New daily? 1984 Corvette

I intend to port match the intake manifold while it's off. Might as well.

 

Get a tube of permatex teflon thread sealer for the intake bolts.

 

I’ve been hankering for a C4 for years now, but I will hold out for a manual, unless an auto car falls in my lap. Really cool and fun project!

 

Best I could do with the tools I had. I could have done a little more here and there but porting was the primary objective here and is where I'll get most of my gains and I don't want the engine sitting open for too long since the car is outdoors. I think it looks ok for a first time job.

Mostly back in, but out of daylight thanks to DST causing it to be pitch black at 5 pm. WTF is that ****? Who wants that??? We'll try to fire it up tomorrow.

 

I’m enjoying this thread a lot. My uncle ordered a red 84 new back in the day. It was a cool car, and I thought it was really fast, still is in my head. The dash was ahead of its time.

 

Couldn't stand it being half done out there so went ahead and got it 90%... stabbed in the dist and got everything hooked back up... fuel lines, hoses, electrical... just need to run plug wires and turn the key tomorrow... figure I'd better let the rtv set (pic not exactly final lol)

 

Well it still runs hahaha. The black smoke was the first big blip after starting. Seems to be not doing that anymore. Most importantly, no big cloud of blue smoke chasing me around.

I'd like to get it out and really play with it but I have no tails at the moment and the transmission is still toast.

 

If you drive it like the trans is junk, it will last longer!
Exploring the limits will tend to find stuff that can't handle the limits!

 

I normally find the limits pretty quickly.

 

Neat car! One of my funnest daily drivers was a 91 6 speed car. The only thing about those is how hard they are to get in and out of. But, you are young, so should be fine for quite a while.

 

The Purple People Eater gave up one of its headlight motors and we put a new fuel sender in. Now I have headlights and a fuel gauge!!




Irrelevant beauty shots because I love looking at this car



So cool to have everything working on the cheesy Atari dash.

The transmission is semi working again. I don't really understand the failure mode. It's like when it wants second gear it misses and hits neutral instead... about 70% of the time. Sometimes it catches and works fine until it has to shift again. I don't know much about automatics, but it seems like a servo or valve body problem. I guess either way it's coming apart.

 

Glad to see you making progress on your new car. I want to drive it when you get it all working like it should. Missed you and Saul coming out this weekend but I had a lot of things I needed to get done that I'd been putting off. I don't know much about Vettes but you seem to be working your way through the majority of arising issues. Just don't forget about Sids car and your T!

 

We are all currently on standard time not DST. Who wants what???

 

Let me be mad about stuff

 

Glad to see the progress and understand wanting to work on this over the other projects for a time. You get a lot quicker gratification on a project like this. Oh, and even though you said you like the spoiler, I think it looks better without it from your last pics.

 

It really is nice to not have to tear a car all the way down to the carc*** for once hahaha. It looks great with or without the wing but personally I gotta have it.

 

So get this... drove the car to work and home today (about 60 miles). Absolutely no second gear the whole way over there but it started working intermittently in the middle of the day and was almost 100% on the way home after me manually downshifting it a few times. Still no 4th. Feels like it almost has to be the servo gone bad. If it was anything else that transmission would surely be 100% fried by now.

 

The guys I could ask about a 84 auto trans I haven't seen in decades! I will say you probably shouldn't change the fluid. IF you do drop the pan, save and reuse it. It could be a filter or servo, but I don't have the experience to help on this. There are forums and other sites that walk you thru it, which is better than the old ways.
EXAMPLE:
https://petrisenterprises.com/blogs...1984-1988-corvette-4-3-overdrive-transmission

 

You ain't right! How can ANYONE unsee THAT ****?

 

Let's change a servo.

 

Holy **** I was not expecting it to be this bad. The piston is somehow wedged sideways in the bore. We barely got the cap off because the housing had overrun its o ring and was bound up against the inside of the cap. Can't get the piston to move. No ****ing wonder it wasn't shifting very well...

 

Rather than try to unjam the current mess, can you source a good used valve body?
Yes, a 2025 - 1984 = 41 year old part is not going to be easy to track down, but once something like that happens, it is to my mind suspect and can jam up again. The bore and piston have lost the tight tolerance that kept this from happening.

 

The servo isn't part of the valve body.

I was able to get the old one out and yeah I see why it failed... the builder used a hodge podge of used **** out of a parts drawer, some of the parts are late 70s date codes and they are all banged up and galled in some spots. I ordered a new complete servo ***embly which should be here tonight. Also my su****ion about the rolled o ring was correct.



The bore looks OK so I'm gonna roll the dice on installing the new $40 servo ***embly and see what happens.

While we were messing with that, the new tail lights showed up so we got those wired in...

 

Good then!

 

FIXED.

So here's the whole story. I had already bought a "Corvette servo" from a local transmission shop thinking this was the problem (and it was). I was not anticipating the amount of damage to the rest of the ***embly, however, and what I bought from the shop ended up only being the 2nd gear piston and separator, and didn't come with O-rings for all the rest of the parts, which were all ****ed, so yesterday morning I ordered a complete servo ***embly off Amazon and it was delivered same day (the future is lame but useful sometimes). We slathered that ****er up in ***embly lube and got to it.

We spent two hours last night trying to push the cap in enough to install the snap ring with the new servo ***embly. Everything on the internet says it's hard as hell even with great access and, well, access isn't great here, so we didn't think anything was really amiss for the first while, after all it seemed like we could get it if we just had a little more push on the cap.

We gave up last night and today I pulled the new ***embly back out and compared it with the old one. The ****in pin in the middle is too long on the brand new ***embly. And the more I looked at it the more I realized it was a piece of **** anyway. The old one was vastly better made.

So I took it apart to rebuild the new servo ***embly on the old pin. While I was doing that I realized most everything else in the new ***embly was a piece of **** too, so I robbed a couple bits off of it, the new springs and all the O-rings, put it together on the old pin with the new 2nd piston and separator from the transmission shop and popped it in. And holy hell if it didn't just DROP IN. I put that snap ring in with my fingers. MY FINGERS!!!

Took the car out and I can once again exceed 130 mph. Second gear is definitely hurt, it will still slip if I firewall the throttle while in 2nd, but it shifts in and out smoothly and is mostly functional. It doesn't spend a lot of time in second anyway, so I think I can baby this transmission along for a while. In the meantime I'll be looking for a replacement.

 

You know, I thought that picture was funny, but it gets even stranger.
More to the story.
https://www.corvsport.com/are-corvette-owners-old/

 

It was seriously not fun diagnosing and fixing the vacuum controlled blend door HVAC system - patching vacuum lines inside the dash, by feel, with one hand, by reaching through the single DIN radio hole... but that works now, so I've got heat and defrost. Also fixed the cigarette lighter while I was in there so I can charge my phone or whatever people do with those.

Unfortunately I broke the microscopic plastic web that held the shifter position indicator in place so now waiting on superglue to set and cannot put the interior back together until it does. Hopefully it holds, very annoying...

 

With the heater controls working just in time for winter the next item on the agenda was windshield wipers to clear ice melt. This involved robbing the wiper arms off the parts car, one of which I had to break & then repair because of how stuck it was, then tinkering with the transmission adjustment to get the arms to both stop hitting each other & also park when the wipers are turned off. Also had fun at the parts store trying about 7 different types of blade until we found one that actually tucked under the hood. Got that done literally in the nick of time because the first rain since I've had the car struck right after. Shocked that it doesn't leak in the rain even at 80 mph.



Surprised how well the car drives in rain, even on 11 year old kumhos. Which reminds me I'd better look for some tires!

 

Maybe you can find some WWWs for it!