Chapter 4: Bad Rings, Good Rings
20 July 1999: Finally got the heater rebuild kit from Chevy Duty. Those guys are great. Spent a few hours scraping rust off the thing. As usual, there are a lot of oddities about refitting parts: the valve doesn't fit right, the knobs don't center absolutely right, and they used Helvetica Medium on the mylar heater decal-- a font that wasn't invented until 1965. It's bugged me for awhile-- I really hate it when I'm watching a period film and that damned font shows up in a sign or something. It's a sign of laziness on the part of the art director involved. Like in Titanic, when the good ship Carpathia (as opposed to the bad ship Californian-- see the 1959 version) shows up to rescue whats-her-name, on the prow, bigger than life-- CARPATHIA in Helvetica Medium. I cringe when I see Helvetica now.
Well, since I'm planning to do a half-assed resto, I shouldn't complain.
24 July 1999: Went to a birthday party for my cousin Chris up in Santa Rosa. He and his wife Vickie (short for Vickie) and the kids have a cool place in Wickiup with a commanding view of the whole valley. Anyhoo, I met Vickie's dad Leo, who restores classic straight-axle Corvettes. He was a pioneer dragracer back in the days and actually heard of the Vagabonds-- my dad's car club in Stockton in the 1950s. You'll be hearing more about Leo, I guarantee it!
25 July 1999: Came to Santa Cruz for a number of reasons-- To check up on the repair work, buy a pound of coffee, and get my hair cut by my sister Karen, owner of half the truck (the right half).
Karen's relationship with the truck's history is even more detailed than mine. Here's the story of her first look at the Panel Van, in her own words:
The first time I ever saw the Beast (as my brother would call it) I was a freshman at Soquel High School [in 1983]. I guess I was an awkward 14 year old and as insecure as any pubescent teen. I wasn't feeling well that day and the school nurse had called Dad to pick me up. She said I could go down to the turn-around at the quad and wait for him. For those of you who aren't Soquel alums the quad is where all the surfers, jocks, cheerleaders, Madonna wannabees (and anyone else who is in any way cool to a 14 year old) hang out. I was sitting at the circle trying to be as mod as possible without seeming like a dork in front of the most important people on campus when I heard it.... The Beast. It was the biggest , loudest, rustiest, most Beverly Hillbilly thing I had ever seen. I was getting ready to laugh when it came fully in view and then I saw that none other than my old Pop behind the wheel. I could feel my face instantaneously go flush. Many of the Soquel elite had noticed the Beast as well. I couldn't run away and hide, I had to get in. I reached up and sort of struggled with the door handle when Dad reached over and let me in. I stepped up on the running board and climbed up. I wondered if by sheer will you actually could be invisible. I sunk down as far as I could in the seat but they nothing could help my pitiful embarrassed self. My Dad looked as proud as he could be and said "What do you think?" (About the truck) and I remember saying, as kindly as I could at such a desperate time, "I don't feel so well, Dad."
I'm 31 years old now and find that my big brother and I rarely fight over stuff except who's turn it is to drive The Beast. I think I drive it better, but he thinks he does...
She and I, along with Garryowen, visited Lazlo, to see how things were going and to drop off more documentation and the rebuilt steering gear. When we came in, he was watching cartoons with the sound off and looked dejected. He had news.
The first thing I wanted him to do when he started working on the Beast was to test the engine's compression. and so he did.
"#3 cylinder has bad compression," he said. "The other ones look fine, test perfect, but #3 seems to have bad rings. I'm going to have to do a partial rebuild."
The rings are... well, ring-like things, which are tightly bound to the pistons of internal combustion engines. There are usually three per piston: two skinny ones at the top which insure a good seal against combustion gases and a wide bottom one which keeps the oil from the crankcase out of the combustion chamber. They are at the heart of the engine, and the relative health and good operation of an engine depends on the high compression produced by the rings. Bad rings equals low compression equals power loss equals excessive oil consumption equals worn-out motor.
Now, all is not lost: There's only one bad cylinder. What probably happened is the last rebuild was not done right, and the rings were not put in correctly on #3. It sometimes happens. Fortunately, it's a Stovebolt 6: it's designed to be really servicable. All Lazlo has to do is open the crankcase, unbolt #3 piston from the crank, and yank it out. He doesn't even have to remove the engine from the truck! And because he has to crack open the head to do it, the motor gets new intake, exhaust, head, and crankcase gaskets. So it'll take a little longer, but the motor will be better for it overall. Armed with this knowlege, we left.
27 July 1999: Put in a bid on ebay for a pair of California1960s truck plates. The California DMV recently changed thier rules and you can now register obsolete plates-- as long as you have a pair. The plates on the truck are the yellow-on-blue ones issued from the early 70s to the early 80s. The ones I bid for are yellow-on-black ones with commercial numbering, issued from the late 1950s to the the early 1970s, just like the ones that came with the Beast when it was discovered. Of course, ideally I'd like to find a pair of commercial plates from 1956, which had black letters on orange-gold and had the year stamped in the corner. I'll take what I can get, however...
28 July 1999 Late news: a fellow out there in the ether of the Internet is offering to sell me 1956 California commercial plates. He says he's out of stock on the mint-condition ones. Of course, this is perfectly acceptable, preferable even, and exactly what the Old Man would have wanted. It's also becoming a recurring theme on the epic adventure that is the Beast Rebuild Project.
