What happens when you burn 2010 fuel in 1960's technology ?

Well, just to show I  still like the mechanicals and its not all about the bling, I did some research.
After I fitted the new carby, all was well for the first few runs. I noticed though ,when the car got warm I had some hesitation issues and bogging down when I had sat at the lights for a few minutes.
       Thinking the worst I immediately pored over my books ,determined that ...of course the main jets where to small ............. wrong!
     read the link on this site re fuel percolation. It seems, this new fuel boils at a much lower point than the old leaded  fuels....The out come it literally boils in the bowl, and gives you all kinds of grief when you take off under throttle. So, I thought about it, read some more and all the pundits agree, an insulating spacer will help. So this is what I did.

A trip the the speed shop yielded  one half inch Phenolic spacer.

Being a bit pedantic re flatness,I checked it out, as it was only molded and not machined.



with the aid of some 400 grit emery, my trusty Steel plate, (some 3 inches thick! ) the spacer was not flat enough for me.
Note the mottled surface, the dull spots are where it contacted the emery

Below is the nice uniform dull surface after I lapped it flat, on the left is the emery paper, you can see the phenolec dust.


Any way after a lot of huffing and puffing and lots of figure eights on the emery it ended up about .002" out,
that was close enough for me and my arms !!!

   The spacer plate comes with extended studs and nuts and fitted up nicely , I trimed the gasket overhangs on the bores, just to be neat.



Fits well, note the Exotic accelerator linkage, that's another project looking right at you !!

                        Well I hear you say," why not put a thicker spacer in that will surely help!"

I will tell you why , I am working on a Vette and bonnet clearance is at a premium !!



note the half inch clearance on the putty after I closed the bonnet

 Well , while I had the carby off again I did go up some jet sizes, as I did note a hesitation at  slow acceleration from light throttle opening, running 70's now up from 68's seems to work very well,the fuel percolation issue has gone away all together, a good outcome, so keep it in mind, if you notice the same thing on your car.
 Oh and for all you non AUS people we still get premium 98-100 RON here, hmmm that's mighty fine !!

See you soon

A bit of Makeup for Esme

I decided on fixing a few cosmetic issues on Esme, just because she will stay as a driver for awhile and if I don't it will annoy the heck out of me.

Firstly the Steering wheel, YES its a real deal wooden one, hmmmm I hear you say that don't belong on a 64!! I know but I like it



This was the wheel as I got it it was very dirty and starting to chip

Any way washed it with oil and wax remover, Shellite or Mobilite or white spirit does the job nicely

    

    

       IT came up really well sanded with 800 paper and 5 coats of Poly urethane Satin

The finished product back in you may notice the centre console is out !! the trouble is the more you look the more you see!!

Till next time



Hmm It's that crazy time of year, work, work, work but there is still time to tinker

Well , its been awhile since the last post. I have been a bit busy but have still found a bit of time to tinker,
sadly Pearl is still waiting. Esme has a view more issues to fix.

Any how I liked the Ultrasonic cleaner so much I scoured the Internet and found another one, a bit Bigger !!


Big Brother, I can fit a small block head in this Sucker!!

makes the parts look small don't it  :)

The stuff just floats off its fun to watch

This is the final result

I think these cleaners are a real boon to restoring parts and think every garage should have one!!

Enough of the cleaners I'll post something a bit more interesting next.

Hey some New stuff for the Garage!!

Just took delivery of my little helper in the garage

70 watts Cleaning 35 watts heating

Its a little rippa, tanks a bit small, only 150 square by 90 deep but good for small intricate parts

Half an FI unit with lots of bits to clean

Mesh filter see the enlargement below

before shots of some fuelie bits



After a clean

 

Have a close look in the bore, you can still see the brass plating,like new, outside it's long gone


             All I used was one part water one part vinegar and a few drops of dish washing liquid.

Oh and it works a treat on the wife's Jewelry

shines them up like new! 

so this gets the big thumbs up from me, my E-bay special

Hey and I got a USB microscope to use, also have a look at the photo below, its the fuel bowl mesh filter at 400:1 sweet!!!

One of the small strands on the edge unraveling
Why ? Because I can !!!

till next time

Some old wounds get seen to for Esme

         Well its a long, long weekend here.....what to do.....Work on the cars of course!!

 Last time, after I did the carby rebuild on Esme, while it was idling away I did a little bit of investigating. I found something not very appealing and realized its been there for a long time but was not on my, "I want that in my car " list.

   The power steering pump pulley was offset to the drive pulley by a massive 8 mm ,that's 5/16" for our American friends. That is NOT good and would lead to a potential belt throw.....V belts are NOT meant to go sideways....well not for long. The biggest issue is, what it would wrap around on the way off ,before I would squeal to a stop, with lots if white smoke coming from under the hood. Not  the way to get noticed!

Impressive engineering !, its the little things that will bite you in the arse if you get careless.

Who knows why they didn't fix it at the start?

So As the pulley was bent and dinged, I opted for some new ones, as this engine is not numbers matching..

of course..350 in a 64 !!!! So I opted for some bling in the way of Aluminium .Well easy ...rip off the pulleys pack out the brackets, couple of hours tops....!!! Oh was I wrong. One bonus when I got the pulleys home was I got my 8mm back real quick.

The turned pulley had a narrower pitch than my steel one, which turned out to be a bitza two pulleys badly put together. there was no location for one pulley to the next so brute force and distortion had to do

All this did for me was give me a nasty vibration through the front end at 4000 RPM

The fact that the main pulley spigot didn't locate in the Harmonic balancer didn't help

Anyway, I couldn't get the the power steering pulley off because is had been damaged onto the shaft, I didn't have the correct puller,  in the end I had to cut it off the shaft !!!!

After the Exorcism

As I had a power steering service kit for Pearl and she generously donated it to her sister, I spent the next hours rebuilding the power steering pump, the pump is pretty worn in the chamber but it should last a few years.

pump bits

Pump assembled

The final outcome, not to shabby !

So then, I reassembled it all with a few new ARP screws here and there, marvelled at my handy work...

I should have realsed when I had to grind the bore of the harmonic balancer because I couldn't locate the new pulley, thats because the end of the harmonic balancer looked like the lunar landscape, from getting belted onto the crank. When it started the new pulley had one hell of a wobble and so did the balancer I hadn't noticed till it was all clean and not all banged up.

Original balancer with the bore ground to fit new pulley

Ok that's another day gone. Off to the speed shop harmonic balancer puller ....yup good brand...

another easy job for me ...... this should only take about half an hour to get it off, I bought  a nice shiny new balancer and front seal and soon it would all be good

OK, here we go take one, all set up, text book stuff, ha .. so easy

Gee  its going pretty easy ...yeah great , good puller.....? what ... oh stripped the thread

Remedy ? cut off the offending bit remake the end screw in try again , nickel anti seize a bit of heat and,

CRAP ......stripped again , didn't even budge a mm!!!

Remedy No2? Get upset I went to my work and made one that would work, from an M16 unbrako



Ausy Pete Special

Outcome?? it came off in about 2 minutes. I used the seal pick pried out the old seal and away we went . The original balancer was totally dead, had already had a seal saver on it and the rubber had extruded out, it was well past its use by date.

I found out why the balancer was hammered on there was about a .08 press fit on the shaft, I couldn't get the new one on either  after heating to about 70 deg.

So I opened up the bore .06 heated it up and it pushed on snug , a few good taps with the soft mallet and it was on





Mission Accomplished!!



Heres Esme and her zippy rendition (cut down ) of the old Chevy Potato...Potato tune I love, and a look at her new pulleys too

Not bad for 46 she still can hold the old 500 idle I guess the motors probalby 20 plus  years old ?

Well after doing all that, Jen and I took Esme for a drive down to the beach and had a break, it was a great end to the weekend



Oh, of course we had to stop for fuel, lots of it !!



Esme's first road trip




What a great view we got !

  I guess Pearl is getting a bit antsy At the moment as I am not paying her much attention, oh well it won't be long now.

Esme gets gets some TLC

As Esme is to be a driver, till her sister Pearl is ready, the main thing is to make things work. She was somewhat, reluctant to leave her old home and all those European sports cars she had befriended over the last four years of her life.When I went to pick her up she absolutely refused to run on more than 7 and sometimes 6 cylinders.......I suspected leads but could not find a way to get it going with the limited resources there. For my trouble Esme gave me a nice couple of burns on the knuckles while I played with her plugs......
         Well, so I drove home ,one very load, very sick sounding car, which was being noticed for all the wrong reasons!!!!!!!!!!!. Thanks Esme.
       The next day I did a trip to my buds at Eagle autos and ended up making a new set of leads. That solved the misfire problem, threw in a set of plugs too.
       But , with no choke and a nasty habit of firing back throught the carby when cold, and a nasty stumble
on the blip to down shift. I thought a bit of a looksy was in order and perhaps a rebuild of that old 600.

600 vac secondaries 6.5 power valve, 66 jets 1986

Thats not to pretty !!

I had a bit of a look at the carby after I took it off

Luckily I also have a few carbs, after a full rebuild of the 3310-3 750 vac, same powervalve

and I up sized the jets  to 68's

its running fine, there is a nice smooth transition to the secondaries now

Hey and I got a choke now too, looks a bit better and we hold about 5 to 7 psi fuel pressure too.

The other job was to adjust the tappits from the noise and the loppy idle I thought I had a solid roller cam.

Man I was wrong...hydraulic . I think they had not been touched in a long ,long time. These are going to give me trouble  I think, later on. Some of the valves have rounded heads, as about three where very, very  loose and floped around,, how could you not notice , well its quiet now,  and runs well.

I will have to try and work out what cam is in this thing.Next is an oil change and a sneak peek to see if she is a 4 bolt or not, thats in a week or two.

Oh this was Esmes best friend while at Brooklands  DBSZ an amazingly beautiful car

not bad for the high $300K ??

Stay tuned ....you too Esme!!