Thursday, April 29, 2010
45th birthday celebration
The car turns 45 on June 1st. A present is in order for both the car and the owner. STOP by (clue there) for details soon.
Gauge validations
For the record (as a follow up to previous posts), I've discovered:
- speedometer is accurate
- tach is accurate
- oil gauge is accurate. The free flowing oil pressure is between 35 and 60 PSI. At a regular idle I'm about 35 PSI and under load or while cruising above 1000RPM I'm around 60. Works for me
- gas gauge: I discovered that the float is my culprit here and NOT the wiring, nor the gauge. At completely full the float is measuring 4 ohms (when it should be 10) and at damn-near-empty somewhere around 40 ohms (when it should be nearer to 70). Drain the gas tank, oh goody! :(
- speedometer is accurate
- tach is accurate
- oil gauge is accurate. The free flowing oil pressure is between 35 and 60 PSI. At a regular idle I'm about 35 PSI and under load or while cruising above 1000RPM I'm around 60. Works for me
- gas gauge: I discovered that the float is my culprit here and NOT the wiring, nor the gauge. At completely full the float is measuring 4 ohms (when it should be 10) and at damn-near-empty somewhere around 40 ohms (when it should be nearer to 70). Drain the gas tank, oh goody! :(
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Catching up
Quite a bit has happened since the last posting some six months ago. Hoping to get back in the habit of updates -- but who knows!
The car sat parked with occasional driving for the last bit of 2009. Partially because it was raining, partially because of moving. You'll notice the main picture is in front of a new house. That's the one. Here's another:
A reference to the number of the beast taken in the parking lot of the hospital one morning when I was getting lab work done (12-18-2009):
Now onto the goods. After the move I got right to work figuring out what the heck was the matter with my gauges. For starters, I was given a transmission cooler to install (thanks Ross!) with the theory that my temperature gauge readings were largely due to the fact that the radiator could not cool the engine and the transmission oil at once.
That seemed to help a bit (or so I thought) at the very least the transmission is probably worlds cooler now than it was. I should flush the fluid out of it sometime soon to replace the entire amount of it (something like 13 quarts -- I replaced about 3 quarts when I dropped the pan in the summer).
The next step was to get an infrared reading of all the surfaces of the engine to understand if I really was heating up
Looks OK to me. I ratcheted down the sending unit a bit more into the manifold and it seemed to agree:
Update as of 4/25/2010: the warm weather is causing the gauge to creep again. Will have to figure this out more in depth. Annoying to say the least.
Decided to install the LED license plate light I've had for 2+ years from Oznium:
And the LED lighting I ordered from Oznium late 2008/early 2009:
Through all of this my carburetor began to really annoy me (I'd been coping with its random idle speeds and random flat spots for awhile). The idea was to replace it with a 4bbl replacement at some point, but I figured I'd take a stab in the dark and try to rebuild it myself.
The BEFORE picture after I had removed it from the top of the engine and placed it on the work bench:
Fully dismantled and soaking in carb cleaner:
The fully rebuilt product:
Aside from a mis-seated choke diaphragm that was causing a sticking choke/vacuum leak/et al the rebuild went extremely well. The carburetor performs as well as it looks.
I even got to borrow some wonderful toys to help tune it. Here's an Air/Fuel ratio meter stuffed up the tail pipe to read the mixture while I tune the idle mixture.
Following this it was time for some long overdue tires. The quality and selection of whitewalls out there left much to be desired so I went with standard tires this time around. The difference in ride of these tires over the previous is greatly improved. They were also able to align the car (first shop ever). I purchased a lifetime alignment so I'll be back when it's time to mess with tie rods, et al.
The car sat parked with occasional driving for the last bit of 2009. Partially because it was raining, partially because of moving. You'll notice the main picture is in front of a new house. That's the one. Here's another:
A reference to the number of the beast taken in the parking lot of the hospital one morning when I was getting lab work done (12-18-2009):
Now onto the goods. After the move I got right to work figuring out what the heck was the matter with my gauges. For starters, I was given a transmission cooler to install (thanks Ross!) with the theory that my temperature gauge readings were largely due to the fact that the radiator could not cool the engine and the transmission oil at once.
That seemed to help a bit (or so I thought) at the very least the transmission is probably worlds cooler now than it was. I should flush the fluid out of it sometime soon to replace the entire amount of it (something like 13 quarts -- I replaced about 3 quarts when I dropped the pan in the summer).
The next step was to get an infrared reading of all the surfaces of the engine to understand if I really was heating up
Looks OK to me. I ratcheted down the sending unit a bit more into the manifold and it seemed to agree:
Update as of 4/25/2010: the warm weather is causing the gauge to creep again. Will have to figure this out more in depth. Annoying to say the least.Decided to install the LED license plate light I've had for 2+ years from Oznium:
And the LED lighting I ordered from Oznium late 2008/early 2009:
Through all of this my carburetor began to really annoy me (I'd been coping with its random idle speeds and random flat spots for awhile). The idea was to replace it with a 4bbl replacement at some point, but I figured I'd take a stab in the dark and try to rebuild it myself.
The BEFORE picture after I had removed it from the top of the engine and placed it on the work bench:
Fully dismantled and soaking in carb cleaner:
The fully rebuilt product:
Aside from a mis-seated choke diaphragm that was causing a sticking choke/vacuum leak/et al the rebuild went extremely well. The carburetor performs as well as it looks.I even got to borrow some wonderful toys to help tune it. Here's an Air/Fuel ratio meter stuffed up the tail pipe to read the mixture while I tune the idle mixture.
Following this it was time for some long overdue tires. The quality and selection of whitewalls out there left much to be desired so I went with standard tires this time around. The difference in ride of these tires over the previous is greatly improved. They were also able to align the car (first shop ever). I purchased a lifetime alignment so I'll be back when it's time to mess with tie rods, et al.
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