[cwazywazy]

New tires and a new problem, kinda. At higher RPM the generator light starts glowing and it gets bright right before the shift point. Belt tension is good. I guess I have a shift light now.

 

[pkevins]

New tires and a new problem, kinda. At higher RPM the generator light starts glowing and it gets bright right before the shift point. Belt tension is good. I guess I have a shift light now.

It's not unheard of for the generator light to illuminate if a faulty regulator is allowing too MUCH current.

 

[cwazywazy]

L is installed.

I was poking around under the car and found a rust hole.

I had the car in the air because I was attempting to replace the front shocks. The nuts are rusted on, just spinning the shaft and there doesn't seem to be enough room to get a spinny implement of destruction in there.

 

[extech]

penetrating oil and vice grips on the shaft and impact gun

 

[cwazywazy]

I finally got around to doing the front shocks. They were pretty wasted. The passenger shock had no oil left and the drivers side shock dumped all its oil onto the driveway when it fell.. Haven't really done anything else to the car besides drive it.

So there's a few things I wanna fix. First is the heat soak/vapor lock problem. If the cars been parked for 5-60 minutes or so I have to floor it, crank for 5+ seconds, and feather the gas to get it going. I'm curious as to whether this is a result of running ethanol gas or if there's something not right with the carb. I'd run a tank of ethanol free but I can't find any, other than the $10/gal Sunoco stuff. Also the rear main is leaking. I don't feel like pulling the trans on this thing, but if I do I'd be very tempted to replace it, either with a stick or at least something that has an overdrive gear.

 

[ShotRod64]

Pick up a holley heat insulator gasket, Edelbrock makes them also i believe. It goes between the carb and spacer and is a fiber like stuff about 1/4" thick. Or you can get a plastic/phenolic carb spacer. If you have the stokc 4100 carb and you get the plastic spacer you will have to shave off the front top edge some as the back 2 screws on the underside of the carb where the accelerator pump is will hang up on the edge and you'll have a huge vacuum leak. Those two work pretty good, either or both. I don't have the 4100 on mine anymore but when it was I adjusted the rear float down some because the gas will perk up in front and run to the rear along channels on the side and then overflow that end of the carb. I actually think the plastic spacer was better than the stock one which i by passed the water hose and cut the hose pipe piece off. Mine would sit for 10 mins or so and i'd have to hold it to the floor to start it cause it was flooded. If it sat only 5 mins it would start right up. Pain in the rear when you live in a hot desert! Now i'm in WA and it doesn't usually get that hot here but does occasionally.

I wish my car had overdrive, would be great when i'm off on road trips!

 

[Larry-11]

Following this thread....
I have a 2dr Box Top. Last one on the line according to vin

 

[cwazywazy]

I've done some pretty minor stuff to it like a new sending unit (float failed on the original) and a new rear brake hose. Front hoses are still good. I have been tinkering with the carb, adjusted the accelerator linkage and stuff. Still has a bit of a hesitation if I get on the skinny pedal too quickly when it's cold, but when warmed up it runs like a top.

Also I took it to a little autocross circuit. Wheeling this thing around a little track was a ton of fun and I was pretty impressed with how well it can take a beating. I got it to hang sideways a few times but the steering made it really tricky to control where it was gonna go once the back was loose. I had to hit the brakes to unload the rear while whipping the wheel to one side then back to the other as fast as I could manage to make it really kick out. I went out for around 5 minutes at a time since that's about how long it took for the brakes to fade away. I'm fine with keeping the drums but I do need to get a dual master and maybe some more modern shoes.

Currently working on fixing the gearbox for the passenger vent window. Back cover fell off and dropped down into the door at some point. I also noticed the water pump has a pretty significant amount of play in it. No weird noises or coolant leak though.

 

[BC_99]

Holley sniper efi. Best money Ive spent on mine. I used cheapo stainless shorty headers from ebay. There are a couple different versions. One style works ok with some slight massaging to clear the steering box... the other style isn't even close.

BC

 

[cwazywazy]

I drilled and tapped the little gearbox to bolt the back plate on, works fine and the window closes all the way now.

While I had the door apart I put in a new seal, but it looks like it doesn't seal on this bit of the door.

Same on both sides. You can see the old seal was fine there by the overspray.

Gunky. I'm thinking of pulling the motor just to reseal it.

 

[cwazywazy]

Pulled the motor. That thing is heavy. Gonna replace all seals, but I started with focusing on the body since everything is real easy access right now. Chucked the single pot master and installed the dual I got. I plumbed the front into the junction block and capped off where the rear line went. The rear brake line was some cobbled together mess of compression fittings and rusty lines so I ripped all of it out and ran new line. Should've done this a long time ago.

Updates to come.

 

[1964Fastback]

Looks good! Consider replacing the 3 rubber brake lines too, if they look old and you haven't already. They can deteriorate on the inside, swelling and acting as a one-way valve. When you press on the pedal, you force fluid past the restriction and the brakes apply. But when you lift off the pedal, the restriction may make the wheel cylinders slow to release, dragging the brakes.

Pat

 

[cwazywazy]

Looks good! Consider replacing the 3 rubber brake lines too, if they look old and you haven't already. They can deteriorate on the inside, swelling and acting as a one-way valve. When you press on the pedal, you force fluid past the restriction and the brakes apply. But when you lift off the pedal, the restriction may make the wheel cylinders slow to release, dragging the brakes.

Pat

Good advice. I replaced the rear hose, front ones look fine for now.

Engine was nice and clean inside but the pan gasket was hard as a rock and wasn't even trying to contain the oil. The rope rear main didn't appear to be leaking but I replaced it with a felpro rubber one anyway.

Bearing looked nice but the crank journal seems to have suffered a bit from sitting for so long at various points in the cars life.

Still had the nylon cam gear. About half an inch of slop in the chain so I replaced it with a comp cams double roller set.

I broke two bolts removing the cracked manifold. I got the rest of one out cleanly but I wound up drilling and tapping the other one for an m10 stud. New manifold from some 70s truck.

New boot and bushings on the power cylinder thing, new hoses as well. Hopefully one of those hoses was the leak.

 

[Jiffy]

Like the smiley face on the TC boss....

 

[cwazywazy]

Got the intake and valve seals done. Someone had the intake off in the past, they installed it with those cork gaskets and a tiny bit of rtv in the corners. Hopefully my method of lots and lots of rtv does a better job of sealing than that did. It was leaking oil into the #8 port, I found out because after having the engine turned sideways the cylinder was completely full of oil. Dunno if I mentioned it, but on cold starts, if the engine had ran in the last day or two, it would blow a nice amount of oil smoke out the exhaust for a few seconds. Maybe this was why.

 

[Jiffy]

yeah - I'm guessing that would be why!
That's a lot of oil, and if it was leaking in that easily, so was air.....
Great idea to use the ball-joint splitter as a spring compressor - I have one identical and wish I'd seen that pic before paying $50 for this:

 

[cwazywazy]

Okay, it's mostly back together, running and driving now. Couple issues to sort out. It needs an exhaust. The original exhaust (what was left of it) had some big rust holes in it so I just cut off most of it for now, open dump behind the transmission. It's not quiet. The bigger issue is that the rusty old transmission cooler lines really didn't like being jiggled around and sprang a couple minor leaks. It's also got a nasty WOT misfire. Feels like something ignition related.

The good news is that I haven't found any engine oil leaks yet and my choke now works as it's supposed to with new heater tubes to the manifold. I got a fan clutch in there now too. Oh and the brakes work nice. Requires a lot less pedal effort to stop than the single master did.

One question, how do I get crap out of the frame rails? I went around the car with an air nozzle and blew all the acorns and stuff out of the crossmembers and frame and whatnot, I found both frame rails under the front doors to be packed full of mouse nesting. Couldn't really get much of it out of there, not sure what to do about it.

 

[Jiffy]

engine looks great - do you get the mis-fire at WOT with low revs or only high revs?
I would poke some holes in the mouse nesting stuff and see if you can blow it out - but I have an idea it's in there to stay....

 

[cwazywazy]

Well, so I got new cooler lines installed, which was fun because they didn't fit at all. Should've just bent up new ones from scratch, but I made them work and it doesn't leak. Then I reset the points gap/ignition timing and took it out for a drive. After a few miles of warming up I wanted to see if the misfire was still there so I pinned it. Somewhere around 30-35mph the engine just.. quit. No funny noise, just like I turned the key off. Rolled into a parking lot and after poking around I found the distributor wasn't spinning. Got towed home and after more poking I found the distributor to be fine, and the cam isn't turning. I'm not looking forward to pulling the timing cover off.. Not sure what could've happened either. Maybe the cam bolt backed out and it sheared the pin? Pretty sure I put loctite on that, and I used torque wrenches for everything in the engine..

Stay tuned to find out, I suppose.

 

[cwazywazy]

Yeah, seems like the bolt came loose. I was not expecting the camshaft to look like this though. That's a real bummer.

Are these things interference? It certainly doesn't sound right turning the crank over by hand.