Hey everyone...
I sent messages to the list earlier in the year to get advice and
contacts for last minute fixes before driving my spit across Canada... from
Ottawa to Vancouver. I rolled in to Vancouver on Friday night around eight
pm, after six solid days of driving. Thought I might post a few details on
the trip, just in case anyone is interested.
The primary thing I mailed about prior to leaving was to find a set of
SUs to replace the ones I had which had sticky jets after several careful
rebuild attempts. Thanks for all the tips to those who mailed... I ended
up getting a really good deal from a guy who had an ad on an online spares
list. My Dad was going to pull the car out of storage and install the carbs
during his week off work prior to my comming home. The lot I had stored the
car at was about ten blocks from home, and as he was driving it back the
U-joint on the driver's side shaft seized at about fourty kph. It smoked
the drive shaft, so Dad spent some time replacing that instead. The brake
line going to the wheel also had to be replaced as it didn't take well to
the wheel being dropped out and replaced.
So I installed the carbs, which went fairly well, except I had a
horrible time balancing them. After finally getting them half-okay, i took
the car out on the highway to see how things were going and noticed a lot of
smoke. The smoke, and my balancing problems, turned out to be due to the
fact that the previous owner had installed a plastic elbow in the plumbing
to the PCV -- at some pont the elbow melted, which resulted in enough blow
to spit oil out all over the place on the highway. argh. Anyhow, a bit of
a hack -- we replaced the (rather contorted remains of the) plastic elbow
with an elbow of about half-inch copper pipe that happened to be kicking
around old parts in the shop, which worked fine. After that, the carbs
balanced very nicely.
All that remained was to pack and look everything over. I charged the
grease gun and got every nipple I could find. As we were taking a final
look at the carbs, we noticed that the water pump was leaking fairly
severely. Presumably due to a bust inner seal. I'm thinking that this is
one of the parts that just doesn't handle being stored too well on old cars.
I wasn't too pleased over the lost pump though, as it was Saturday night of
the long weekend -- waiting until Tuesday to score a pump wasn't sounding
like such a great plan. Fortunately, after about half an hour of surfing
and I few phone calls, I was able to get in touch with Trevor Boicey.
Trevor had a spare used pump, which I was able to run out and pick up.
Incidentally, Trevor has a fantastic set up... and a very cool lift in his
garage. The pump was installed two hours later and we hit the road at about
eleven on sunday morning after a final check.
The remainder of the trip was very enjoyable, but in the interest of the
list's topic and brevity (which I don't seem to be achieving so far) I'll
stick to what broke:
Day 1:
We made it to Sault St. Marie. The water pump leaked a bit, which we
attributed to the seal needing time to break itself in... the leaking was
significantly less than the old pump had done. Other than that, the day was
uneventful. A little rain, but otherwise nice.
Day 2:
We had planned to take the M-28 out of the Sault across to US 2, and
essentially follow that across to at least Montana. About an hour of
driving later we were twenty minutes down the road -- we missed the M28 exit
and took our time about realizing it... anyhow, we stopped to look at a
noise that sounded like it was comming from the rear driver's side wheel.
One of the studs had been a little bent when I put the tire on, and I think
it must have straightened up over the drive. the noise was presumably the
wheel skipping across the threading on the hub. (in a couple of days this
turns out to not be true at all, but it sounded right at the time...)
anyhow, the stud was trashed. Or at least it was ornery and then when it
snapped off in the whench as I tried to remove the lug, then it was trashed.
Of course, it's a little tricky to find those little spit-sized studs
normally... and on a holidy monday -- forget it. Although the irony of
snapping a stud in the parking lot of a closed tire shop was not lost on me.
Fortunately, I had thought far enough ahead to bring four extra studs, but
not quite enough to bring spare lug nuts. This resulted in about half an
hour of dialoge between me and a broken stud that will not get passed the
censors should the details of the trip ever be made into a short film.
Strangely, a very friendly family drove by and after five minutes of
explanation I was lead to a salvage yard just out side of the Sault.
The guy that owned the place was very funny... in a third-person sense.
I spent ten minutes standing outside the shop (his living room) window while
he talked to someone on the phone about catalogue dating. Finally, I
explained the problem and he told me to go poke around the lot, but that he
was doubtful. I was doubtful too, until I spotted a yellow early seventies
spit lying mostly crushed, underneath a datsun. I thought I heard choral
singing as I hammered out four studs (so I could keep spares) and grabbed
some nuts. The guy at the shop wouldn't take any money for them and asked
simply (and gruffly) that I *never* come to his shop on a holiday again.
Anyhow, I wrote the name of the yard down somewhere if anyone lives in the
area. There didn't seem to be a lot left in the car on a casual
examination, although there did seem to be a good set of Jager (?) guages in
it... and the drivetrain etcetera was probably in tact. The datsun made
looking much further than that quite difficult.
We made it to Floodwood (just past Duluth) that night, rolling in around
midnight. Very scared of deer in the dark.
Day 3:
We got going fairly early and had a relatively uneventful day of driving
until the last few hours. The new (to me) water pump was leaking quite a
bit and I was getting a little nervous. About twenty minutes out of Minot,
North Dakota the fan belt started screaming like crazy. I figured it was
due to expire and wasn't too surprised -- still I had forgotten to pack a
spare. I pulled over to take a look and was immediately followed off the
highway by a state trooper. He kindly held the flashlight while we checked
things out, and advised us on a good hotel in town. Then he gave me a
warning on having a tail light out. Heh.
Day 4:
My dad was able to track down a new water pump from obsolete auto in
Sarnia and had it shipped ahead to regina so we decided to modify our route
accordingly. I had checked with several parts chains in the states, all of
whom listed the pump very inexpensively (relatively to Obsolete and Victoria
British), but none of whom had one in stock anywhere. I found some fan
belts in town and installed one on the car, keeping a second as a spare.
When I started the car with the new belt on though, it made a very insane
screaming noise. Assuming the worst, I guessed that I had trashed the
engine by driving for several days on an iffy water pump... I justified this
to myself by figuring the temperature guage must have been broken and that
the car had actually been verging on overheating for several days. I
apparently have an excellent, albeit slightly neurotic, imagination. It
turned out to be the generator, Which I was able to have rebuilt in town
that afternoon by a guy named Curt and Motor Service. He put aside a week's
backlog in work to fix my generator and was a fantastic sport about the
whole thing. Curt actually machined down the rear shaft in the generator,
which was very gnarled, and fabricated a new brass bushing for the downsized
shaft. I highly reccommend the shop to anyone in the area.
Day 5:
We drove to Regina to meet the new water pump, and changed it in the
parking lot of Canadian tire. Everything went quite well, and I realized
that the rear-end noise that we had been hearing for the entire trip was due
to badly worn bushings on the struts and passenger-side rear spring. Not
really much chance of being able to fix them before getting to Vancouver, so
we drove on through to Calgary.
Day 6:
Rain all the way through the rockies. After sliding -- sliding like
crazy -- on just about any puddle on the road I decided to get out and look
at the bushings again. I had been assuming that the problem was with the
driver's side, which was where the noise seemed to be comming from. I
realized that the camber on the rear passenger side tire was way off and
that the tire had been worn nearly bald over the last five days of driving.
I threw the spare on and the trip through to Vancouver went quite well.
Oh -- except that the vacuum advance, which I replaced with a spare I had
part way through the trip started to behave very strangely. It was as if it
was making the timing worse when the car was under load instead of improving
things... Anyone who knows the toll highway road from Kamloops to Vancouver
has got to be able to relate to carberation and timing problems on the
way -- the four hour trip involves climbing over two ~1400 meter summits. I
did the first one in second (ouch) and then popped the hood, pulled the pipe
off of the advance and stuck a piece of chewing gum on it to preserve the
vacuum in the carbs. This made for at least reasonable performance out of
the mountains.
Anyhow, the trip was a lot of fun. I have trouble convincing people of this
when I tell them about the repairs... The car actually seems to be running
better now than it was when I left... all I need to do is replace the
bushings and possibly look into some exhaust work. The exhaust I have is so
loud that it sets off car alarms in the garage under my building. Very
entertaining for a 1147 cc engine... but I'm not sure the other tennants
agree with my sense of humor.
Thanks to everyone that sent advice prior to my trip... and thanks
especially to Trevor Boicey, for saving my trip at the last minute.
Regards,
andy.
'69 Mk III, 1147 cubic centimetres of streamlined touring power.
|