DeLorean CV Boot replacement

While I was under the car repairing the frame rust last month, I noticed that the CV boot on the driver side was not even attached at the lip. I also discovered that the passenger side CV boot was nearly in two pieces. That's bound to happen after 30+ years.

So I ordered a CV boot kit from John Hervey at Special T Auto. It was back ordered and took a few weeks to get, but it came with everything I needed to rebuild the CV joints. This was a relatively easy job, but just messy. Luckily I have a stash of latex gloves to help keep my hands a bit cleaner, and I used plenty for this job. There is a great write up on www.dmctalk.org on how to rebuild the joint. Since mine has been trouble free and hasn't made any noise, I decided to not completely disassemble the joint itself, but to just wipe out as much of the old grease from the joint before repacking it.

Here is the drive axle with one of the joints removed:


It really was as easy as the write up shows. Once the drive axles were removed from the car, and I did them one at a time so I didn't mix them up, I put them in my vice for ease of working on them and went to town. I simply removed the old boot clamps that were obviously original to the DeLorean. I then disassembled the joint. The hardest part was the old snap rings. The new kit even came with replacement snap rings, which I didn't realize until I had completed the first joint. The old one works just fine, however.

Here is the half-torn CV boot from the passenger side:


I used dozens of paper towels wiping out the old grease before putting on the new boot. I repacked the grease on both sides and worked it in before sealing everything up. The kit came with heavy duty zip ties that allowed me to tighten them really well to ensure no leaking. Here is one of the joints all put back together:


Here is a completed drive axle with two new boots:


The hardest part of the job is taking the drive axles out of the car, and then back in. The actual job of rebuilding the joints is easy if you follow the instructions. After approximately 100 miles of driving, the boots look perfect and show no leaks anywhere.

Back on the Road

After taking a couple of months during the winter to tackle some rust repairs and clutch hydraulic repairs, I was able to button everything back together on President's Day and get the car on the road again. I realized that I have not taken very many pictures of my car since I bought it last year, so I snapped a few pics for the heck of it after the successful road test:




 

I have significantly reduced my mental to-do list. Here are a few items that I will have to tackle soon:

Replace CV axle boots on drive axles (passenger side outer boot is torn)
Replace Thermo Time Switch to fix cold start issue
Replace non-functioning power antenna
Find and replace suitable spare tire (doesn't hold air)

Some possible to-do items:
Replace 30 year old transmission gear oil
Replace cracked dashboard
Replace motor mounts
Get an alignment
Fix interior lights to come on when door is opened

I'm sure there's more, but that's enough for now.

DeLorean Clutch Issues Resolved

As seen in an earlier post, when attempting to remove the clutch pipe from the slave cylinder, the clutch pipe snapped off right by the bolt connection on the end. I pulled the SS clutch line and hooked it directly to the slave cylinder, but the line was too close to the exhaust.

I bought a replacement clutch pipe from DMC Houston and installed it. When I went to bleed the system, the clutch pipe started leaking badly at the connection with the SS clutch line. I must not have tightened it enough. It now works flawlessly. Here is a picture of the new clutch pipe attached to the slave cylinder:

Much more space between the clutch pipe and the exhaust now compared to when the SS clutch line was hooked directly to the slave.


Here is a picture of the old clutch master and slave cylinders once they were removed:
 
The DeLorean clutch master was a Girling and the slave cylinder says Bendix. The slave still worked great, but I decided to replace both since they were originals. I don't want to repeat this job for as long as possible.

Below is a picture of the new clutch master installed. This was taken after it had been there for a few months:

DeLorean Rust repair complete

This turned out to be a much bigger job than I originally anticipated. Once I started searching, I found patches of rust in various spots on the frame from the very front of the frame to the very back. The most obvious places were on the gas tank closing plate and the front frame extension. In earlier posts, I showed the before and in-process images of the gas tank closing plate.

After taking a wire wheel to get the epoxy off the rusted areas, I attacked it with a flap wheel grinder to get it even cleaner. I then wiped off all the dust and then applied two coats of POR-15. The gray color matches fairly well with the original frame color, so in many places I didn't even bother to top coat it wih Krylon Smoke Gray. It only fades in UV light, so since most of the frame never sees the sun it should be fine.

Here is what the bottom of the plate looked like after my repair job:
 
 The top part of the plate was where it was rusting the worst. This is what it looks like now:
 
A closer look reveals the pitting that was occurring on the top side that is now painted over:
 
I also bought new bolts and washers as the old ones were old and rusty. Here is the plate almost completely bolted on again:
 
Here is more of the frame in the front all repaired and looking sharp:
 
Here is the rear part of the frame. The rust wasn't bad here at all, except around the tow hooks:

DeLorean rust repair begins

When I first bought the DeLorean and had my first peak at the underside of the car, I could see that there were places where the epoxy on the frame was peeling off, revealing the bare frame underneath. I knew that I would need to address this quickly. I started by removing the fuel tank closing plate from beneath the car. The bottom of the plate didn't look that bad, but when I saw the other side, this is what I found:

Liquid had pooled in this area sometime in the 30 year life of the car and much of the epoxy was bubbling and flaking off. I could peel a lot of it off just with my fingers. The frame itself looks to be in good condition and hopefully won't require a lot of work to touch up the problem areas.

I whipped out my trusty 6" grinder with a wire wheel and went to town on the plate. It was slow work. I discovered a lot of pitting on the top side of the plate, but the plate didn't rust through in any places. It is definitely salvageable. This is what the plate now looks like, with some close ups of the pitting:


 
I have a can of POR-15 that I will be painting on all areas that I am repairing. I will then add a layer of the appropriate paint to match the rest of the frame. Good progress made for the first day.

DeLorean Clutch Problems

On the last drive of the season, I noticed that the clutch pedal was very very soft, like it wasn't doing anything until at the very end of the pedal depression. It was also hard to get it into first gear. The next day, I couldn't get it into any gear. I thought the clutch was toast.

I checked the clutch fluid reservoir and discovered that it was bone dry. I looked inside at the clutch pedal and discovered that the clutch master cylinder had been leaking brake fluid into the car:
 
I was also told that if I replace the clutch master, I should also replace the slave cylinder because it is sure to fail soon after. I bought new parts from DMCH and attempted to complete the job. The clutch master cylinder was pretty straightforward with little to no surprises. I also purchased a new hose that goes from the reservoir to the master cylinder since it looked like it was cracking. The previous owner also had clamps on the ends, probably to extend the hose's life once the cracking began.

The previous owner also had installed a SS braided clutch line, so I didn't need to worry about upgrading the line. The slave cylinder replacement has got to be one of the most annoying repairs on a DeLorean. You can either attempt to do it from above the engine, or below, or a combination of the two. I decided that certain things were easier to do from above the engine, and most of it was easier to do below.

I removed the engine cover for easier access from above, and jacked up the car on jack stands to allow me to work from underneath. The metal clutch pipe that the SS braided line connects to runs along the transmission and connects to the slave cylinder. While attempting to remove the clutch pipe nut from the slave, the clutch pipe snapped in half. The nut had fused to the pipe, twisting the whole pipe instead of just the nut.

To add insult to injury, one of the slave cylinder bolts snapped while trying to loosen it as well. At this point I thought I was screwed and that I would have to remove the transmission. Luckily the slave cylinder bolts only keep the slave in place, but don't have any lateral forces. The new one should be fine with just one bolt and a large washer holding it in place.

As far as the metal clutch pipe was concerned, I was told on www.dmctalk.org that the SS braided line has enough slack in it to connect directly to the slave, bypassing the metal clutch pipe entirely. So I cleverly hooked it directly to the slave, thus eliminating the need to purchase a new clutch pipe. After I hooked it up, I noticed that the line was way close to the exhaust front pipe, as seen here:
 
It turns out that the DeLorean owners that told me that this mod could be done had aftermarket exhausts on their cars and this pipe was no longer there to worry about. So after all my hard work of getting this line to work and bleeding the clutch line, I now have to end up ordering a new metal clutch pipe and installing it like it was originally done. If I were to leave it as-is, the exhaust heat would likely boil the clutch fluid, which is a bad thing.

While replacing the slave, I happened to also break a couple of things. First, there is a plastic tube that goes from the corner of the engine bay:
 
It looks like the previous owner broke this and tried to repair it with that larger tube on the end. I just happened to discover it when a wrench fell on it. That tube hooks into the heater control valve, which is in the red square below:
 

I'll probably just seal it with some sealant to allow the vacuum connection to work again. The other thing that I found is circled in the picture above. Apparently this wire does nothing on a manual DeLorean, and possibly no DeLoreans. It is likely that it is an extra wire for another make of vehicle that used this same PRV motor. Luckily these things are nothing major.

DMC Headquarters Visit

This week I had to fly to Houston to visit one of my clients for work. When I got there, I looked up Humble, TX online to see how close the DMC Houston location was, and found out that it is just a few miles away from the airport. After all my meetings finished, I had my client drive me to the headquarters in Humble and had the opportunity to meet some of the guys that work there. This is me outside the facilities:
 

I am in the market for a new dashboard, and James Espey was kind enough to show me the new plastic ones that DMCH has made to replace the old, cracked dashboards that are found in so many DeLoreans now. My dashboard is actually in decent shape. It only has one crack that goes from the glove box up to the windshield. Here is what the crack looks like:
 
I had see mixed reviews of the DMCH replacement dashboards, but after seeing them in person and actually installed in a DeLorean that was at the shop, I am confident that I am going to get one from them in the future rather than repairing and recovering the original. The only cons for the new one is that it doesn't deaden the sound of the windshield wiper motor as well and that you have to be careful while installing it so you don't bend the plastic because it can discolor.

The DMC headquarters was very impressive. I've never seen so many DeLoreans in my life, especially since I had only seen about five or six in person before that day. The first thing that I saw when we pulled in was a line of cars that all were DeLoreans. Here's a picture of my client by all the cars lined up:
 
I never thought that I'd go to Houston, let alone have the opportunity to visit the DMCH facility. It was so educational and I can't wait for the opportunity to go back and spend more time. I had to catch my flight back home and was there for less than 30 minutes.