Stop in for a cup of coffee
That's damn nice of you to a help a lady out. I hope she's learning a lot as you guys go along..
It's fun. She has a nice car and is right there with me asking questions, trying to figure it out. She's interested in learning and has potential to be another Mopar nut that works on her own car. She was helping with the easy stuff, but I did the more difficult parts and she watched.
We've made some great improvements to her car.
We were going to do the springs on Sunday, but got sidetracked on other fixes. When I removed the rear tire and looked at the brakes, the backing plates and star wheel were rusty and dry. I took them apart and cleaned up the backing plates, greased them, and then cleaned and greased the star wheel.
When I was feeling the wheel cylinder, one side blew out of it. It felt "sticky" and then one side piston and seal and dust boot shot out off one side. We checked the other side and it was also dry and sticky. Luckily my local NAPA had the wheel cylinders in stock, I had a spare set of OEM brake shoes in the basement, then we bought a new spring kit and then put them back together and bled them.
We also fixed the front shock bushing problem. Someone didn't remove the original style one piece bushing, then installed the shocks with the two piece split bushing over them. Luckily NAPA had the spare bushings on the help rack and we were able to remove the shocks, replace the bushings, and reinstall them. The front shocks were new and the top nut came off easy without any problems. Just the bottom bolt for the left shock had a "no grade" bolt in it and it stripped out. I had to air chisel the nut off of it to get it apart, then off to Menard's for the bolt. They didn't have any grade 8 bolts in 7/16", as they skipped from 3/8" to 1/2" in grade 8, but we were able to find a good bolt and nut in Grade 5 that worked. All the other hardware and parts stores were already closed by then (after 6 PM Sunday).
We also changed her fuel pump, and bent a new fuel line. The one in there had some kinks in the bends where someone tried to bend it. I have the proper bending tools, and we bought a couple pieces of steel tubing and bent a few up and went with the best fit one. It turned out pretty good, but was real tight getting by the alternator and A/C compressor brackets. Someone also put the fuel filter on the suction side of the pump, so we moved it to the pressure side on top by the carb. Then painted the alt bracket and reinstalled everything.
Then poking around yesterday, I saw that someone had put a tee in the vacuum line that goes to the carb and had one side on the ported vacuum from the carb, and the other to the vacuum advance on the distributor??? #-o #-o #-o
So I hooked up the distributor vacuum advance to the ported vacuum port on the carb, and then took care of the extra intake vacuum lines and ports...
we made some good progress and it stops better and runs smoother now. I see some other things to clean up. It has stock style 7 mm spark plug wires, and the electric choke on the carb is not engaging properly. So our next things on the list are to go through her front brakes and do a complete tune-up with new 8 mm plug wires, cap, rotor, get a carb gasket so I can remove it and figure out what is going on with her choke and get it set up properly.
It has a 318 with an Eddy Performer intake and Holley 600 vacuum secondary carb and dual exhaust. It is idling at 20.5-21" vacuum, and we may be able to get some more vacuum with a little tuning.
She's a nice person and interesting to talk with. She just installed her first tire on her car yesterday, by lifting it to the axle and then running down the lugs with an impact wrench herself, so she's changed her first tire!!!! :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
We're starting with the basics and teaching her as we go along. She's an eager learner and asks to do some things that are at her level. She's picking up pretty well and I think that we can create a Mopar Monster out of her. (we've created a monster... LOL!)... :glasses7:
She's truely interested in her car and keeping it running well as her daily driver for summer. She will fit in well here at FABO and can be another Rani, Cudachick, or C that can talk cars with the rest of us Mopar freaks....
She got good and greasy yesterday, including some on her face from rubbing it with greasy hands!!! :cheers:
