Been a few days since I update everyone on where we stand on Gary's
lakester and the SUnbeam wannabe. Started on Gary's car first, connected
some water pipes, started filling the system with water. Going fine
until niagra falls opens up somewhere up front around the motor plate. I
maen water, lots of water...everywhere... well crappa dooley. See
nothing obvious, so, sigh, off with the motor plate. After removing the
water pump, the alternator, taking a strain on the engine with the
hoist, removed the motor plate. Everything looked just peachy. Gary
slathered on some RTV and back together it went. Ok, so no big deal and
it was fairly easy to do. Now filling again and WTF? Hardly any water
going in now. Got air locks somewhere. Solution was to raise the top of
the radiator during filling and that cured the problem. Got all the
water in the system. No major leaks now and not a clues as to why it
leaked in the first place. Go figure. Skip comes along now and so we
have 3 sets of eyes to watch things going on. And his invaluable
experience. TIme to bite the bullet and/or fly the missile as we usta to
say when I was working in the missile business. Hit the
starter...dead....nada.....zip...ok, some trouble shooting....solenoid
not kicking in.....bad solenoid, right? More later.... so Skip used
jumper cables to get the starter working by jumpering around the
solenoid. We have all done that haven't we. BArks! Really shaking bad
when trying to start. More farkling, some starter fluid (brake clean)
and IT LIVES!!! Aftr some more fiddling with the 'puter and so fort,
runs pretty well. No major leaks, no bad smoke...just lots of happy
exhaust noise. Now, ahem, I aske dto have the small red wire on the
solenoid moved to the other small post and to ignore the ground
wire...works! Can no whit the starter button and it cranks. Ahem, Ford
solenoid, in a che*vy.... But in good fun. Beers were passed out, me I
had water. But all in all a pretty happy occasion.
Yester afternoon I had pulled the number one plug out of the SUnbeam to
find the compression stroke. Wouldn't you know iot, 180 out. Pulled the
distributor and set it to the correct position. Decided to see it it
would go. A very LOUD banbg and somwting went whizzing by Ships
nose...don't know what it was, maybe something in the turbo down pipe.
Oops, left the plug out. Ok, crawl under the car and put the plug in.
Now try again and with some tweaking of the distributor and lots of
throttle , IT ALSO LIVES!!!
Both cars now have run. Mine not so well because I have 42 pound
injectors in place of 19's so it was lets say a tad rich.. Wee enough to
set of the smoke detector in the shop and the house. But happiness! No
wiring changes, all is well, life is good...except that the alternaotr
did not put out.
Then we shut down and colosed the shop...
mayf
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