Tiring business

I drove the car to the garage on Saturday to have new tires fitted all round including the spare. The existing ones are old and cracked and although most of them have a good amount of tread on them I just don't trust them. 195/75R14 tires are a bit thin on the ground so I didn't have much to choose from but the Uniroyals they had in stock come with a lovely whitewall side.

Spent most of Saturday afternoon, T-Cutting the car and you can see the difference in the shot below. The left hand side has been T-Cut, the right hand side is yet to be done. I haven't done the sides of the car yet and also need to add a coat of polish too, but I'll do that over the coming week.

Swapped out the power steering hoses today. I decided to flush out the old fluid and replace with fresh power steering fluid. I'm guessing that they previously used ATF in the power steering as old stuff was red. It's a common enough thing to do but I decided not to. I ran a couple of quarts of fresh fluid though the system and it no longers leaks.
I also adjusted up the front drum brakes. In my haste to get driving I forgot to do it at the time, it also gave me an excuse to use my new brake adjusting tool. Boy I should have got one of these before cos it's so much easier than digging around with a screwdriver.

Rollin' in my 5.0...

It starts, it idles and it actually moves under it's own power. Today was a momentous day where Mrs P and I actually took to the open roads. But let me back track as I'm getting ahead of myself.

The carb was full of gunk and crud. The float bowl had a sort of grey sludge in it and the brass main jet was green with corrosion. I cleaned, soaked, scrubbed, blew and scraped the carb in all the holes, nooks and crannies I could find. I left the main well and economizer unit soaking in carb cleaner over night as they was a couple of bits I couldn't get to directly. The idle air mixture had been screwed virtually all the way in, the warm (curb) idle screw wasn't being used and the fast (cold) idle adjustment was too strong and being used instead of the curb idle. The wrong thickness gasket had been used to install the carb to the manifold too. Basically it was set up all wrong, which probably explains the black sooted plugs.

I reassembled the carb using a kit from Mike's Carburetors , and I can't recommend these people highly enough. Great kit that arrived super quick (even with free delivery) with good instructions made the job easy.

I took an educated guess where the 3 adjustment screws needed to be positioned, fitted the carb back on the car and turned the key. After a few cranks she fired right up and a quick adjustment of the idle screws and she was sitting pretty. I need to get an old school tacho to set things up properly as I've no idea what she's idling at.

With the car idling when warm, it was time for a drive round the block. Slipped her in gear and we slowly pulled away, and kept going and going and going until we'd gone full circle. It never missed a beat. The brakes are scarily non-existent, due to a combination of not being properly adjusted and none of them having been bedded in. I'm told that the 30 from 30 rule will sort the latter part out. That's 30 stops from 30 mph. Having made a complete circle round the block, everyone wanted a ride and we made another half dozen or so circuits without any problems at all.

Mrs P and I took the car to the grocery store and acheived the heady heights of 45 mph. We just made it home before it started to rain and it's been raining nonstop since. BLOODY TYPICAL.

Oh the high pressure power steering pipe leaks and the exhaust manifold is cracked, but it drives.

If a job's worth doing then do it twice

Turns out there was a leak from the front distribution block, however I was unable to get a spanner on it in such a position that I could tighten it so I had to remove all the other ones and start over. ! managed to tighten it on the bench and then reassembled. Rebled the brakes and touchwood there's no leaks this time.

Also turns out that my soldering technique needs a bit of work. I didn't remove the circuit boards when I soldered on the wires and when I poked the wires through the holes left by removing the pins I left too much exposed. This caused a several shorts with the case below and the dash behaved very strangley when I reconnected it all. Once I trimmed the excess wires the dash lights, indicator lights and high beam lights started working correctly.

The fuel gauge is not working at present but that could be the sender, I need to test it further.

 When I first bought the car it would start but wouldn't idle and the man I bought it off said he'd driven it on to his trailer. Once the dash was back together and the brakes finally reassembled it was time to fire up the engine. To my teeth gnashing the car failed to catch, it turned over fine but wouldn't start. I removed the spark plug and theuy were sooted up but aside from that looked in good overall condition. I cleaned them up and then checked they did indeed spark. One thing I did note was that they had been installed with the crush washer. Apparenty this isn't needed in early Slant 6 engine as it moves the spark further away from the optimum combustion point. I regapped the plugs to 0.035" as they were a little on the tight side and reinstalled them, however the car still wouldn't start.

I bought some Easy Start and squirted that down the carb, and the car did catch but stalled straight away. Time to break down the carb.... rebuild kit ordered and a couple of cans of squirty carb cleaner bought too.

Oh and my parents have been over for that past 3 weeks and my Dad has been assisting me in the garage.