Time for a tune-up

After the... interesting drive home we knew a tune-up was in order. The carb had been worked on previously and it was still having some flooding issues. The ignition also felt weak under load so something wasn't right there either.

We fired up the engine and kicked the throttle a couple of times to look for any issues. After shutting down the car, the gas kept pouring in. Alan popped the top off and I kicked on the fuel pump to watch it bubble over. Alan quickly made the adjustment to the float level and brought it down to a reasonable level. Who needs a float scale when you have an Alan?

The car was fired up again and no more leaks! Now without that extra gas flooding in, goosing the throttle caused a bit of stumbling. Next stop, the accelerator pump. Well, we messed around with the different linkage positions with varying success. It's better then it was but there may be a slight leak that's bleeding off some pressure. We'll rebuild one of our junkyard finds later on and see how it runs.

Now with the fuel sorted out, it was time to take a look at the ignition. With the good old points under the cap, it was the first place we took a look. Sure enough, it was the pits! There was no saving these guys so we grabbed a set out of a rebuilt distributor sitting on the shelf. After a little adjusting and a quick check in the book, we had the dwell setup by feel. We'll throw a meter on it later to check it. You can't adjust these on the fly so we'll have to do some finessing. The right way to go would be to put an ignitor in there and forget about points all together.

One more time of lighting the engine and it was sounding smooth! The idle was reasonable and working the throttle didn't make the engine cough and sputter. Alan suggested that I take it for a quick drive so I put it in gear and headed down the street. This would be the true test. The car pulled smooth when I gave it the gas and no hiccups!

Down the street I went very happily. After taking a turn, I was reminded that there was a differential and transmission still in the back. Kids playing in the street went running the adults outside looked concerned as if this jalopy had just side-swiped their car. I slowed down taking the turns after that and that made the ride much quieter.

I pulled back into the driveway and shut it down. If it had driven home running like that, I would have been very happy and felt much safer. That will do it for today. Making it a decent running car is a pretty big step.

The weather was threatening again so we put the car cover back on and added some bracing in the back to keep water from pooling up on the cover. Next step is to take the spacers out from under the drivers-side bucket seat and give me an extra three inches of space in there. It's been hard to get out there in the rain. The garage needs to be cleaned out of goodwill items and car parts need to go on a shelf so we can pull it into bay-3. That will give us better working conditions and we can start on some of the rust repair.