Met a neighbor today.... While out taking Leo for a lunchtime walk, I once again saw my around-the-corner neighbor outside working on his antique Ford. This time, I decided to go over and introduce myself.

Jim is a retired tool and die man who says he has had a passion for Ford Model As since he was a kid. He quit working about 4 years ago and looks to be somewhere in his late 60s or early 70s.

He already has a restored example in his attached garage; that one is a sedan, while the one he's currently working on is a coupe with a rumble seat.

The car was purchased a few years ago in a state of partial restoration. All of the filling in the body had been done with lead, and the coachwork is phenomenal. There's not a ripple to be seen anywhere in the body at all, which has a beautiful coat of dark maroon paint.

Jim is currently rebuilding the engine and considering altering the transmission with a syncromech, although he says the cost is probably going to be prohibitive. The interior is bare metal right now, and the dashboard is missing; you can see into the engine compartment from inside the body shell. It's obvious the car will be a museum piece when he's finished; the attention to detail is striking. He has a new reproduction rear bumper on the car now, which he says appears to be a couple of inches short. The cylinder head was resting on the frame at the front of the car today; it's been machined and appears to be ready to bolt up.

There are enough car enthusiasts (or the evidence of them, judging by all the covered vehicles I see in garages while out on walks) in the neighborhood to start a car club - maybe 'Hatherly Area Auto Enthusiasts' or something like that. Maybe someday that idea will take root.  ¶ Friday, April 28, 2006 0 comments

  No luck with the junkyard axle shafts

I've struck out in the junkyard axles department. The Daytona axle
boots were dry-rotted and in tough shape. The LeBaron axles were the
larger diameter.

I've gotten REALLY good at removing axles. I did all the work to drop
the swaybar, free the balljoint on the passenger side and remove the
axle on the LeBaron in under 40 minutes using just hand tools. Bet
with air tools I could do it in 15 minutes.

So I'm gonna punt. I've ordered up OEM-style replacement boots and
I'm going to disassemble the joints I have, inspect them, and
hopefully just replace the boots and call it good. If one of the CVs
is bad, I'll end up popping for a rebuilt replacement axle, but
hopefully luck is with me (hasn't been so far, of course, but you
never know.) Then we'll get this thing put together and at least
fully know the condition of the CV joints. At less than $10 more than
the cost of a pair junkyard axles (and not knowing their true
condition before installing them) replacing the boots on the ones I
have seems like money well spent.

I've been reading about water/alcohol injection this week and it looks
like guys are saying they can safely dispense with the intercooler!
One guy said he had FROST forming on one of his intercooler pipes and
the intake was cool to the touch after a hard run. I wonder if this
is an easier and perhaps more effective solution to cooling the air
charge on this suck-through T1 I've got?

  ¶ Friday, April 07, 2006 0 comments

  PRNDL! We have PRNDL again! You might recall my mentioning that I was having an odd problem with the gear selector not moving fully into Park; the best I could do was Reverse, so my test runs of the engine were all done in Neutral.

I had changed over the bracket that the shifter cable attaches to from the TBI trans to the turbo trans so it matched the cable connected to the column. In the process, I mistakenly pulled up too hard on the manual valve shaft, disengaging the detent spring and making it impossible to shift anything.

Well this afternoon I finally directed my attention toward this and took the pan off the trans again. (This is the third time. First time was to try to repair the original mistake and also change the trans filter, second time was when I realized I hadn't put the fibre gasket in place between the filter and the valve body. I'm getting good at R&Ring that pan.)

I dismantled the valve body from the transmission again to try to determine the problem. Trouble was, I could hit the Park detent no trouble at all with the valve body out. I played around with the manual valve itself, poring through the FSM, and from what I could tell I didn't have it installed backward or anything.

I did a test reassembly, and discovered that the manual valve stem was protruding too far on the engine side of the case and limiting the movement of the selector through the detents.

Obviously, I was assembling something incorrectly, but without the benefit of a complete set of assembly diagrams (the FSM is a little weak on that, IMO), and never having seen it put together correctly, I was just guessing.

Well, I took the manual valve shaft off of the throttle valve shaft again at this point, trying to see if it had somehow gotten twisted or something. I concluded it hadn't. Then I accidently put the thing back together CORRECTLY!

There is a tang on the stamping that engages the detent spring which actuates the manual valve stem. I had been placing it against the end of that valve stem, thinking that hydraulic pressure must keep it forced against the tang. In retrospect, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's how I had formed my mental image of how it must work.


All of a sudden, the range of movement of the valve stem was now almost completely inside the valve body at the other side, and even better, the stem moved with each corresponding movement of the selector lever through the detents! Yep, once I saw it that way, it made perfect sense!

Now that I've reassembled the trans, I've got the gear selector moving through all of the detents it should, and the cable is magically in the correct adjustment. Amazing the difference once things are put together properly.. :-
Oh, well, one more little problem solved!  ¶ Sunday, April 02, 2006 0 comments

  Fixed: inoperative heater control I had hooked up the vacuum line to the interior of the car the other night in the hopes of getting the heater control working again. The thing was still stuck on defrost, however.

So tonight I got my vacuum pump out and put some vacuum on that line manually. At first, it looked like it wasn't holding vacuum, and I thought I was in for some leak detection. But fortunately, I pumped some more before giving up, and whaddya know, it started holding vacuum quite well! I went inside the car, and was able to operate the blend doors using the dashboard control just fine, as long as I kept the vacuum pumped up.

So I teed into the vacuum line from the brake booster and started the engine up. No vacuum whatsoever coming from that line. Hmm. Pulled the hose off the booster and heard a sucking sound. Then I removed the check valve and tried to suck on it with my mouth in the direction it was hooked up.

It was installed backward, of course.

That wasn't my doing. The previous owner had done a lot of work to the car according to what he told me in an email, and obviously he had tinkered with this check valve and reinstalled it incorrectly.

So, yet another little item fixed!

I also connected the vacuum gauge to the manifold and noted that it was a little bit low. Since my timing light is on the fritz, I haven't been able to set the timing properly. Tonight I loosened the distributor and futzed with it until the vacuum was at about 17" and holding fairly steady. I think it's probably timed pretty close to spec now.  ¶ Sunday, April 02, 2006 0 comments