My GY8 '71 Road Runner

[ct71rr]

Last Sunday, the wife and I took a road-trip to PA to pickup a heater box and a few other parts from QuickBpBp (Brett). Thank you. Brett! I took it apart and, of course, it was full of rodent nests. Did I mention I HATE rodents!! I removed all the nests, acorns and feces with my shop vac and then gave it a good wash. As with almost all 50+ year old heater boxes, some repairs were necessary. The area beneath the blower motor was pushed in slightly and the two round protrusions were chewed up a bit by said rodents. Also, one of the raised areas surrounding one of the mounting bolts was damaged/missing. The area between where the heater core pipes poke through was also broken out. Just about every heater box for sale I’ve seen has this area missing, as well. A little epoxy, pieces from my original trashed heater box and some patience, I was able to get the box looking a bit better, I think.

Road-trip! (It only took a little over 5 hours each way)

New heater box:

And few other parts:

Rodents!!!!

This area was bent in and the cylinder sticking out was chewed a bit:

The base to the long mounting screws was broken off and a large crack. You can see the second cylinder sticking out with rodent damage in the foreground:

Heater core pipe mount. This area is almost always broken. I made a template and cut out a piece from my original heater box to patch it:

This corner was bent down and cracked:

More to follow:

 

[ct71rr]

I used my heat gun and bent the damaged areas back up. I then cutoff the base to the mounting bolt from my original and epoxied it to the new box. I also filled in the crack and repaired both cylinders with epoxy.

Cylinder one fixed, area bent back into position:

Mounting bolt base and crack fixed:

Cylinder two fixed:

Heater core pipe mount fixed:

I also cleaned up the blower motor:

Thanks for looking!

 

[HawkRod]

Nicely done on the heater box.

I have found evidence of rodents in almost every one of the old cars I have ever messed with. It seems old cars have some sort of hidden sign that draws these little buggers into the heater core. They are destructive little bastards!

 

[ct71rr]

Nicely done on the heater box.

I have found evidence of rodents in almost every one of the old cars I have ever messed with. It seems old cars have some sort of hidden sign that draws these little buggers into the heater core. They are destructive little bastards!

Thank you!
It never ceases to amaze me where those little bastards can get into.

 

[chargervert]

Ise hates mieecees to pieecees!

 

[QuickBpBp]

Last Sunday, the wife and I took a road-trip to PA to pickup a heater box and a few other parts from QuickBpBp (Brett). Thank you. Brett! I took it apart and, of course, it was full of rodent nests. Did I mention I HATE rodents!! I removed all the nests, acorns and feces with my shop vac and then gave it a good wash. As with almost all 50+ year old heater boxes, some repairs were necessary. The area beneath the blower motor was pushed in slightly and the two round protrusions were chewed up a bit by said rodents. Also, one of the raised areas surrounding one of the mounting bolts was damaged/missing. The area between where the heater core pipes poke through was also broken out. Just about every heater box for sale I’ve seen has this area missing, as well. A little epoxy, pieces from my original trashed heater box and some patience, I was able to get the box looking a bit better, I think.

Road-trip! (It only took a little over 5 hours each way)
View attachment 2012037

New heater box:
View attachment 2012038

View attachment 2012039

And few other parts:
View attachment 2012041

Rodents!!!!
View attachment 2012040

View attachment 2012042

This area was bent in and the cylinder sticking out was chewed a bit:
View attachment 2012048

The base to the long mounting screws was broken off and a large crack. You can see the second cylinder sticking out with rodent damage in the foreground:
View attachment 2012049

Heater core pipe mount. This area is almost always broken. I made a template and cut out a piece from my original heater box to patch it:
View attachment 2012046

This corner was bent down and cracked:
View attachment 2012045

More to follow:

Holy crap sorry Chad I had no idea what was in it other than it was in my storage barn since 1991 been sitting for over 35 years.... That was a complete working assembly when removed decades ago. I hate rodents just as much as you. It came out of this car at least it was cheap… I changed the color though..

 

[ct71rr]

No worries! It is still way better than the one that came with my car.

Nice car!

 

[cosgig]

You think that mice do damage, I just pulled this car out of a 30 year slumber last wednesday, it was almost completely covered in raccoon feces. I’m still going through it, emptying out every book and cranny, raccoon feces in every orifice. See all that brown on the truck? Yep, about 3” deep with raccoon shot. This is just before I took it through the car wash!

 

[ct71rr]

Holy crap!!! (literally!!)

Looks like a nice project you got there.

 

[ct71rr]

I had some time today to do a bit more work on the heater box. I soaked several of the flap doors in my DIY evaporust solution and blasted a few of the other pieces. I also repaired a section of the box where the mounting locations were broken off. I ended up cutting these off my original box and epoxying them onto this box. I also cleaned up the rubber tubing in my sonic cleaner using oxyclean. I cleaned up all the hardware and blued them. I also plugged some holes from where an MDS box was mounted. Hopefully with the temps warming up, I’ll be able to spray everything and get this box back together next week.

Before DIY “Evaporust”:

After (I had to blast some of the stubborn areas that had adhesive on them):

Just using DIY Evaporust”:

Hoses before:

After (oxyclean)”

The oxyclean in the sonic cleaner worked better than I thought it was going to. More to follow.

 

[ct71rr]

This is the area of the box I had to fix with pieces from my original:

Fixed:

Holes plugged:

Vacuum pods before:

After:

Hardware:

I also straightened out the fins on the AC dryer:

And cleaned these with oxyclean:

Thanks for looking!

 

[HawkRod]

Nice work!

 

[71Beeper]

Way more work to restore an A/C box than a non-A/C box.
Good job Chad!

 

[chargervert]

I checked yesterday, I have an AC heater box if you need pieces to finish it up.

 

[ct71rr]

Way more work to restore an A/C box than a non-A/C box.
Good job Chad!

Thank you!

 

[ct71rr]

I checked yesterday, I have an AC heater box if you need pieces to finish it up.

Thank you, I’ll reach out if I do!