Today I received the bad news from my
mechanic that my '59 Imperial has very poor combustion from two cylinders now,
and a leak in the brake booster, which would account for its lack of power
lately, and poor braking.
Bill '59 Crown
Here is my reply:
Bill,
You have had a good number of replies, all with excellent
advice. I think the problem can be looked at a little more simply.
A key question is how much of the needed work can you do yourself. With
these old cars many shops give out huge prices for repairs because many
consider old relics to be more than a bit of a nuisance. Their so called
mechanics are barely familiar with modern cars. They rely totally on
computers for diagnostics and replacing parts. Your car will take up a
lot of space, time and effort. The more of the work you can do yourself
the better. $5,000.00 is a lot of money. If you are on a tight
budget be sure to avoid all the 'might as wells' that Kenyon mentioned in his
post. Stick strictly to what ails you. This runs counter to what
many a more wealthy person will advise. Only you know about your
financial situation. Getting a whole bunch of other stuff replaced is
all well and good but if that stuff is still working, I say leave it
alone.
You actually have two problems, and one is more serious than the
other, You have an engine with poor performance and you have brakes with
poor performance. Attend to the brakes first. All the parts are
available, of you know where to look. Replacing the two main hoses to
the booster is relatively simple. You can get the booster rebuilt at
Karps, in California. Here is a link to their web site.
You can either send them the whole unit and they will fit the bellows
unit for you or you can do it yourself. I did it myself. The part
cost around $250. They offer the whole package for around $500.
The unit is held on by eight nuts, if I recall. You will have to remove
the master cylinder as this is attached to the vehicle on the booster unit's
bracket. This is quite tricky but not that complicated. Its an
access issue, really. I think I'd recommend getting Karps to do the
rebuild and only did it myself because it was faster and cheaper. The
booster is not a simple unit. I'd rebuilt some previously, before Karp's
made the outer rubber available and I had no choice.
There is a way to seal up the unit itself but it very much field
engineering and doesn't look pretty. It is, however, effective and I
only replaced my "fix" with a new unit when I had the rest of the brakes apart
for a different reason. It is a simple but hardly elegant
"repair." Get a large truck tire inner tube and cut out a section a
couple of inches longer than the unit itself. With no further ado,
attempt to slide the tube section over the bellows unit. You will have
to remove the hoses first. The first time I did this while the unit was
on a table but it is easier with it still in place on the car. It
is enormously hard work. Imagine putting a too small condom on a
reluctant elephant. However, the results are surprising. The inner
tube will conform to the ridges of the bellows unit and seal up the hole or,
more likely, slit, on your unit. These units usually give out, not
at the bottom of a ridge, but at the top. The forces of vacuum and
compression make this spot the weakest as it is here that the unit is being
both pulled in by the vacuum and pushed out as a mechanical result of
being contracted. This is a $5.00 solution that is effective.
Vacuum is restored to the unit, which is the point of the exercise. I
found using two thin, long screwdrivers at either end of the unit made
the fitting process much easier, as it helped to avoid the inner tube become
bogged down on each and every ridge.
If you do decide to store the car for a while you may find you need to
move it every once in a while. It will be a lot easier if you can do
this using the car's own power. You may also be able to take the car out
for short trips around town to cheer yourself up once in a while, not to
mention keeping the car in good shape, you know, tires, etc, etc. Once the
brakes are fixed you can then trouble shoot the engine. It may not be as
bad as you think once the vacuum leak is resolved.
An engine job is more intimidating but being in a situation like yours I
decided to take the bull by the tail and face the situation. I took the
engine apart myself. I could not find a single shop that would take it
on. Not one. At any price. I would still be voted the guy
most unlikely to be able to tear down and rebuild an engine but I did it
anyway. On the 392 I had to remove just about everything in sight to get
to the left cylinder head. I only had problems on the right hand side
but everyone told me I would have to do both sides to maintain balance, which
is to say I'd have new parts on the right and old stuff on the left. I
hated doing it but decided I'd better do it anyway. Take lots of notes
and too many photographs. I don't think an inexperienced mechanic can
take too many photographs. You never know what you are going to have
trouble with as you reassemble everything. Put parts in bags and label
them. Number the bolts holding down the heads carefully as you may find
they come in different lengths depending what else they go through.
My ultimate point is that, including a new head, a rebuild kit and one
mechanic to rebuild the heads, I spent less than $1,000 rebuilding the top end
of my engine. It took a lot longer than it should have because of some
"might-as-well" projects that were desirable but not strictly related to the
original problem. I bogged down badly on the carburetor, but that's a
whole story in and of itself. I am, of course, still using the
original carburetor, rebuilt, even though I was told, again by "professionals"
that it couldn't be done, and ended up with a spare one if it ever does fail,
since it wasn't really even broken to begin with.
I know little about the 413 engine. I just hope you can get better
access to it than you can the 392 which is not called the whale for
nothing. If you have poor compression it will be from three
places. If your cylinder rings or walls are shot it should be easy to
tell as your engine will be smoking like a bandit. There is no easy
solution to this. Just hope that is the rings. Either way, it is
quite a task for an amateur. You may only have a shot head gasket.
This ain't so bad. Even I can replace one of those. Likewise a
cracked head, which is what I had. I got a new head and then took both
the old and the new to a local shop that swapped out the old mechanicals in
them, the valve guides and seats. etc, with new parts I purchased from Hot
Head Hemis. Parts for the 413 should be in even greater supply.
Doing it yourself is not fun or easy but it saves you a ton of money and
the headache of dealing with shops that are reluctant to do the job in the
first place. You get a wonderful sense of accomplishment. In my
case, I even managed to impress my wife, not an easy task, who was as sure as
sure can be that I was completely in over my head. She was right but
hard headed determination actually won the day, for once.
If there is a local Mopar club in your area, they may be able to advise
you on a good mechanic. You may also find that someone is willing to
help you and supervise the project. I now need to get the lower part of
my engine done now as it needs a ring job. There is a member who is
willing to help me with it but he knows nothing about Imperials. I will
end up doing the lion's share of the work again but I am, gulp, dare I say it,
kind of sort of looking forward to it, in a weird kind of way that I will
desperately regret having admitted, even to myself.
Good luck.
Hugh
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