop—and a big helping of interesting cars.

Right from the start, Andrew and Dennis humor Tom and his seemingly insatiable love for the oddball cars. That is to say, they help him uncover what is likely the weirdest car in the group, then they tease him. Tom spots the unusual vehicle on his first walk by, and he immediately impresses the brothers by guessing exactly what small bits are poking out from under the canvas. Dennis and Andrew help Tom clear away a stack of metal from atop the Crosley chassis, which is fitted with a custom body. The Jeep grille is merged to a Ford hood, which covers a V-8 60 flathead from an early Ford.

The remaining cars on the property are a mix of vintage and full-on old vehicles. A restored Ford Model T give Tom flashbacks to his cross-country trip in a similar car before one of the more impressive cars is revealed. A 1962 Thunderbird seems to be languishing under a carport, but upon closer inspection it appears to be quite a catch. The interior is quite nice, and the paint is claimed to be original; it would be a great cruiser.

A Buick Grand National sits in an open barn, which honestly seems like a sad spot for one of Buick’s greatest gifts to the gearhead community. It starts and runs on cue, however, and has rolled almost 30,000 miles in the last handful of years, which is better than it sitting in the open shed collecting dust. Andrew mentions he’d take $20,000 for it, which is right in line with its average #4 condition value.

All of these cars were amassed by a single man over the course of a lifetime, and even the truck that started it all remains on the property: a Model T pickup that is languishing in a shed. Tom points out on a similar truck with a composite body construction that’s composed of wood beneath its metal exterior. Pre-war classics like this are full of interesting bits of trivia.

Perhaps it’s time to seek out that old car in your neighborhood, talk to the owner, and see what you can learn—it might just the tip of the iceberg.

Enjoy Season 4 stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

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