Ray Milland's got nothing on me. I think I'd rather have spent the weekend
watching little non-existent creatures climbing my walls than how I actually
spent it.
Things started out well. Saturday morning I installed the new teak dash from
Prestige Autowood. It fit quite well, and looks mah-velous! I also got
finishing trim for the tops of my doors. All in all, the cars looks GREAT
inside!
After a 3-hour break to pick a little banjo at a banquet, I decided to install
a new rocker adjustment screw and adjust my valves. This is in the GT6+, btw.
What should it be, maybe a 30-minute job, tops? Let the fun begin!
One removes the adjusting screw by screwing it into the rocker, so it comes
out the bottom. Well, the threads ended a little sooner than I figured, and
the screw fell. Down into the tappet on valve #10. I tried to get it out with
a wire and a dowl, and managed to flip it into the oil return hole between
tappets 10 & 11. In my additional spastic attempts to remove the screw, it
slid down and became wedged at an angle in the hole.
I rotated the engine and discovered there was a point at which it would not
turn (this was by hand). It seems the bottom of the screw was sticking into
the crankcase and blocking the camshaft. I worked at this for hours and got
nowhere. I had to quit at 5 to go to the Eddie Adcock concert at my theater. I
was disgusted. Not at Eddie Adcock, he was great.
Sunday afternoon I was staring at the problem, and realized that the fuel pump
on the car sits right below that oil return hole. Removing the pump, the
bottom of the screw was accessible through the fuel pump opening in the block.
I used a walnut pick (high tech tool) to push the screw back up into the hole,
and grabbed it with those little mechanical fingers and pulled it out. Hey,
about 4 or 5 hours of hair pulling had just ended!
I now know that when working with parts like that over the uncovered head, to
place rags or something over those pushrod openings. I will be fanatically
strict about this in the future!
So I missed the St. Louis Triumph Club polar bear run, because my engine
wasn't running that morning.
Now it looks like my front carb isn't behaving properly. The car is missing
when any accelerator is applied, and when I looked in the throats of the
carbs, the rear one sends out a nice mist from the jet when accelerating, but
there is no sign of fuel in the forward carb. This is the one that had the
float stuck open after I installed the new head. Maybe it's stuck shut now.
Time to rebuilt it.
Thanks for listening, doc. I feel much better now.
Larry
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