Dutch '62 Skylark

At first this was going to be "repair brakes and get engine running" but it slowly turned into a full restauration. Have been working on this since june 2020 but only now decided to make a bit of a diary of the progress, both for myself and for anyone who is interested in reading!

some pics of the progress:

Car being delivered on the trailer.



first we tried to get it running: made sure it wasn't locked, took out the sparkplugs and soaked the pistons in some atf for a couple of days, primed the oil pump (it still made pressure!!) and actually got it to run! might upload a video later. It sounded terrible. probably ran on only 5 cylinders, but it ran!

we only did a compression test after trying to get it to run, turned out there were only 2 cilinders with acceptable compression ratios. So engine had to come out to see what the damage was.

Look under the bonnet right before the engine was taken out (look at that cute 2 barrel!)


engine out. You can really see the yellow tint in the headlights: this is because the car was originally delivered in france, where back in the day, yellow headlights were obligatory! Will probably keep the headlights like this, I really like the look.


Doesn't look to bad in terms of deposits


but...

multiple push rods looked like this.


As I don't have the expertise to do a proper engine rebuild, it got sent off to a specialist. Luckily there's enough "rover v8" guys here in the Netherlands.

Next up: let's see what's wrong with the brakes.

If I remember correctly, this is one of the rear brake cilinders: cracked on the left hand side. Luckily I was abled to order replacement parts on rockauto.com.

The front was a different story... not sure if this is different now, but I didn't seem to be able to find new brake cylinders for the front anywhere!  

This is the first time where I found this forum: turns out a disc brake conversion set exists for these cars! because I couldn't find a proper replacement cylinder for the front, I decided to just upgrade the front brakes to discs with the scarebird brake disc kit.


Removing the hubs from the brake drum was quite the ordeal, but I succeeded. On the right hand side one of the hubs after it had recieved some tlc from a rotating wire brush. it does have to match the new brake disc, which was already lying there waiting to be put on...


test fitting the bracket.

The hubs have been machined down and new studs installed. This is where progress on this halted a bit: as my wheels are only 13 inch, they do not fit around the brake discs. So the parts have been put on a shelf untill I have found the right wheels.  I'm not the greatest in terms of planning! but it's all a learning process which I am enjoying very much. My previous experience with car restoration is only small bits and pieces: I've daily driven a W115 mercedes from 1971 for 2 years, and now since 2 years, my daily driver is a volvo 142 from 1973. All work needed was just to keep them driving, so it was always one job at a time.

Luckily there's enough other stuff to do: restoring the engine bay for example.

Engine bay before: (I had already repainted the black parts with some rust inhibiting paint at this point)


After primer has been put on:


And after:

Some work in progress from the engine rebuild:



And after it had been delivered!

FRONT SHOCK ABSORBERS

As I found out on this forum, a known problem: not a lot of other cars used the same shocks as this car model/year. So the only replacement parts available are specifically made for this car by a specific amount of small companies. I decided that the price they asked was a bit too high. 150 per shock if I remember correctly?

So after looking at a lot of build sheets, and comparing sizes, I found out that 1972 caprice shock absorbers have roughly the same size and throw. A 72 caprice might be a bit heavier than these cars, but seeing as all US cars from this era are boats anyways I figured a bit stiffer shock will not matter. The bottom mount is almost the same, and the only difference is the top mount. this should be fixable: I installed a plate with a hole in the middle on the top of the front shock  mount, and installed the shocks this way.



Just found out I don't have any other pictures of the actual mounted shock, they will come soon!

Have fun rebuilding your Skylark! Brings back resent memories for me.lol

hello, nice work, greetings from Switzerland