If it's not one thing....

...it's another?  Well Drake picked up his car this morning and will be delivering it to his customer next week.  A very pretty car that seemed to be reasonably priced to sell.  

I replaced the temperature sender yesterday evening and was able to tell as soon as I turned on the switch that the temperature gauge was reading 'more' accurately than before.  Previously the gauge would go to the warm position with turning on the ignition, this time it stayed in the cold area of the gauge.  After test running the engine to make sure it didn't leak I noticed that the fans didn't come on,  What now? I'm thinking to myself. The fans worked with the AC on so I knew it wasn't the fans and then checked the wires to the 'otter' switch.  Even with the gauge reading at the 'L' position of normal the switch showed no continuity when it should be closed and have continuity.  So, if the temperature gauge is reading correct then the otter switch is defective too.  If I would have had time I would have drained the coolant and pulled the switch out and checked it in a pan of hot water.  It should close when the temperature reached 180F, unfortunately Drake needed to get the car off to the AC shop for a recharge and he will leave it for the next mechanic to sort out, as a temporary measure I jumped the 'otter' switch wires so that it wouldn't over heat.  Down side to this is that it will prolong the warm up on cold days, but better than 'toasting' the engine!

So I vacuumed the car out, topped off the fluids and sent it on it's way. It will be nice to get back to the '64 and get some work done on it after we clean up from having family here for the past 10 days.  Had my Sister here and will be sad to see her leave, but have some house projects to finish up on as well as Michelle's car so back to work I go...

  Notice the precise 'stamping' of the information, the originals usually look like the guy stamping it had a few to many beers on a hot afternoon.

Going, going,

Gone!

Side Tracked...

While waiting for parts another project has come my way, a very nice Series 2 FHC that needs a little TLC before it's passed on to it's next owner.  A dealer of high end motorcars, called me this morning to see if I could take a look at the car and sort out a miss-reading temperature gauge.  It was working fine this weekend in Sun Valley, however the gauge started reading high even when the engine was cold.

Started looking into it and found the sending unit to be reading 40 ohms at 85F where as it should be reading about 300 so it's likely a sender issue which sadly has been a common problem with aftermarket senders.  Just hoping that a new one will work as I have heard of them being bad right out of the box.  Drake would like to have the car ready for delivery next week so the pressure is on.

The car needed a few little things, the carbs need topping up with damper oil, the brake fluid was down below the 'fill' mark so topped that up (no sign of leaks, probably never topped up).  One of my pet peeves has always been the wrong installation of the windscreen squirter, folks seem to think they squirt out of the end rather than the side and often have the end pointed towards the windscreen.  This car was no different but I was able to turn them without loosening the nut  (very hard to get to with the dash on the car-even then one needs to be a contortionist with small hands) so lucked out.

This car has undergone an extensive restoration and is very nicely done as one can see from the pictures.

Windscreen squirters pointed the wrong way ;-)

Dampers needed oil, look at those shiny carbs!

Can't see it in this picture but this car even had the fragile plastic 'covers' for the fan electrical connections.

Little things

 Today was a day for some little stuff, finishing up the fuel tank, making some gaskets for the door handles and cleaning the seat runners while waiting for a parts delivery from SNG Barrett.

Folks often joke about the paint on things like the gas tank, splash pans and so forth,  describing it as original if it is drippy and runny black paint. Guess it's like the Corvette folks who look for orange peel on their cars to mimic the original look.  Well this certainly looks OEM

Painted and ready to install

Making a template for the rubber gaskets under the handles

Completed gaskets

The seat runners, very grimy 

The runners are usually bound up from the natural course of years of use.  These were no different and to get them apart one has to flatten or drill out the dimple that keeps them together. Once that is done the halves can be separated and the pieces can be cleaned and lubricated.

Completed and ready to go in

It's a Gas

Needs a bit of cleaning

Picked up the gas tank from Lynn F. who continues to clean and seal fuel tanks after his retirement from his radiator shop.  Lynn does a good job but the exterior is left up to the re-builder.  While I was cleaning and painting the tank I pulled out the carburetor spring holders and painted them as well'

After cleaning with wire brush

Carburetor spring mounts, they hold the throttle closure springs

Preparing for primer

After primer, will finish with black paint tomorrow

Three Sisters....

Or perhaps the 'Bells' of the ball?  The Carburetors are clean and ready for kits that need to be ordered.  The diaphragms that hold the jets were so brittle that they cracked into many pieces.

Not much to say, just apart and cleaning

One of my pet peeves, cheese head screws that have been 'buggered'

 With as much baked on crud as they had I had to clean them then soak them in carb cleaner then clean them again.  A tedious process with a tooth brush and Simple Green.  The screws over the course of time have been buggered,  I try to remove the burrs and clean them off.  Not as nice as new but at least they won't snag the cleaning cloth.

Bottom of the center carb showining the linkage

 You can't tell from the picture but I did some polishing on the center 'bell' and will do the same to the others, not perfect but much nicer and will look good on the car.

The Sisters and their Bells, awaiting the kits and final assembly

Carburetors (French for leave it alone?)

Perhaps not in this case, today was clean the carbs day.  I started with the front carburetor for no particular reason and found it to have the most issues.  The float was seized on it's shaft and the jet was frozen in it's housing.   I was going to try to get buy with out kits but it's become obvious that would be false economy.  I'll place an order with SNG later on in the week and just proceed with cleaning the remaining two.  Cleaning them is quite involved because the old gas has left everything gummed up and filthy.

One clean one dirty

Front carb with seized jet and float

Something missing?

Now that I can see it with carbs out of the way-matching numbers!

The really good news today was that once I had the carbs out of the way I was able to clean off the block enough to see the serial numbers.They match the ID plate.  A heritage certificate would confirm it but I have no reason to believe that it has been altered.

If I had carb kits I would be 1/3 done

I'm Positive?

When this car was made it would have come from the factory with a positive ground setup, however over the years a lot of these cars have been converted to negative ground like the later cars.  In '65 the factory converted to negative ground when they dumped the generator in favor of an alternator.

Confusing, the negative lead should be going to the distributor  not the positive lead if it's been converted to negative ground.

Battery leads suggest that it has been converted, lead with disconnect is smaller consistent with it being the neg lead. 

After market fan on front of radiator

Leads for generator

Showing the positive lead coming to the dizzy

Given the size of the respective positive and negative battery terminals and the negative ground radio I think the car was converted to negative ground.

Aftermarket 8 Track radio with negative ground

Fuel pump

This car had an in-tank fuel pump that was complete gummed up necessitating that the pump be dismantled and re-wired.

As it came out of the tank, clogged with 'tar'

After a can of carb cleaner, ready to disassemble

Broken wire

Getting there, still clogged but pump cleaned

 The wires were quite brittle and this one may have broken during the disassembly however the brushes were worn beyond the point they would even stay in the brush holder.  At this point I was at a loss because they don't make a rebuild kit for this unit anymore however I remembered that I had some old S3 cooling fans and on the off chance I could use them I decided to check. Low and behold they were the same size.

'New' brushes  from old S3 cooling fan, same size brushes.

  Transferring the brushes and re-soldering the wires took a bit of time but the motor spins under power.  I don't have a picture of it yet but I sealed the case with a Halomar type sealant and expect that it will work better than before ;-) Since it didn't work that's a pretty low benchmark.  Even if it doesn't work I needed the pickup tube to draw fuel for an external pump so it needed to be cleaned out.

 The last photo is of the completed pump. Will have to figure out some way to test the pump, one concern is the bypass valve which seemed to be tight in its opening, possibly from the 'rubber' swelling as a result of ethanol containing fuel.

Completed pump,  Bypass valve may be problematic

Door latch repair

Sand and grit under gas tank

As I mentioned in the earlier post the tank had to come out for cleaning and sealing , some dirt under the tank but surprisingly not rust in the floor or tank.

Fuel tank sender

 Here I'm chronicling the repair of the door latch mechanism, these are not available aftermarket to the best of my knowledge and they were worn to the point that the pins were binding making the door latch mechanism stick.

Door handle mechanism

Pin 'diving' under and binding

Pin in track, resting position

Setting up to remove rivets

drilling out rivets

Setting up to weld tracks

Welded, next have grind and file track to get it back to original size 

Ready for reassembly

Ready to go back in the car

In the car.