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Now that the car is safely ensconced in my shop I'm dying to know if I bought a lemon or a Lemans. The first order of business is to empty out the car and clean out the debris. After that, remove the front clip to access the engine for disassembly.
I grabbed a light and crawled under. Having had a previous rusty Lemans, I knew exactly where to look and what I was looking at. I found an absolutely beautiful frame, aside from a bent rear crossmember. And the floorboards were beautiful. Aside from a coat of dust, it looked like factory. The front and rear suspension looked like it could just be left as is, with the exception of the sway bar links. This is actually when I discovered it had factory discs. But no power booster, a somewhat unusual combination.
The underside of the engine and transmission were covered with black secretions and the power steering box had a bolt stuck in its return line port. Must have been a bear to steer. The exhaust had been cut away and the parking brake cables were missing. But as far as I could tell, I would have very little work to do under here.
Back up top. The car had a variety of loose parts inside, including two alternators, three starters, two OEM air cleaners, the guts for the passenger door, some chrome trim pieces, and miscellaneous other parts.
The headliner is gone so its insulation pad was disintegrating, having joined all sorts of other rubble on the floor. The debris filled a five gallon pail, but what I found underneath it gladdened my heart:
The floor is very nearly pristine, including its original body color paint. This is nothing short of amazing.
Except for the passenger toe pan rust, which was a known issue before purchase:
Having replaced entire panels of rusted metal in the previous Lemans, this repair will be child's play.
The rear window gutter, also a known issue before purchase, may present some challenges:
I will be replacing the deck panel, but I think the package tray is fixable, despite a prior owner's desire for larger speakers.
Front Clip Disassembly
Now it's time to find out if I have an engine or a boat anchor. This means disassembling the front clip first:
It's not necessary to disassemble this to access the engine, but it makes it easier when you're wrenching on head bolts. Plus, it all had to come off anyway since these parts were either being replaced or repaired.
Pulling it apart was surprisingly easy. The passenger side was held together with two bolts and some baling wire (really!), and the driver's side came apart easily with the exception of the fender bolt that goes into the firewall. That twisted off, but it's in a good spot to be able to drill it out. Even the bumper and the core support came off easily, which never happens.
The core support was a rusted-out disaster:
This was actually causing the front of the car to collapse. You can see a piece of added sheetmetal that someone used to bolster the missing metal.
Which means I'm very glad that some previous owner sourced a pretty nice replacement:
Though it is much better, it does have that dent on the close out panel, bottom right. I think it will hammer out pretty well. Or, I might swap the better panel from the bad core support. Haven't decided.
The inner fenders were pretty good, with only a little rust out on the forward edge of the driver's side where the battery mounts above it:
The driver fender is probably usable, but a previous owner had obtained a better replacement for it as well. Not so fortunate for the passenger side. I don't have a replacement for this side. The reader might remember from the previous episode that it was pretty bad:
But after taking it off I turned it upside down and stepped on the dent:
I'm now thinking I might be able to actually fix it. My big old foot worked surprisingly well, and may have saved me $600.00.
I was surprised to discover that the passenger door had a reproduction skin on it:
It's a little hard to see, but the lip was hammered right over the remains of the original lip, and not even welded. Hmmm. I will gently roll back the foldover and properly prep the lip before reinstalling.
The Engine
Now it's time to attack the engine. I left the engine in the chassis because it's easier to disassemble this way. But as I worked my optimism that the engine might be rebuildable faded.
First I took out the spark plugs. Some were relatively clean, but at least three had some sort of deposit that completely closed the gaps. This is the first bad omen. In addition, the rear plug on the passenger side (#8) came out with a spurt of clear water. Second bad omen. This likely means the engine was exposed to the weather, and the water got pressurized by the piston coming up on the compression stroke. If this happened while running it could mean significant damage from hydro-locking. But if it happened when someone tried to crank it over, it's possible the rod didn't get bent.
The distributor was stuck in its hole. Third bad omen. Happily, Pontiac did not mount it to the intake like Chevy did. So I took off the intake, then the power steering pump. The alternator was already off.
When I took off the rocker covers I found this:
Oh, no. More than a bad omen, we have crossed over into bad news. This engine is not rebuildable. But optimism took over for a brief moment. Maybe the block is good?
I drained the oil and got approximately 3 gallons of greenish water, followed by several quarts of chocolate milkshake. More bad news.
After pulling the heads, this is what assaulted my eyes:
This is undoubtedly the worst engine I have ever seen. Period. Besides the rust and goop, if you look closely you can see that the cylinder walls in 2 and 4 are busted out. On the other bank cylinder 3 is the same.
I can't imagine what would have caused this level of devastation. It goes so far beyond the typical engine failure. And how did so much water get into the crankcase, let alone in all the cylinders? The green tint suggests coolant. Did a prior owner leave the motor unprotected from the elements (there was no air cleaner on the carb) and the water froze? Or, was the motor so abused that it failed in multiple areas? Did the owner try to keep running it by putting more and more coolant in it, only to have it end up in the crankcase?
So I went ahead and pulled the engine and transmission (no fluid in the transmission) and dropped it out in the driveway. After a brief period of mourning I girded up my loins and considered my options. Now I have to decide if I want to go LS, or put something Pontiac in it, like maybe a 389.
In the meantime, it's time to tackle the rust.
So here's the progress as of October 10, 2024:
Up next: Episode three, rust repair.
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