The car has been on the ground and driving around since yesterday. So far I have put about 60-70 miles on the car and its running great. It was a bit sluggish around half throttle until the last 20 miles or so. Seems like the carb and bad fuel has finally cleaned up as its really responsive now. Have no problems getting up to 70mph freeway speeds and maintaining that speed up small hills. The only problem with driving the last few days was not seating the main coil wire to the distributor down far enough and slightly melting the top of the cap with the insane ignition system I installed which you can read about below.
Since last update I have fixed the dent in the front left fender, primed it, and re-installed it and the marker lights. Installed new bulbs to replace ones that where out. We where in a rush to get it driving because we needed to pick up an engine hoist to start out next project. Actually a project car my friend and I have been working on for a while, his XT turbo motor rebuild which was ready to go in the car. So our maden test run of the car was a 15 mile round trip drive to pick it up, we loaded up all the tool boxes, jacks, and a spare part of everything we had on hand and took off.
It was a good thing we took the tools, because nothing went wrong! Car runs like a champ and drives just as well. Its finally nice having a vehicle with enough cargo room to carry large items. The 2011 STi sedan to the left just doesn't have room for things like this lol.
Did you notice the painted wheels in the pic? They are finally done and for $100 I found some almost brand new 155/85 R13 studded snow tires for it. Normally I wouldn't buy a studded tire but the deal was just too good. They are in such nice shape I think I will not pull the studs in the spring and just stash them for the next winter seasons to come.
The wiring issue for the brake lights turning on all the lights ended up being a single prong light bulb stuck in a brake/blink housing causing the brake lights to send power to the parking lights also. This has been fixed and all the lights are now working correctly.
One of the best modifications I have done to the car so far is Multi-Spark high voltage ignition system. I had an old Accel 300+ digital multi-strike ignition that I had in my 1966 Impala that I removed to go to a programmable MSD unit. I figured this would find a great home in the wagon combined with an Accel Super-coil which the instructions say not to use this coil for the 300+ but its all I have available since I am not taking the proper coil out of the Impala for it. When the coil burns up I will buy the proper one then. We shot a little video and a few pictures of the installation. Next to the setup are the relays from the Cadillac to run the lights and the 300+ ignition (I need to wipe off the pink writing on the relays).
More rust! I had my sand blaster out for working on cleaning up the wheels for painting, and had the great idea to hit some of the rust spots on the car. Its amazing how fast a sand blaster turns surface rust (or what appears to be surface rust) into rust holes! Its time to get some sheet metal and pull out the welder! Take a look at some of the clean up work. After hitting the rust, I sparyed some rust eating primer over them. I even sand blasted and primered the calipers and rotors with the stuff and shot over it with a clear coat!
Next on the list of things to do is to finish buffing out the body. Fix the small brake leak we discovered today, re-gap the spark plugs to like 0.065 and work on more rust spots. I plan to repaint the car in the spring.
The car as it sits tonight:
No comments:
Post a Comment