Tuesday, February 14, 2012

YEEHAW




Car's with me now. Here's a shot of it on the trailer.












And again after a quick drive to the car wash. I'd prefer to wash it by hand, but the hose at my house is currently frozen, and I don't have all the necessary doodads. Sorry about the filter, I'm using this as the background on my phone, and didn't want to see that stupid ass truck everytime I look at my home screen.

One thing I noticed as I drove it was that it wasn't getting enough gas. I knew that this was probably residual gunk sitting in the gas tank from when it was sitting in storage. I've ordered a POR 15 gas tank restoration kit, so when it arrives, I'm going to have a fun little project.

In the meantime, I bought a bunch of fuel filters, and a can of seafoam. Keeping an eye on it. It has been pushing through the filter pretty clean lately, but I'm not going to be 100% satisfied until I have it cleaned and sealed.













Think that might be the problem? I was hesitant to install the Weber 32/36 carb I bought with the filter looking like this. After a few drives and changes, though, It's definitely clearing up.

Again, not enough for me to be 100% satisfied, but good enough for now. I have had some pretty harrowing initial drives around town in this thing though. Nothing says getting to know your car like stalling out everytime you stop, and praying to god it doesn't happen in an intersection.

Below is what the filter looked like today when I changed it and ran it for a good 10 minutes. This is the 3rd one I've put in since the car arrived. You can see the rust dust residue on my driveway, along with various coolant stains. My roommate's VW is leaking like a seive, and for some reason she's okay with not replacing the water pump.

You can see sun (in February?!) out there, which has enabled me to work or dick around almost daily on the car. I'm only running the plastic filters until I fix the tank, so I can keep an eye on it. This car isn't going to be driven seriously without a metal filter down there.

Considering the cleanliness of the filter, and the ugliness of the stock air cleaner, and the weak performance of the almost 40 year old stock carb, I decided to go ahead and install the Weber. I got the kit new from Weber Carbs direct.

Pulling the old one off wasn't too hard, nor was installing the new one. I had a bit of trouble figuring out the base adaptor configuration, and I had to retrofit the old throttle linkage attachment to the new carb, but other than that, it went off pretty much without a hitch. Not too shabby for a first-timer. One last problem I ran into was that my fuel pump does run at 4.5 PSI and Weber requests 3.5 PSI for proper performance. I got a cheapo fuel pressure regulator, but when I was trying to get the engine started, there was no fuel going to the damn thing!

I pulled the worthless regulator (Mr. Gasket Co., so you know) off, and boom, the car started right up, albeit running rather rich. I'll have to pick up a better regulator as soon as I can find one. I adjusted the richness, and got a pretty smooth idle, although it still doesn't like to drive up hills. And it sometimes will idle reallllly low. My tach doesn't work at the moment, but it certainly sound like less than 500 rpm at times. These are all issues I plan on addressing this week. There is a little Cars and Coffee get together this weekend for a bunch of local J-Tinners, and I'd really like to make a solid debut.



There she is with the new setup, and a shot in the dark when I finally finished dialing everything in. Those flourescent lights come in rather nice when the days are short as they are this time of year. I'm sure my crazy neighbor enjoyed hearing me opening it up 15 feet away from her living room, where I know she was trying to watch her TV shows.

Now, for the future plans (as soon as basic mechanics are out of the way). Swiped these off ebay. AME's are apparently super rare, as I could hardly find any information on them. These wheels were made in the early 80's in the Enkei factory, under the AME name, if my facts are correct.

 Size is 13"x7" with -6 offset all around, I believe.
I ordered up some Falken 185/60 r13's to wrap around them. Those were tricky to find, by the way. I think I'm going to wait for summer or at least late spring to install and fit them. Partially cause I don't want to dirty up these pups, but also because I want to get the fitment right, and I need to order new suspension parts still. Going to get adjustable coilovers up front and new shocks all around. I'm not sure about how to lower the leaf springs, so I think its going to be run stock, possibly opting for some lowering blocks if necessary. I need to research more options here.

Other than that, I've been spending waaaaay too much money on various things. As I mentioned last post, I am not satisfied with the Mercedes Benz taillight setup, so I started searching around.

I found a seller on the JNC forums who has 2 driveable Te27's and I guess one derelict one, because I don't know why else he'd be willing to chop the back end off. This is going to be the big bodywork project for my car, and I'm just waiting until the time is right.

Stockpiling parts is okay, but doing poor work is not. I want to make sure that I either a) have the necessary skill to pull this job off, or that b) I have someone helping me that does.

Eric @ JDM Legends is going to be a mighty valuable resource, and I am trying to start up an apprenticeship/shop bitch type situation there. Hopefully we can have a symbiotic relationship going there. I plan on spending as much time there as I can without getting in their way, while still helping as much as possible.
Here are the taillights to match. I think that trim will look nice matte black. It's kind of a rough gray right now. Maybe down the line I'll even be able to find some cool JDM taillights. You can see a big pile of parts in these two pictures, including the stock air cleaner with carb sitting under it in the box. I think the new setup looks much nicer, don't you?





Speaking of JDM, here are some non-JDM fender mirrors I got off ebay. They are Hella-Talbot, and supposedly off a Fiat Abarth 750 Double Bubble Zagato. I would have preferred OEM Toyota mirrors, but since every set I've seen is overseas and that sketches me out, these will have to do, for now at least. I think they still look pretty sweet, and only JDM snobs will be the ones to call me out. I'd love nothing more than to have a JDM Sprinter Trueno, but that's not what this car is, and I guess all I can do is either break my back trying to find super rare parts to make it that car, or just try to capture the spirit that I think this car has.

So that brings us to where we are. I'm pretty busy with moving out into a new place and midterms right about now, so no promises for updates until I can make another substantial post. Until then, adios!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Planning Ahead

Back in SLC now, car is registered and sitting in AZ for the next couple weeks until it is towed up here. Sitting around with nothing to work on has gotten me thinking over and over the first things I plan on doing.

I ordered a Weber Downdraft carb to replace the stock unit, which should free up some ponies. Also bidding on a set of KP61 taillights on ebay, going to replace the poorly "frenched" Mercedes 500 SEL units. A bit of other body dings and holes to plug, not to mention fabbing up a front bumper. Looks like the car might have to be a matte grey demon for a while after all this work is done until I can get the interior stripped/cleaned.


 This picture is pretty indicative of the interior. I'm going to have to source a heater/blower unit from somewhere, and probably need to rebuild the dash and panel from scratch. Thinking maybe a nice mahogany...?
Front bumper shouldn't be too hard to figure out, just going to need a pipe bender. You can see the holes that need plugging, in addition to tucking various wires away. Also thinking about replacing radiator, and at the very least swapping over to electric fan ASAP.

After all that is going to come suspension, and possibly fitting some smaller (13x7's) wheels, if I can find a decent set without breaking the bank. Hopefully will be driving by March/April, weather permitting. Going to try and keep it covered as much as possible, as the weatherstripping is all pretty shot, but I am hesitant to buy a whole new set until post-paint. Wish I didn't have to repaint, but there are too many little things that will just drive me nuts if I don't address them.

So, next post will have work in progress shots, I promise!