YEAH!!!! I know!! Where have these been…right? Sorry, but I think I’m back on track.
My Mustang has an old school 4 barrel Holley and although it starts pretty quick after a few pumps of pedal to get the mechanical fuel pump to push gas where it needs to be. But if your old school muscle car or race rod sits for a while or you swap carbs often, you can spend some considerable time cranking on the engine. This might seem like no biggie, but it can cause lobe failure on a flat-tappet cam.
For my Holley there’s a better way.
You need to locate your float-level sight plugs.
Holley - image not from my mustang
A different configuration
Take a plastic squeeze bottle…. (Do you really need a pic of a squeeze bottle?) Well just in case…
Bottle Pic you don't need!!!
this type works the best…. and fill the float bowls with fuel until it trickles…(very little trickle…no fires…please.)
Float Bowls
This should be enough fuel to allow the fuel line to fill from the tank. According to the specs a Holley can run 45- 60 seconds on full bowls.
It’s been a few days since I posted last, every once in a while life gets a little busy, business travel and a vacation.
However, this blog might have been idle but I wasn’t.
For as long as I’ve owned my vette, I’ve dragged around the original Bose stereo. Yup, 1980’s technology, with a cassette and AM and FM radio. (You kids won’t remmmbbberr….hang on while I put my teeth back in…there…better…remember these and I use to walk to school when I was a kid, up hill both ways and snow up to here!!!!) It sounded really bad. The cones were mostly dried out from the AZ heat and I think I’ve spent enough on original used speaker and amps (each speaker had its own amp) to buy four stereos with big amps and have the vette vibrate down the street without starting it. I just didn’t want to get read of the thing….because it was original equipment.
Well, I finally broke down and replaced it. HOWEVER, not with just a cd player and radio. Nope. I wanted something a little more fitting for the car.
The 1984 C4, as more Corvette peeps know, was the most technologically, advanced car at the time. It was the first car with computer controlled fuel injection, electronic shifting, and a dash-board with digital and graphic displays….and you can switch it from English to Metric. So I wanted a stereo, befitting the other technology, but…..say it with me….Average Guy with and Average Budget!!!!!
So I couldn’t go to crazy. What I did find was an all digital Pioneer Media Center. No CD. USB connection for IPODs or just a thump drive. HD Radio that finds adds all the radio stations and …..wait for it…..drum roll………blue tooth phone connections. KOOL or what…my wifes’ 08 Lexus has got nothing on my 84 Vette now…..ok..well she does have air-conditioned seats and navigation (…but my phone has that) and the rear camera and a back seat (over rated!!!) and moon room (but my roof comes off!!)…away there’s more.
I did not want any thing to happen to the original speaker covers nor did I want any new holes, I wanted great sound and an original look. So I added Alpine SPS 699’s in the rear, 260 watts and 85 RM and Alpine SPS 400 for the door speakers, 140 watts peak and 45 RM. She sounds great.
The original Bose system is safe, all packed and stored.
7/7/1928 First Plymouth is made, some research suggest that it was actually built on June 11, 1928. It had engineering code (or model) Q and had a 4 cylinder engine. Check out the video on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGfwjTI1ahA
6/10/1951 A Jaguar wins the 24 hours Le Mans – it was a C-type version of XK120. Here are a couple pics:
Jaguar at a race
XK 120 C
C Type
6/10/1927 – The Graham boys purchased what was Paige_Detroit Motor Cars. The Grahams started out as farmers and glass bottle makers. One of the brothers invented a rear axle that would allow converting Ford car platforms in to light duty trucks. Oh they are still in business – owning/running Madison Square Gardens and hosting sporting events.
Graham-Paige auto
6/11/1955 Horrific crash at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Here are the details from History.com
Prior to the race, Levegh complained that the course was too narrow near the pit-stop area and the grandstand. This observation proved prescient. As Levegh was racing for the lead near the pit-stop area, he swerved to avoid fellow racer Mike Hawthorn s Jaguar as it moved toward the pits. Levegh s car, going about 150 miles per hour, came up too fast on Lance Macklin s Austin-Healey and was catapulted upward. The car crashed into the grandstand and its exploding parts went straight into the crowd. Levegh and more than 80 spectators, packed into the grandstand, lost their lives in the fiery crash.
6/12/1954 – Packard offers the first tubeless tires.
Steve Sears is one of the readers of this blog and owner of a 1982 Mercury Cougar Station Wagon (again..I love this car).
But that’s not all, Steve does a lot of his own work, including this unique paint job on his 1992 Ranger.
Here is his recent project.
The before:
1992 Ford Ranger XLT
Tim,
I completed my project last week and thought you’d like to see it.I painted my Ranger with a roller.I only did six coats of each color, usually 8 – 10 coats are required.I like to call the color Haze gray underway and white.I spent 26 years in the Navy so I thought the gray was appropriate for me. Ha Ha.It’s painted with rustoleum mixed with mineral spirits in a 1:1 ratio thus the many coats required.The body prep is the same as any other type paint job except that a primer is not used over the whole truck.I only spot primed the bare metal and over the bondo used to fix parking lot dings.It took a full 8 days to complete the project including the paint on the topper.I have to wait a few weeks before buffing out for a full gloss.For that I’ll just remove the mirrors and the bug shield on the front.The process is well documented on the web over the last 10 years or so so I won’t repeat the process.
I thought your readers would be interested. Finally I have the truck looking like new again.It’s a 1992 Ranger XLT that I had bought new on April 24, 1992.It has the 2.3 liter four and a five speed tranny.The picture labeled 019.JPG is the before shot is attached.
And the after photos:
After Pic 1
After Pic 2
After Pic 3
Thanks very much for sharing it Steve. (A roller? Wow!!!!)
Brooklyn bridge opened for traffic on 5/24 1883 and the Golden opened 5/27 in 1937.
Race car driver Mauri Rose was born 5/26/1906 currently in the racing hall of fame, placed second in the 1927 Indy 500. Actually won the Indy in 1941, but that was a tough victory, spanning two Maserati-powered Elgin Piston Pin Specials cars, after the first one had mechanical issues. He tossed a fit and the car owners pulled one of the other drivers on the time from the race and give Rose that car.
The Pin
Elgin Pin
What powered that thing?
Power Plant
The first Kaiser-Frazer was produced 5/28/1946 – cars weren’t sold until 1947.
I was about to start the pillar moldings mini project when I ran into a couple mechanical issues.
About a week ago the Mustang began squealing when pushed to high revs. That normally indicates one of several problems.
1. It could be a water pump
2. It could be the power steering pump
3. It could be a pulley
4. It could be a bolt that was holding the alternator bracket to the engine worked itself out and was in contact with the fan belt.
5. It could be a combination of the any of these.
Now the Mustang did, every once in a while, drip some fluid from the power steering control value but it wasn’t a huge deal.
Well, Saturday I went to start her and the battery was dead. It’s over 3 years old and I had left the lights on the day before and had to have it jump started. So off to the auto parts store I went and pick up a new 3 year battery and stuck it. When I started the engine up, it made the squeal and I decided I needed to fix this, before the pillar molding.
So with a neighbor revving the engine I noticed the bolt protruding from the water pump/block ( it passes through left side water pump housing in to the block). With the revs the fan belt would flex and briefly hit the bolt. This bolt was “custom” made when we were fitting everything up to reman’ed long block and was about 7 or 8 inches long.
It took a bit to get that back in place, had to loosen up the alternator’s other two supports and toss a little loctite on the threads and she was good to go…..almost…..
Yeah….option #5 above was the correct answer BTW.
Started it up and there was still a squeal – not the same squeal but clearly an ‘accompaning’ squeal. Shortly after that a power steering hose let go and well liquid does what gravity make it do and I spent the afternoon cleaning the driveway. So there went my allotted time for Saturday. So replacing both hoses seem the best way to go and they’ll be in today. Right now it’s at the shop down the street, I had no time to undertake this task at the moment, will be traveling the next couple weeks.
One of my travels takes me to the National Corvette Museum. I’ll spend an entire day there which include the assembly plant tour.
So the other cost I mentioned will be in the area of tires.
In this event I just ran with my street tires 255/50 ZR 16 BFG GForce Sport and stock rims (only chrome). There was a lot of tire spinning and some smoking. The surface of the track was…well lets just say less the optimun..ok…fine…it was horrible. (You could toss in a few cuss words in front of horrible and you wouldn’t be over dramatizing.) It was black top, cracked, uneven and there was grass and weeds growing on the far end. The tires looked rough when I finished the 10 runs. Too many more events (this was the second auto cross on these tires) and I think I’d have to replace them.
So that really means that to protect the street tires and the chrome rims, I really ought to have an other set of tires and rims. Now you are talking money that many of us average guys aren’t going to spring for. This is true for vette owners..tires are not cheap for the older vettes. Not so for my co-worker running his Civic, they are reasonable.
Take my C4 the tires and the Wheels are uni-directional. Not unusual for tires, but my 1984 C4 rims only go one way and are labeled left front, right front and the same for the rear. I do have the original set of rims that I will eventually restore to the factory aluminum and clear coat, but right now they would for auto crossing. But the rubber can run upwards of $700.00 and if I put racing rubber on it, according to SCCA rules it will change my class.
The last cost is the “I broke it cost.” They could be just about anything on a car that’s racing. Anything mechanical, brakes (oh..they will wear out a lot faster in auto cross…or at least the way I do it!!!!), undercarriage, right down to the dreaded “cone damage”. (yeah…yeah….I know you aren’t suppose to hit them…I know the object of the race..but man did I kill some of them ‘good’..no doubt!!!) I did no damage to the vette but I did see a Evo that took out a portion of his front air dam.
In fact the vette performed flawlessly, only problem was the driver. I’ll get to that next blog. You’ll laugh and I’ll give you my times and points and we’ll talk about PAX times and classes.
The last I blogged about my Mustang I had finished up the installation of the new dash pad and replaced all the bulbs and cleaned up a few years of dust.
If you recall (well you don’t have to, just go back and read the posts) I talked about planning and how I could have saved time by waiting to put new dash pad on (not cap, pad) until the pillar molding came, but I decided not too. The molding came in today….so out with the old….
Old cracked and broken
And in with the new:
New
Mustang Unlimited
I have pretty good luck with Mustang Unlimted’s parts and service. I recommend them. (No I don’t get paid for plugs or compensated.)
These will have to be painted which is very common with interior parts. I even had to paint the replacement arm rest. I have the paint and I’ll post up the entire process.
I finally got the exhaust manifold taken care of (I didn’t do it). But apparent when I had the custom exhaust with hooker headers created and installed, they didn’t use locketight and they loosed up with the vibration of daily and drag strip racing. The right side had to be replaced and the left side was just tightened. Oh she sounds so much better.
Thanks for reading. I’ll get the pillar molding replacement pretty quick.
Ok..let me finish up blogging to you on this event. I had a read ask if it has really taken this long and the answer is No and Yes. (I’ll explain the YES in a bit..it ain’t pretty!!!!)
After find the correct bolts, wrestling the covers back into place was, I bolted them down. Installed they looked pretty good.
Check it out.
Left side painted and installed. Still missing the emblem..right now
The only difficulty was aligning the holes in the cover and the gasket and the engine. Due to the lack of room to maneuver I wasn’t able to keep the gasket and cover holes aligned while wrestling them into place. I used two (small enough to slide into the threaded holes without damaging) phillips head screw driver to help keep them aligned and put the bolts in.
Errrkk……whatever you do tighten them carefully…..let me spell that for you (Mickey Mouse Club tune playing in my head) C…A….R.(because you care about your car)…E…F….U…L…L…(cause you want to keep the oil full)…..Y…(because if you tighten too much on the 1984 C4 magnesium valve covers you’ll crack them and they can’t be welded, JB or other wise, and then you’ve got to find used ones, because aftermarket aren’t all that great)….Ok…end of Mickey Mouse Club song…and the end of one of the original valve covers….
And in case you didn’t get the between the lines intention of the above Errrkkkk…I broken one.
I wasn’t sure at first, my mind refused to process the sound so that I could be sure..it might have been a crack, or maybe I just crunched one of the plastic tubes covering a bundle of wires. Yeah..that’s it…I sure (it might have been a crack though….crap!!…let me spell that for you…oh…never mind….just invision huge font type all in upper case, bolded and underlined.)
I inspected the cover while it was in place and I couldn’t see anything and said…ok.average guy.. with average skills and average budget..you have above average luck…at least today…at least that’s what I thought…or hoped.
When that happens the only way to tell is to either take the cover back off and inspected…that wasn’t going to happen…or let her run and build up the oil pressure and see what happens….that is what you’d normally do any way after replace the gaskets.
Here she is running: (includes bonus views of the injectors…I think they are pretty cool to watch.)
Covers don’t look to bad…but they aren’t going to stay…because..there really was a crack…but it didn’t show up by leaking on this run…it should up the next day when I took the car to work. I checked it when I arrived (about a 15 minute drive) no leaking…drove it home and she started to run poorly and had no power…yeah….it was leaking…on to a spark splug….got home and a little puddle of oil formed under the car and…well lets just say as I replaced the tightening episode in my head the crunching noise…sounded a lot more like a crack..in fact it was very clear on the replay!!!! The little referee in my head….said ‘After reviewing the play..the ruling in the garage is over turned, and Tim is charged a time out and $400.00 fine for cracking the cover and the vette gets parked until the parts get here!’
Here is the pick where the crack occurred.
Yup...cracked!!!!
That was Monday (4/5/2010) fast forward to today new cover have arrived (chrome) and they’ll be installed today or tomorrow. So Yes it was finished and now No it’s not.
Well after the bout of bad video uploads I decided to stick with photos for the rest of this project.
This blog entry (I like the sound of that…’blog entry’) I’ll show some pic of the area behind the dash and the removal of the gage panel and bulb replacement.
As I suspected and as to be expected, the dash and gages have been out of this car before. No big deal, it 40 years!!! Clearing you can tell that because the screws are not matching that hold the gages in.
Right side of the gage cluster had philips screw with washer.
After the dash pad was removed there were really only 2 screw left that held the panel/cluster in place – seen above and below.
The Left side was not a philips
After these were removed the gage panel/cluster (ok….I’m just going to call it a gage panel…if you like cluster…read as “cluster”). The only thing holding it in were two connections to the wiring harness. Those just clip together..sorry….I had those on video… and pull off easily.
Part of the wiring harness
As you can see other than just being dusty, all the wiring was in good shape. I had expected some issue due to age, but nope..not a one. (That’s not a complaint…no way…I hate electrical work…..I had a bad experience 🙁 )
This pic is of the panel on the right side of the and there is a LOT of space behind there. A cd changer should slide back there as well as adding a dvd player to the plastic panel. No I don’t believe I would, actually add one…..hmmmm…..I guess if someone donated an item I might consider putting it in…..or not.
The right side panel...lots of empty space.
Look at that room...for a donated dvd player....:)
So I did blew that out to get rid of some of the dust and wiped it down with citrus cleaner.
As I removed the two screws from the panel I thought it would pull right out but nope..the cover for the steering column had to be removed first. Simple enough.
Cover for the steering column
Then……( insert…dooms day music)…a piece fell out!!!!! See below
queue the dooms day music...the loose piece.
Ok..not really a big deal. It was just a clip that held the to pieces of the steering column cover together. It screwed back in slide of the two ends.
Now I didn’t take the gage panel out of the car didn’t really need to since the wiring was all fine. I pulled it out enough to allow my had to go behind and pull out the bulbs.
The position of one bulb.
Here is what the bulb and socket look like, together and apart.
Bulb and Socket
Bulb removed from socket
They come out of the housing by a simple twist. The socket has two copper conductors (you can see them in the pic above…one on each side) that come into contact with the electrical ribbon and provide the power to the bulb. Most of the bulbs were still functional, very dusty..but I replaced them all.
Ok that’s about if this “blog entry” (come on..you like it too!!!…say it with me “blog entry”….I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!….BLOG ENTRY!!)
I’ve actually placed it all back together today and I’ll post more tomorrow. But you want to see it before that, I’m driving it to work tomorrow…it not that long of a drive to Tucson…come down…I’ll spring for lunch….. 🙂
