In two months I will have been writing this blog for 1 year and I have enjoy every minute of it.
When you blog like I do, to share a specific area of interest, you are always trying to increase readership. Now if this were a commercial enterprise for me, then increasing my readership would be Job One. (Come on, which car company’s slogan was that? If Ford jumped into your head that would be correct.) However, it is not, but still I’m always searching for a way to make this blog a place more and more folks want to view.
There are a lots of ways to do that, none of them huge as far as bringing in the masses and some aren’t inexpensive and others are labor intensive. (Guess which one I do…oh…yeah…cheap and labor intensive…Average Guy….say it!!!!……Average Budget!!) While searching for ideas or processes I could take advantage of, I ran across some helpful hints. One in particular makes sense, namely, keeping the site updated regularly. This suggestion dictated that it be daily, which is really a good idea. However, the method it promoted was to jam the blog with other folks news feeds, articles and automatic updates from outside sources.
I thought about this a bit and I tooled around the web and looked at commercial blogs and forums and I realized that everyone had read this particular tip and employed it. And I thought, I just don’t see the point. The blog is no longer the owners writings, but really just a reorganization of things floating around on the web. Nope, not for me.
I still think keeping up the daily effort is the right way to go, but I can’t do it in that manner.
Although I do pop on videos that I think are cool and maybe a link to a forum or another blog, I’m going to keep the core of this blog full of original material, meaning my own scribblings and occasionally notes from the readership.
The life’s blood of a blog run like I run this one, are comments and readers. So drop me a note, ask a question, or give me a suggestion ( I do requests).
10/12/50 – Kaiser-Fraizer built their 500,000th car – 4 years later they opened up car manufacturing in South America.
1950 Kaiser-Frazers
10/13/1902 – Packard Motor Car Co was formed out of the old Ohio Automobile.
1902 Packard Run-About
10/15/24 – The original Mr. Government Auto Company Bailout. Mr.Lee Iacocca was born this date. If that’s all you remember him for, turn your car lover card…this guy rocked it in the car world!!!! This might change your mind…yea…the Mustang was his baby too.
How ya like him now???!!!!!
And now for the new arrivals!!!
10/14/65 – the Oldsmobile Toronado – a friend of my had one of these when I was in college back in the late 1970’s. It was my first awareness of a front wheel drive car.
1966 Toronado - Kool factor of 8.5 out of 10.
And one of my favorites
10/16/58 the Chevy El Camino arrives. Now I’m big fan of those fins!!! These also spawned the GMC Sprint and a few other variations.
9/26/1967 Everyone loves this car AMC’s Javelin the car was in the public’s hands by 1968. I loved the body style.
1968 Javelin
10/1/1908 – Mr. Ford began selling is Model T
Model T Ford – Rag Top
(they were all convertibles!!!…just saying!!!)
Oh.. you’ll like this one.
10/2/1959 – Chevy introduces the Corvair. Believe it or not I’ve seen some of the sale footage and they treated it like a jeep. Chevy had drivers drive up embankment, up and down streams with water over the tires. This gave Ford a scare but it wasn’t until they could put together the Mustang did they really have an answer.
If you are work on your older cars engine, there are a good many tricks that you can use save a couple bucks and gain a little horsepower.
This one is an oldie but a good.
Have your intake valves back cut, you’ll get a similar boost as if you use high lift rocker arms or cam.
The procedure is best done by a qualified machinist. So while you have your engine apart and laying all around our garage on pieces of cardboard (come…you know that’s what happens!!!) have him take a little off the port side of your intake valves. This creates the same effect as an earlier opening a later closing action like just a like a the addition of a an upgrade cam. The lighter valve means less spring pressure is required to control the valve at higher rmps.
A 30 degree cut is what they do on vortex engines.
The backcut is at the edge of the normal valve cut.
Evo is short for Evolution Performance Driving School. Evolution Performance Driving Schools are hands-on, foot to the floor autocross driving schools. With programs designed to improve the driving skills of 16 year old novices to multi-time Solo II National Champions. (I didn’t write that it from their web site.)
This even is sponsored by the SCCA Tucson, Arizona Border region and will be held at the Marana Airport, Marana, AZ .
This weekend two instructors Brian Peters and Tom Kotzian will we taking us through our paces with our cars. Both of these guys have plenty of experience with National level Solo with the SCCA, including multiple National level wins, and Championships.
Yes I’ll have my 07 Corvette there and Well see how I do.
People love their cars. Some people love only a specific make or model. I case you haven’t noticed I have a thing for Corvettes and thing for Mustangs (yup Ford and Chevy). I enjoyed this comment from a guy who left it on my Facebook
Andy from my Facebook wrote this:
Part of the reasons why I Love Corvettes, the heritage, history and traditions. To some it’ ll be just be a car, to others it’ s part of their lives. A true Corvette owner/enthusiast will appreciate all aspects of the Corvette, from whateve…r generation. They may have a least favorite but none should be hated or looked down on, because without the last there would be no present. I Love the great community behind this Car, it makes owning one so much better. Owners all across the world willing to give others a helping hand, worldwide Corvette events are held, some over 500 owners attending, a lot for good causes. To me, that’ s something very special because this doesn’t just represent a “Car”. It represents a special select group of individuals willing to enhance the past traditions, that is Loyalty!!. I plan to hold onto it for as long as I live. Something this special is hard to come by and shouldn’t be let go. Just felt like sharing this thought!! Have a great Sunday.See More
Brent worte: Beautiful and well written Andy!
Tim Sweet – As a previous owner of a C4 and the new owner of a C6. You are right on Andy. Save the Wave!!!!
One thing I really hate is a leaky car. I don’t like it when stuff leaks inside the car and I don’t like it when stuff leaks out of the car.
I have a friend that alway says…”Hey…old cars leak. That’s just what they do.” To this I normally just respond with “Yeah…I guess so.” I say this because he has pride in his work he does on his cars and I’m not going to poke at him about it.
What I want to say is “Bullstuff!!!!” Not this day in age, there all kinds of reproduction parts and hoses that can be molded and even entire businesses that make custom hoses. If it’s a gasket that’s leaking you can make your own, there’s all kind of gasket material on the market.
If you remember back a bunch of post ago, you may recall my power steering issue with my C4 Vette. Oh…yes…my poor old vette (which now has a new home), leaking everywhere!!!!. I hated that, but it was all fixable, right down to having a place in town customize a power steering hose ( it didn’t actually get that far, the oddly shaped hose turned out to not be the issue.).
The reality is that chasing down a leak is sometimes difficult, almost always time-consuming and the likelihood that it will be expensive is high. So, no old cars don’t have to leak.
What old cars do do (that’s just as funny to type as it is to say) is vibrate. My ’70 Mustang is mostly stock parts, with the exception of polyurethane motor mounts, and it will shake stuff loose, is it a pretty raw machine. A good portion of leaks can be attributed to that alone.
A few weeks ago, I notice a dime sized dot of oil in my driveway….errrkkk….no I’m not a neat freak, my drive has spots (been meaning to get it power washed), but with my older cars I like to keep an eye out for issues. So I climbed under the car and looked around and it appeared that the leak might be from the oil plug it’s self. So I grab my 5/8 ” open end wrench and gave it a bit of a crank. Now you have to be careful, especially with the type of oil pan I have (aftermarket chrome) as it can get out of shape if you over torque the drain plug and really leak. I wiped down the pan so I could tell later on if there might be another leak.
Chrome Oil Pan and Plug
A few drives later I noticed another dime size drip. Only this time it was a bit further back. OF NOTE: My driveway is sloped, and pretty good incline at that. This causes a bit of a problem determining exactly where liquid might originate, that whole gravity thing, ya know. This drip did seem a bit further back then the last.
Again I check the oil pan and this time the oil pan gasket between the engine and the block. Nope no oil. So I go topside and start checking the valve covers. And sure enough there, there appears to be a leak in the rear of the left value cover. Not really a big deal, looks like it’ll just need new valve cover gasket, this 302 engine is wide open in the engine bay with lots of room (nothing like the 84 Vette was to get to).
Lots of room in this engine bay to work.
Valve Cover, you can see the bit of oil grunge along the bottom.
I then recalled that FelPro gaskets were used and I specifically chose the type used on drag cars, designed so that you can pop the valve covers over between heats to make adjustments. This particular set of valve covers that I purchased when restoring the car came with bolts that tighten with an allen wrench.
Screw with allen wrench (or hex wrench).
Just in case:
Allen Wrench/Hex Wrench
Hexagon end of allen wrench
So I thought…to myself (really….can you think to anyone else?) “I wonder if they are all tight?” Sure enough they were all loose. Hence the oil leak. I tightened them all down, wiped down the engine where I could reach and drove it a couple of days. No leaks!!! Now I make it a habit to check those every so often. This is BTW a good tip if you drive your muscle or vintage car.
Now the latest leak, I noticed a couple of days ago. I check the liquid laying in my drive (only about the size of a quarter) and it was power steering fluid. I’m thinking oh…NO..not again!!! I didn’t even look under the car and went straight to the computer and did a quick search for new power steering parts for my 70 Mustang. What I found wasn’t horrible, as in, well no retirement for me, got to fix up this ‘stang, but bad enough price wise to see if it was repairable.
So I crawled under the Mustang (or hunk of iron, as my wife calls it…or maybe she was calling me the hunk :^ ) and took a look. Yup, there was a leak but it appeared to be coming from the flared steel hose fitting going into the power steering unit.
Steel hose and the leaky mess.
A couple turns with a 1/2″ open end wrench and again wiped down area. I keep checking back to see if any new leaks appear.
I can say… right now…. that my 70 Mustang doesn’t leak….I don’t think!!!
So now I stand corrected, sort of. Old car do leak, hey new cars leak!! However, they don’t have to stay that way.
Tips:
1. Check under your muscle or vintage car for any liquid (hey…it’s ok if is just water from you AC..usually) on a regular basis.
2. Get under the hood and after your ooo’ss and aaahhh’s at your magnificent creation, tight things up. ( I always ooo and aaahhh!!!)
3. Get the car up in the air “”SAFELY”” and check the fittings you can’t see or reach from the top side.
4. Chase down the leaks and clean the area to make checking for a continued leak easier.
This site is getting a lot of hits and as all of my readers know it’s not a commercial enterprise..as in I don’t sell anything, nor do I have sponsors. I do it for fun.
A few months back while I was surfing the web I ran across a web site that offered to find small “Mom & Pop” racing teams sponsors for their companies. I read the site and I thought it was a really cool ideal. Then I got to thinking, which is often a laborious effort, and more times than not ends in some sort of less than optimal situation, I’d like to do something like that. Small draw back…..oh you know what’s coming…..Average Guy, Average budget….hell most of the time I can afford my this hobby of mine either. So there won’t be any cash involved. (Hear that?!?!!??! That’s the sound of internet browsers slamming closed!!!)
Well if you are still with me, here is what I’d like to do.
I’m going to add a portion to this site called “Mom & Pop’s Racing Corner. I’d like to feature the small racing teams from anywhere in the in the world from time to time. What’s in it for me? Nothing. What’s in it for the racing team? Some recognition outside their local areas. Maybe you get noticed pick up a sponsor or even a couple fans!!!
So if you want to play here is what I need:
1. Name and size of your racing team
2. Details on the vehicles you race…i.e., cars, and trucks (other types might be considers but NO…ABSOLUTELY NO…..LAWNMOWERS!!!!..unless they are really cool) like engine, mods, horsepower, transmission, you get the idea.
3. Type of racing (oval, drags, drifting)
4. A brief paragraph (or longer if you desire) on history and resent racing results and even next event you are going to attend.
5. Include some way for a reader to contact you. (email, facebook or other social media)
6. Include some pictures. At least one of your vehicle. It would be really cool to show the driver(s), owner(s), pit crew, engine builder, stuff like that.
I’ll select one every two weeks or so, depending on the response and run the information in that corner.
It’s going to be fun to introduce these small racing teams and learn more about their cars and their type of racing.
You can drop me a comment here and I’ll get back to your or just email me directly at timsweet@cox.net with your information.
This should be fun.
Thanks for reading
Tim
My Coupe taking of from the line. Before the new paint!!!
As you know the electrical system failure was the alternator and it was replaced.
A now the story continues……
I picked the car up and it started fine, even had power to flip the lights up (it could do that when I dropped it off) and I drive two miles home. It ran just horrible. No power at all. That was worrisome.
Now the ’84 Vette has a very simplistic computer that controls the fuel injectors and it does take a bit after a “power outage” for it to get the mixture correct. This should happen after a couple of miles. Well by the time I got home there was no change in the how utterly horrible it ran. So I took it for another spin and still no change.
So I disconnect the battery for a few minutes and then tried it again…still the Vette could barely keep idle and giving it gas made it shake and the idle dropped to 400, 500 rpm. So I thought ..ok..I’ll drive it to work in the morning and see if the 10 + miles will straighten it.
Next morning, a Volkswagen bus filled with 40 people could have passed me like I was up on blocks!!!!
Ok…at this point I’m getting a little bit…P.O.’ed…(that’s short for…oh..you know what it’s short for!!) I call up my guys and I explain my displeasure. My take was that they should have test driven the car and that they have had the damn (that’s short for @#$@#%%!!!!!) thing enough to know that it wasn’t running right. I expanded on my thoughts in person when I limped the car back there after work..which was not a great day…which might have contributed to my disposition. Sorry Sean, but you ya know noting but love…its all good dude….Sean later told me I hurt the only “feeling” he had…I told him to get over it. They had a new guy there and he was the one that test drove it after the electrical work.
This was the start of a 3 day, all hands on deck, WTH…(that’s short for “What The Heck” >wink?<…I didn’t want to push the envelope with the “bad words”, because I would have had to add “put the kids to bed ..I’m about to use some adult verbiage”) is wrong with this car!!!
I’m thinking it’s still electrical, computer was F ‘ed (short for “fried”) or there was a short somewhere. I ended up at the garage a couple of nights after work poking around a bit – Tim Sisk the guy that runs the places is good about that.
So here is what was happened.
It appears that the evap system that is supposed to take the fumes from the gas tank for emissions was filling up with fuel every now and then. This system is supposed to push the fumes through a canister filled with charcoal and remove some of the harmful particles. Of course it doesn’t stop there the “cleaner” fumes then are pass back into the intake manifold to be “re-burned” and sent out in the world through the Vettes exhaust system. This simple hose highway runs along the entire length of the car and isn’t designed to handle fuel.
The end result was fuel running through the hose design for only fumes, traveled the hose highway all the way to the front of the car, filling the charcoal canister – which wasn’t designed to hold gasoline. Once full the gas has not where to go but across the engine, just following Avenue Hose, and dumping fuel directly in to the intake. That’s the cause of the poor (understatement) idling and running. The car was drowning in fuel.
Canister - now rendered useless.
How does this happen? Well it occurs when too much pressure builds up in the fuel tank. The venting of the fumes is supposed to prevent that. Once the pressure builds, which doesn’t take long with a full fuel tank, the gas has to go somewhere, so it takes a trip up the evap hose.
Now, here is where a guy starts to wonder WTH (short for….) am I doing with a one off car???!!! Really the 84 Vette is a one off production year. There were not ’83 Corvettes sold and although it has the same basic engine as the ’82 Covertte crossfires, nothing else was the same, and the ’85 Vette was an entirely different animal. This leads to a fairly significant lack of printed knowledge on the system..this many years out. Why do I mention this? Because it’s tough to find the knowledge after this long and the newer repair books treat the ’84 systems as ..”oh yeah..it’s not the same as the ’85 or the “L83 (my engine) is similar.” Gee..thanks for that. But it is different and it’s not similar in many ways.
Here is one.
The fuel tank on ’85 Vette has what is called a check valve with allows vapor to travel through it, but if fluid enters it, a small ball is pushed by the denser liquid to a point where it will block the hole. There is a diagram of that in many of the new repair books. But there are none for the ’84, and no, upon actually view the parts, you aren’t going to see anything that looks like the ’85 check valve.
Ok..armed with is knowledge, I showed up at the garage and share the info. This left us all scratching our heads. There seemed not logical reason for pressure to build up. There is only the fuel pump down there (that we tested in a bucket of fuel and worked as it should) there was only one other fuel delivery system was the “limp home” system which use the oil sending unit to push just enough, when the tank was low or fuel pump failed, to get you home or a repair shop.
This lead into the third day, at which point the fuel module was removed from the tank again and it was discovered that there was indeed a check valve.
There is a check valve built-in to the fuel module, it had a piece something (appeared to be plastic or maybe rubber) lodged in it large enough to keep the ball in a position where the it increased the pressure so much that sent it shooting fuel out up the vacuum line. It was incorporated into the system in a way that was not conducive to separate replacement. It was cleaned and that solved the problem..well most of it.
The canister should be replaced find one it not easy. Right now we replaced the PVC valve with a right-angled and the canister is no longer in the flow.
For my 84 that’s not a problem since there is no sensor that checks that and the car is running great. I’m not sure but I think she’d even pass emission, unless they were to visually see that it wasn’t connected.
Of course I’m a big tree hugger and (you can tell because the Mustang gets 4 gallons to the mile ..hey that’s what dead dinosaurs are for!!!!) so I’ll eventual get it replaced. If I can find one. In the mean time I’ve re-routed the hose to protrude under neigth the engine so the fumes don’t fill the engine bay.
Some pics:
Hose Highway with Canister
End of the hose that is supposed to travel on to the Intake, now routed under the car, temporarily.
So there you have. Good thing there wasn’t a car crusher in towing distance….nah…I love that car.
