Good Grief Charlie,
That is an amazingly horrible story. Do me a big favor...stay in Texas. What
you got might be catchy. All my bad dreams happened to you in one afternoon.
Guy
Seriously, say a prayer of thanks....and be careful out there.
Charlie wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I just finished a complete engine rebuild on my 64 1500. After an expensive
> two year ordeal with locating hard to find 1500 engine parts, finding the
> time, asking questions and bugging my roadster friends & vendors to death
> for their time, the roadster runs as good as new. Fast and responsive with
> more power than ever. Still leaks oil out the rear main. DARN!! Well, we
> gave it our best shot.
>
> I've been having a problem with severe grinding between all gears. Traced it
> down to a badly cracked firewall not allowing the clutch master to fully
> engage the piston. Richard Prentice came over with his MIG welder and we
> fixed it up better than original. The trick is to also weld the peddle
> bracket to the bottom of that little ledge that you use to set your tools on
> under the hood. This keeps the bracket from flexing the firewall and causing
> it to crack. I will post the step by step fix to the TDROC web site for you
> 1500 owners.
>
> WARNING, This fix will ruin the paint on the "tool shelf". Look at my paint
> job and you will understand why this is not a problem for me.
>
> LESSONS LEARNED (the hard way)
>
> I did two very dumb things:
>
> 1. Ground through the R-Front brake line while grinding the firewall welds
> down. I was in a hurry and was afraid of breaking the line by bending it out
> of the way. I finally fixed the line last Thursday night and took her out
> for a test drive. Wow! What a difference doing it right (yourself) can make
> on an engine rebuild.
>
> 2. While sitting at a stop light (during the test drive), I put my hand
> under the dash to see if moving the bend in the tachometer cable would stop
> it from bouncing at low RPM's. I somehow managed to ground my watch on my
> new after-market (non-fused) ammeter wire terminal while the car was
> running. The end result was a blown voltage regulator. It also instantly
> super-heated my watch band, resulting in a third-degree burn about the size
> of a .50 cent piece on my wrist.
>
> To make it worse, and if that wasn't bad enough, after shaking it off and
> proceeding through the stop light (on my way home to nurse my wounds), a car
> blew through the red light at about 60 MPH and barely missed T-boning me as
> I was making a left. I just happened to use the center lane and he was in
> the right lane. I about lost it but decided to settle for simply yelling
> like a spaz while offering up a pathetic feeble one-finger salute with my
> good arm. I then drive home very shaken from the entire ordeal. This is NOT
> what I planned. I don't know what I planned but this is definitely not it!
> :-(
>
> I'm going to the specialist tomorrow to see if I need graphs.
>
> I'm getting too old for this SH--! With two small children and a wife who
>need me... I'm now thinking about selling the car and taking up golf. Somebody
>stop me!!!
>
> Charlie
> 1964 SPL310 (1500)
> Flower Mound, Texas
> http://members.home.net/cehubbard/tdroc/
>
> Flower Mound, Texas
> http://members.home.net/cehubbard/tdroc/
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