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Just about 15 years ago, my wife (not at the time) and her father watched Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The start of the movie features this Trans Am: After finishing the movie, he impulse purchased a modified 1970 Firebird on eBay. At the time, he also owned two GTOs of the same era, in mixed states of restoration, but neither in driveable condition; I think to some extent he bought the Firebird to have a car he could actually drive and enjoy. Ultimately, he didn't; for the most part it has sat unused. For the first ~10 years in a garage, but after they sold the house with the garage it has been sitting (covered at least) outside in the driveway right on the SF bay. Since then, my wife and I have been offering to take care of it for him, fearing that it would deteriorate pretty quickly in those conditions, without much success. Fast forward to the last year: we moved out of the area to the mountains into a house with a large garage. Our next door neighbor sold his house recently, and had a four post lift in his garage. He told my wife that if she wanted to get me a nice birthday present he would sell it to us for cheap. She, in turn, asked her father if he would give us the Firebird if we had a lift. That was apparently enough, so we pulled the trigger on the lift and had been waiting for months for him to send it up to us. (sidestory: my first car was a 1983 Rabbit; my dad saw a set of wheels with performance tires for sale cheap at garage sale and impulse bought those, and the rabbit was the first car he found for sale locally with the right bolt pattern. one of my high school buddies: "So here the lift is the wheels and the firebird is the rabbit?") Earlier this week, we were informed that they'd called a tow truck and it was on its way up to us that evening.     It's a 1970 (VIN tells me it was originally just a base model), but has been modified a good bit. Known modifications: - 1975 455 - formula hood - t-tops - shaved door handles - apparently it has shorter than stock gearing; not sure if this is just in the rear end or if the transmission is non-stock as well Known issues when he sent it to us: - tires are ancient and need to be replaced - real loud screeching noise if you try to start it too quickly, so will be looking at the starter gearing - takes a lot of throttle to get it to cold start and a good bit of warming up to get to a steady idle. - there's a wiring issue with the door release on the driver side. only the passenger side opens reliably and the driver side will sometimes open itself - various cosmetic stuff, nothing major. saggy headliner. Our intent is mainly to get the car into decent and safe running order to enjoy occasionally cruising around in, and have a hobby car to work on along the way. I'm a pretty novice mechanic: I have what I think is a workable understanding in theory about how most of a car works, but have not been in a situation where I could realistically apply any of that or get practical experience since high school. The extent of my actual experience is assisting my dad with fixing anything that broke on our multitude of cheap cars growing up that he was comfortable doing himself in our front yard. So this will be a learning experience for me, which is what I'm looking for, including from you all. I'll start shortly with the things that I've learned about the car so far this week in my bits of free time. Steve French fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 19:24
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Things that I've learned so far: The previous owner (referring to the owner before my father in law here, throughout) apparently liked flames    and classy stickers (NSFW)   It looks like it's had some underbody encounters?  
Steve French fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 19:35
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My father in law had said something about the choke on the carb being missing, or not working, so I popped off the air cleaner to take a look yesterday. Manufactured in 1975, so I'm guessing this is the original carb for the engine? However, it's clearly missing some things. A caveat here: my prior practical experience with chokes and carburetors and the like is limited to chainsaws and lawnmowers, and pretty much only from a "how do I operate this thing" standpoint, not any understanding of how they operate (the oldest car I'd worked on prior to this was the 1983 rabbit, which had mechanical fuel injection). I'm basing all of the following on what I've managed to learn in the past week or so; if I've got anything wrong or off-base help educate me! In the interest of improving my own knowledge and anyone else reading who also doesn't know poo poo about poo poo, I'm going to share a bit of my understanding of how things work even if it seems elementary to most, in part to make sure I'm not totally wrong about any of it.  No choke at all on the primary barrels (the smaller ones on the left).  ...there are knots tied in the throttle cable? I'm assuming this was done to effectively shorten it. But why tie knots instead of just actually shortening it?  The secondary choke is always closed! I know there is supposed to be a hot air coil thermostat here to operate the chokes, and there's nothing. Here's where my rudimentary understanding of carburetors (and quadrajets, specifically) comes into play to at least partially explain the cold-start behavior (needing a ton of throttle): The throttle on the smaller, primary barrels opens up with the lowest throttle inputs. The throttle on the larger secondary barrels only opens up at much higher throttle inputs. The choke serves to decrease air pressure in the barrel, pulling more fuel out of the float chamber, making the fuel mixture more rich, which is necessary for cold starts. With no choke on the primary barrels, without a lot of throttle the fuel mixture will be too lean. Giving it a ton of throttle, however, will open up the secondary throttle, which has a permanently closed choke, giving a more appropriately rich mixture. It will only idle reliably after the engine is warmed up enough that the mix from the primary barrels is no longer too lean. In thinking about this more, I was also reminded by a friend of the importance of elevation: I'm at 6000', which in my understanding means it will run richer than at sea level (lower pressure, more fuel from the chamber). That's when I remembered that the previous owner was in the Denver area, which made me wonder if he intentionally removed the primary choke and the thermostat as a hacky means of altitude compensation? At any rate, it seems like I'll want to do something here, including adjusting for the high elevation. The full breadth of options that I'm aware of at this point: 1. find replacements for the missing parts, install them. probably rebuild the carb while I'm at it? 2. replace the carb entirely with another of the same type (either new or from a junkyard; my understanding is that these are not hard to find...?) 3. replace the carb entirely with something totally different! (open to arguments for this as well as specific suggestions) 4. switch to EFI 4 appears to be pretty expensive (first options I found with a quick search were ~$2k), but possibly the best option otherwise? Would this yield the best economy and performance? (I care a lot more about the latter than the former, but performance also isn't the main goal here, just a bonus) My understanding is that this would also deal a lot better with the high elevation (and changes in elevation as well?) In any of the first three cases, I would want to figure out how to tune it properly for life at 6000 feet. While I mull over all of the above, I've ordered a repair manual and a few other resources to learn more about the car and components. We'll be figuring out new tires (father in law also has a set of snowflake wheels we might want to switch to), getting it registered (it's not that far off from being at least drive-able), and next up is probably taking a closer look at the starter to figure out exactly what's damaged there and needs to be replaced. Steve French fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 20:05
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STR posted:Pretty sure my 2000s car has more underbody damage. The header damage in particular is pretty common on headers that hang lower than the stock exhaust setup, and it's not gonna hurt anything. I'm not toooo worried about the underbody damage. Was more just noticing it. The large dent in the gas tank is what's making me wonder a little more than the headers, though. I'll give the exhaust some thought. I do imagine we'll be pretty much always driving it with the windows down and t-tops off. We have very snowy winters and very dry, sunny, and warm summers (at least, the hours I'd be driving it) here. I can't imagine doing much cold or wet weather driving in it as a result.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:08
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STR posted:4 barrel carbs should always have the secondaries closed until you romp on it. Sounds like yours is mechanical instead of vacuum. I guess I had assumed that the end of the cable would just be bare and then clamped down somehow; in retrospect makes a lot more sense given the knots that that's not the case. Thanks for the tip re: carb parts.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:21
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BigPaddy posted:I think I said in another thread that I would just toss that quadrajet and get something new, it saves a lot of loving about if you are new to carbs. Most will come with an electric choke with is just 12v and ground and off you go. Yep, I noted that, thanks. I'm thinking at this point that I'll probably do whatever is easiest/cheapest to get a fully functional carb, leaning towards a replacement. An EFI is certainly tempting, but more than I wanted to spend right off the bat / than I'm willing to commit right away. So I'll ease myself into this without throwing too much money away if I go the EFI route down the road. Elephanthead posted:that is one of the worst engines you could possible have and it most certainly was procured for a half empty can of stroh's when installed. I'm certainly aware that it's hilariously low powered; doesn't bother me at this point. I've got another car for actually going fast already (RS4), this car is for hobby-wrenching.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:31
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I did some more poking around while drinking my first morning coffee today to try to verify/identify what's actually in there. This block casting number confirms that it's a 1975 455, as I understand it:  The head I'm seeing conflicting information, unclear from what I've been able to find whether this marked 5C was sold with the 455 for sure. It does seem like it was on the smaller end of what would have come with that engine, though?  The transmission is a turbo hydramatic (obvious) 350 (based on the pan bolt pattern)  I got a little lost looking at the rear axle assembly; couldn't really find much in the way of any identifying information. I'm curious about it in particular because of what I was told about the car having shorter gearing, I'm assuming that was done with a rear swap. The tag here says "use limited slip diff lube only", which I would guess means it's a limited slip diff. Did these cars come with LSDs?    I also learned that it has disc brakes on the rear.
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Sep 18, 2020 18:45
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 We drove to the gas station today. T tops off, as is required by law. After the drive there was a little bit of coolant leaking from just behind the right side of the radiator (based on the location of the puddle anyway). On the list of things to look at now. I've gotta build a bike first.  "Daddy there's a car up there!"
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Sep 23, 2020 02:23
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Wow. Didn't realize prices were still that low elsewhere. They never really dipped _that_ far in town here, but for the most part I don't buy gas here. 36 gallon tank on the truck gets filled at Reno Costco where it's usually at least $1 - 1.50 cheaper per gallon. Here is a bit of a resort town so gas prices are pretty inflated
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Sep 24, 2020 02:14
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StormDrain posted:Nice. I guess I didn't realize that it already was running. and yeah, it's running, just has a litany of issues to address. I certainly won't be driving it much or very far at all until at the very least it has new tires, and ideally the starter and carb issues are addressed. I'm sure more will present themselves in the near-ish future; the car has been sitting for so long. Oh, we did discover that the speedometer isn't working, so will be looking at the cable for that.
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Sep 24, 2020 16:36
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I'm taking a couple weeks off work soon and wanted to spend time on the car then, and wanted to avoid spending it just waiting for parts, so had some free time this afternoon to poke around at things. I took the starter off to see what I could find there:     So the pinion to my eyes looks like it's been grinding a bit but not toast, and there's clearly some damage on some of the flexplate teeth. I'm guessing that at least part of the problem is the starter itself, and not always extending the pinion properly, causing the screeching noise. I'm going to replace it, probably with a mini starter (due to the close exhaust manifold) no matter what. Wondering, though, what people think of the ring gear damage. It seems to me based on relative damage to each that the starter pinion is newer than some of the tooth damage on the flexplate? Does it look bad enough that I need to think about replacing it in the near term or that it could itself be causing the starting issue? On a different note, I did find some markings in the expected spot on the axle after scrubbing a bit, but can't really make much out of my reading of the code:   5R0 C035? 5B0 C035? I'm also going to order a replacement quadrajet carb and see what I can do about replacing it while I'm off work. Goal is to get something functional without spending a ton, given that I'm not sure yet if I want to go EFI. Any particular recs (for seller or part), or just find the cheapest available remanufactured/new part of the right type?
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Oct 18, 2020 00:54
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From some cursory searching, this is the only option I can find that's not just totally out of stock that's less than $500: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/urm-14-4178 Anyone know how to tell what sort of choke it has? The uremco site doesn't indicate either. How much should I care? If a carb is going to be over $500, that would get me thinking more about just going EFI sooner rather than later.
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Oct 18, 2020 02:21
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Yeah, I'm starting to think that a carb replacement is not going to be as much of a short term savings over a more long term solution as I had hoped. Given that I do live at elevation but eventually would want to drive over a broader area (sea level is not that far away), and weather can change quite a bit (even within a day, temperature swings of 50 degrees are normal), so if that impacts carb performance a lot as well it does sound like long term EFI is the way to go, and ~$1300 for a holley sniper doesn't seem too bad compared to $500 or so for a new carb. What cheaper EFI systems are you seeing, and would a holley be worth the extra money over something under $1k? I did notice that the holley site indicates that the sniper isn't street legal for a 1970 car, but I'd thought that 1975 and earlier was basically anything goes in terms of engine modifications with respect to emissions. Can anyone shed more light here? https://www.holley.com/products/fuel_systems/fuel_injection/sniper_efi/sniper_efi_quadrajet/parts/550-869K
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Oct 20, 2020 02:58
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Yeah, I was just looking in a bit more depth into the holley sniper master kit. I'm thinking at this point that at the very least, it's more of a project than I'll be able to tackle in the next couple of weeks, including some fuel system modifications that I am not yet entirely comfortable with. So I think my plan now is to focus on getting the starter fixed, and then doing a once-over of various components on the car to gain familiarity with the components and the condition that they're in, get the car into a state where it runs reliably (if not well) and safely (tires!), and then revisit the fuel system once I've done that.
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Oct 20, 2020 22:23
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 Having a summit retail location nearby is going to be either great or terrible, I think
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Oct 27, 2020 22:14
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Suburban Dad posted:starter took up the whole page, most likely is this a joke about the size of my photos? I've sorta stopped bothering to thumbnail or resize photos when posting, probably because I'm mostly browsing on my phone
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Oct 28, 2020 02:23
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Well, I went to put the starter on this afternoon while the kids were napping. It didn't pan out today, experienced the first (of many, I'm sure) chains of discovering problems. The first issue, and the one preventing the starter install, is that (somewhat ironically) the battery cable is too short to reach the starter now. So I went to remove it and noticed this situation on the negative cable:  and also noticed that the battery hold down is completely missing. Pulled the battery just to get it out of the way, and also found this terminal just sitting around loose on the battery tray  So I'll be buying new cables and parts for the hold down (maybe just a whole new tray kit if it's not much different price wise than the individual hold down parts), and then trying again.
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Nov 2, 2020 01:00
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IOwnCalculus posted:That looks like the adapter terminal to use top post cables on a side post battery. Yup, that's exactly what it is. No clue why/how it was hanging around loose on the battery tray, though
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Nov 2, 2020 06:08
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Hermaphrodite posted:Wish I'd seen this sooner! I had many old Pontiacs: 64 GTO, 64 Lemans, 66 Bonneville, 66 GTO, 67 GTO, 69 Firebird 400, 72 Formula 350, 72 Grand Prix. I could tell you about Q-jets, the flap on the secondaries is a spring loaded air valve, which you can adjust for when the secondaries kick in. I still have a q-jet from my old 455 if you have more specific questions. Makes sense, though the air valve is missing along with other parts. If you think I’ve assessed that wrong, would you be able to point it out in my photo? Minor update after doing some more reading and realizing where the secondary code is marked on the head and realized why I was confused on the 5C; it’s a 5C-9, so originally from a 1975 400 and is 100cc rather than the 51-6 or 6H-6 with 124.5cc original to the engine
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Nov 27, 2020 20:33
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Darchangel posted:You're missing the choke (on the primaries), but the air door/flap on the secondaries is there. No telling what else is broken or missing. Yes, I'm aware that the secondary choke is there; I was a bit imprecise in my last message. What I was not understanding, but I think I get now, is that the hot air coil that is missing only ever controlled the plates on the primary, and that the secondary plates would just open due to airflow/vacuum when the secondary throttle opens, and that it's maybe more or less functional (depending on spring tension etc)?
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Dec 1, 2020 18:44
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Awesome, thanks a lot everyone, appreciate the insight. Had a few hours today so I figured it was time to finally get around to installing the new starter and battery cables. Observations: The clearance between the block and the alternator assembly sure makes attaching the negative cable to the block an annoyance. Not hard just slow. Also the lug on the end of the new cable is apparently a bit thinner, so bolt wouldn't actually fully tighten down onto it. I'll need to throw a washer on there I think. It still makes contact, but not snug. The clearance with the exhaust headers installing the starter, even with the compact summit racing starter, is tricky. Again a minor annoyance but realizing that with one bolt in, that the exhaust was blocking my ability to slide the second bolt into the starter was just nice. I started with no shims, to see what clearance looked like. Then realized that determining how much clearance I actually had was incredibly difficult; I couldn't get a good angle straight onto the interface at all. I could get a bit closer with my phone camera, but that's about it:  That said, it sure seemed like with no shims at all, that there was enough of a gap, if anything too much of one, but nothing I could really do about that. So I gave it a try. Seems to work just fine, none of that awful noise with the old starter, and I sure gave it plenty of chances to gently caress up; the fuel issues with the carburetor meant I had to crank it about 15-20 times before it was warm enough to idle. https://photos.app.goo.gl/e9BTLk5WfcwhDr5Q9 I'm still thinking more about what I want to do about the carb; one of the reasons I shied away from the fuel injection option in the near term was that I didn't want to deal with putting a return line into the fuel tank (and apparently ideally an in-tank pump is used, which was another hurdle). But then I realized a replacement tank that's already set up for EFI isn't really all that expensive, so I'm pondering that now. In the meantime, to get it at least driveable I need new tires, which means I need to make a decision about wheels. I don't like the rally wheels that are on it, and my father in law has a set of 15x7 honeycombs that I like a lot more, if I can get them in presentable condition (I have no idea what they really are like right now). I love the idea of some of the aftermarket alloy honeycombs, but they only come in 17", which I'm not really sold on, aesthetically, for the car. Currently leaning towards doing what I can with the free 15x7 honeycombs once I can get them, and getting some tires for those.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:23
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And here's the wheels. I think they seem in reasonably good shape, and the bigger question is whether I am personally capable of restoring them nicely. 
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Dec 10, 2020 01:33
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Hermaphrodite posted:https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/polycast-wheels Yeah, these are the original polycast wheels. I strongly considered picking up the repros, since they'd perform better, open up tire choices a bit, and I like the sharper look of the real alloys. However, my father in law already had these wheels lying around, and my wife and I both think we prefer the look of smaller wheels; looking at photos of cars with the 17s. So I'm going to start with this; give a shot at restoring them the best I can, and if we decide down the line we'd rather have the repros we can still do that. Any tips for restoring them welcome; I figure cleaning up the steel parts should be fairly straightforward and then I need to be gentle with the polycast part. Googling around suggests tedious hand sanding or light sand/bead blasting to clean, then prime and paint. A lot of broken links to supposedly comprehensive guides, fantastic. I also decided to go with a replacement quadrajet carb for the time being, I'll be waiting a couple months for a build from https://quadrajetpower.com/ Finally, starting to look into replacing the fugly aircleaner with one that will actually make the formula hood functional. I don't know whether it would really impact performance that much, but getting that hooked up really appeals to me in principle.
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Dec 10, 2020 18:30
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Hermaphrodite posted:Those qjets are pretty pricy, would you consider a nice used one? Had it on my 455 before I installed a tripower setup. Thanks for the offer, but given that this is all new to me I don’t mind paying what they’re charging for the services they’re providing and the confidence that it’s tuned well for my setup, etc.
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Dec 11, 2020 04:53
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I swung by a local tire shop today with the honeycomb wheels to have them take a look at them and make sure there weren't any issues they could see that might result in them being unusable, before I spend a bunch of time and some money to try making them look nice. The owner didn't seem to think it would be a problem, so I think it's time to get started cleaning them up. From various resources I've found browsing around it seems like soda blasting might be a good plan here; easy to clean up, and should be gentler on the polycast and not cause pitting and other issues below the paint I'm trying to take off that more abrasive methods might use (and hand sanding seems like it'd be a huge pain in the rear end). Given that it's a relatively small job and not something I anticipate doing terribly often, I checked harbor freight; https://www.harborfreight.com/15-lb-portable-soda-blaster-60802.html I'm okay with throwing this much money at it and a bit more for the media to try this out. However, I'm not terribly experienced with air tools. This is the compressor that I've got right now: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/air-compressors-and-tools/air-compressors/1895382 Am I understanding the specs right here reading: compressor: "Air Delivery SCFM at 90PSI: 2.6 SCFM" blaster: "Average air consumption: 7 CFM @ 90 PSI" that my wimpy little pancake compressor is (unsurprisingly) under-powered for the soda blaster? I'm not averse to getting another larger compressor; I have the workshop space for it, and if there are enough other cases where having a more capable though less portable will be valuable that's a win in my book. But is this a case where even trying with the little pancake is pointless, or where I might as well give it a shot and it may work well enough for my purposes for now, if a bit less well?
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Jan 21, 2021 04:51
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Finally got the wheels soda blasted. Had a local shop do it, picked them up this morning. They don't look perfect, but they look a whole lot better than they started.    Task this weekend is to paint them and maybe finally put the new carb on.
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May 15, 2021 03:33
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Ok, got a few more things done today. On the wheels side, decided I wanted to try to fix up a couple marred spots on the polycast material. The internet told me that 3m rubber bumper repair is the thing for that, but couldn't find it locally so ordered some and will wait to get going on the facing side of the wheels until I get that. I've got everything else ready, though, so I coated the rest of the wheels.  Then I got started on finally swapping the carb over. I'm most of the way there after not too much time. Old carb just before removal  New gasket  And new one bolted back on, with brake booster and transmission vacuum lines connected  On the fuel line, the new inlet is shorter than the old one, and the fuel line doesn't reach it very well. I don't see a reason not to use the old one, but I figure I should replace the filter and spring while I'm at it. So waiting until I can get a new filter before I hook that back up  A keen eye will also notice that the new carb does not have a vacuum port where the vacuum advance on the distributor was connected on the old one, so I'll need to determine the right alternative port to use and probably also get a replacement vacuum line to reach it. Finally, just didn't have time to deal with running a wire to the electric choke, though I did notice a wire coming out of the firewall not connected to anything, so hey maybe that'll be my connection. Need to check on it first.
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May 17, 2021 03:03
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STR posted:You'll want to use a port that's below the throttle blade (manifold vacuum). You may be able to use that port on the front driver's side, but get it running first, then make sure there's good vacuum on that port with the engine idling (should lose vacuum when opening it up). And cap off all the unused ports. If that port doesn't have vacuum at idle, you can T into the brake booster line. Thanks, I'll poke around those unused ports once I get the other stuff (gas line, choke) ready to go. And yeah, I'll be hooking up the choke next; I wasn't planning on waiting to connect it anyway, just ran out of kid-free time yesterday afternoon to do it. Does it look like the vacuum advance was connected to ported vacuum on the old carb? Might the lack of choke have also resulted in insufficient advance at low throttle when cold? Maybe contributing to hard starting? I'll hook up to manifold regardless, just trying to think through and understand how the different pieces were interacting before.
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May 17, 2021 16:28
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Raluek posted:vacuum advance is generally only for fuel economy while cruising (high vacuum low power, can add more timing, but it backs off when you get on it to avoid pinging) So in my ignorance I was thinking mainly in the context of the old carb missing the primary choke plate entirely; my thought process was that with a ported vacuum, no choke plate would mean less vacuum (and therefore less advance) at cold temps than a fully assembled carb that _did_ have a choke plate. I don't know enough to say whether or not having more vacuum advance makes sense at colder temps with the choke plate closed vs open/missing, just trying to reason through how it might have impacted engine operation on cold start. Really interested in any thoughts more experienced folks have!
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May 18, 2021 03:53
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Had some free time this morning, so I finished the wheels up. Cleaned them, repaired some of the worse spots with some bumper repair bondo stuff, then adhesion promoter, primer, and paint. It came out pretty well, but highlighted imperfections that were harder to see before painting. If I’d paid someone to restore these for me, I’d be pretty dissatisfied, but for a DIY job on a driver not show car, I’m happy with how they turned out.     Next up: tires. Size suggestions for some radial t/as? These are 15x7, the car has 14 up front right now and 15 in the back. Tires are 275/60/r15 and 215/70/r14. Way more staggered than I’d like moving forward.
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May 24, 2021 03:04
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Raluek posted:i think they came out just fine. i like the polished ring and center cap in contrast with the matte centers. gold would look nice too but maybe thats more for the snowflakes than the honeycombs My understanding is that the 15" wheels came paired with F60-15 tires, which as I understand it would be a P235/60R15; so I'm thinking I will either go with that or _maybe_ put 245s on the back for just a little bit of stagger. Tell me about your Javelin! In high school a neighbor of mine had a 1972 AMX that I really wanted, literally sitting in his barn. Love that car ever since.
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May 24, 2021 18:19
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New parts (longer vacuum hose, replacement fuel inlet filter, and vacuum caps) showed up earlier this week, so I got everything else all done and hooked up except that I'd missed that my assortment of electrical connectors didn't include a female spade terminal large enough to fit on the choke connector. I figured I could at least do a test startup without the choke functioning fully, and then.... poof battery dead. I thought I'd had it disconnected the whole time I was working on it, but perhaps I had reconnected it at some point or forgotten? Or I dunno. Either way, figured I'd wait until I got a charger. That showed up yesterday, so after the kids were asleep my wife and I went out to the garage to try again after it had been charging a few hours. We both had sort of low expectations for whatever reason that everything would actually work, so she didn't think to record the initial startup, but holy poo poo, it lit up immediately with no hesitation. I'm super pleased. The idle seemed pretty high before I revved it a bit (aftermarket tach was reading like 1700 or so, no clue if that that thing is accurate), but of course I've done no tuning thus far of the carburetor or timing. I'll grab the remaining bits to hook up the choke today or tomorrow, and then take it and the wheels over to a local tire shop to get that all set up! https://imgur.com/a/VdwjZ18 One thing that surprised me a bit, that perhaps someone can shed some light on: you can see in the video that the choke flap on the primary barrels is actually pretty far open, despite the electric choke having no power...
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May 27, 2021 14:56
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BigPaddy posted:IIRC the electric choke is just a heat element inside that gets warmer the longer power is put to it and closes the choke over a few minutes. I assume you mean opens, not closes. But yeah after reading up on some other things about fast idle I think it makes sense to me now: the choke flap doesn't actually stay _closed_ right away on start up, it has a certain amount of spring tension holding it closed that's overcome somewhat by vacuum when the engine is started, and if I'd had the choke connected, as it warmed up, it would have reduced the spring tension causing it to open more?
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May 27, 2021 16:21
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Updates: Decided on 235/60r15 for the front tires, and 245/60r15 for the rear tires. Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the local shop that took a look at the wheels months ago to put in an order, and they told me it'd be a few days and to bring by the wheels whenever so they can get started mounting them as soon as the tires get in. Swung by this morning to drop them off, and the fronts had already arrived. The rears should be coming in early next week, so hopefully by next weekend it'll actually be sorta competently and safely drive-able. Went to button things up this afternoon with the electric choke wire, etc. Couldn't really see it actually doing much visually, but after a few minutes the choke flap was definitely about as open as it could get, so I'll just leave it at that for now. I also wanted to see if the secondary flaps would open when I gave it throttle, but that was sorta tricky for me not wanting to rev the drat thing to the moon with no load sitting in the garage, so I didn't get anything out of them. Not sure quite how much is expected to be necessary. I did notice what appears to be an exhaust leak, probably at the manifold gasket, but I'm not positive. Weirdly it almost looks like the exhaust is coming out of this bolt next to the gasket, but I have no idea what it is or does. https://imgur.com/a/XLkbFg7 If it is a failed gasket, and I have to fix, that, that's pretty much taking off the manifolds completely, right? Seems like there's potential for that to be a tight squeze / pain in the rear end. How significant of a problem is this in the short term? (like, don't even drive it 5 miles down the road to get the new wheels on, or just fix it before doing much driving with it?) And if I have to remove the exhaust to fix it anyway, is this going to be enough of a project that I might as well make this the time to put new headers and exhaust on it anyway?
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May 29, 2021 03:05
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Powershift posted:You'd hear an exhaust leak before you ever see it, and with a carb'd car probably see soot marks, too.. Interesting, thanks. I knew an exhaust leak would be loud, but I wasn't sure how loud. I did think of something burning off (because when I hit the throttle I _did_ see a good amount of oil burning off the manifold on the other side that dripped out of the plastic cover over the flywheel), but I couldn't think of what would have been on the head in that particular spot in the video that wouldn't have already burned off. Is your opinion based on the audio in the video that there's probably not a gasket leak there? I guess I can run it a bit more this weekend and see it stops smoking there. It smelled more to me like exhaust than something not-gasoline burning, FWIW. But I'm no smellologist.
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May 29, 2021 04:30
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poo poo, oops. Didn’t realize imgur strips audio by default. This should have audio: https://imgur.com/a/pHum8Mh
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May 29, 2021 04:51
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Awesome, thanks for the input everyone. Raluek posted:if the smoke doesnt go away, youll need to figure out where the leak is coming from. i had one once where oil would run down the back of the motor onto the flexplate, and the flexplate flung the oil onto the exhaust, where it constantly made a smokescreen Hah, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I was trying to describe happening when I gave it some throttle. I think there's a screw missing on the passenger side of the cover over the flexplate, so I'll probably get that fixed, but does that mean there's oil coming from somewhere it shouldn't and I should figure that out, or likely same sorta deal where some has gradually leaked out over time? Darchangel posted:Thirding the lack of an exhaust leak. An exhaust leak is a pretty noticeable rhythmic noise, most often a “tic-tic-tic-tic” noise, when it’s just one cylinder leaking. Yeah, lack of load seemed reasonable. I tried it because the tuning instructions that came with the rebuilt QJ mentioned that the secondaries should open smoothly but wondered how you'd actually know that if it required being under load as I expected it would. I guess on a dyno or something...
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May 29, 2021 16:26
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Well I took it out in the driveway to run for a bit and burn things off. Mostly idled it for about 10-15 minutes. No smoke until it had warmed up a bit, and then after a while it definitely tailed off a bit so that seems consistent with just burning off gunk sitting there for years. Drove it down the driveway and back, and then shut it off and noticed that just then a pretty good amount of coolant was coming out of the overflow hose on the radiator cap:  My understanding is that the simplest and most benign explanations for this are either that it's overfilled, or the radiator cap is bad and not holding pressure. Less good are overheating, or blown head gasket. I don't think it's overfilled at this point (I checked after I noticed some coolant when we drove it to get gas months ago), but will double check. I'm not positive that the water temp gauge is working, but father in law said he believes it works and it wasn't reading high and I saw no other signs of overheating. Same with blown head gasket, saw no other indications that there's an issue there. Anything else I should check aside from the coolant level and the radiator cap (any way to verify it's bad or should I just replace it anyway?) Related, was just informed by my father in law that there's a small oil leak from the rear main seal, which seems likely to be the origin of the leak out onto the headers I noticed yesterday. Anyone have any experience or thoughts on a product like this? https://gobdp.com/blog/rear-main-seal/
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May 29, 2021 18:45
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STR posted:You said overflow HOSE. Is there an overflow TANK? Also, did you hear any boiling/gurgling sounds beyond the dripping? Thanks that’s really helpful. I do have a harbor freight so I’ll swing by next time I’m in Reno and grab one. No overflow tank, just a hose that comes off the side of the radiator cap and then is open ended down by the bottom of the radiator. It was dripping out of that hose relatively quickly, but no bubbling or gurgling or steam or signs of overheating that I could see.   
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May 30, 2021 01:26
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Slapped a new cap on the radiator, drove a couple miles around the neighborhood, no leaking. I think that did it.
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Jun 1, 2021 23:29
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