| Date | Odometer | |
| June 3, 2006 (Saturday) |
N/A |
Drain rad and cooling system. Remove radiator, fan, old water pump. Seals at top were misformed and possibly leaking. Kept old pump as an emergency spare. Installed new pump, fan, radiator. Filled with distilled water and noticed minor leak from top water pump seals. Went home to fix leak tomorrow!
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| June 4, 2006 (Sunday) |
N/A |
Pulled and repositioned pump. No leaks! Reinstalled rad & fan and filled with distilled water, coolant. Noted that heater hoses and top radiator hose should be replaced. Did valve adjustment (no major changes needed, good sign as I think the last owner hadn't done this in a while), rechecked timing. Installed tachometer, it works great, but the plastic mounting shaft is busted, gotta restore it later.
For now, the tachometer is held to the top of the dash with plastic cable ties.
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| June 10, 2006 (Saturday) |
x37215 |
Second trip with car to San Jose for friend's party. Problem free this time! Bought gas, 7.871 gal for $3.379/gal = $26.60, still a dismal 12.83 mpg over 101 miles. Gotta get to these carbs! |
| June 15, 2006 (Thursday) |
N/A |
After all the recent maintenance, enjoyed a fast late night drive on an empty 280 now that I'm comfortable pushing this car a bit more.
What can I say, there's nothing quite like driving this car.
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| June 17, 2006 (Saturday) |
N/A |
Used drum puller and large hammer to remove rear drums for brake inspection. Rear shoes are visually fine, minor leaks from brake pistons.
Drained transmission (again) to clean out overdrive oil strainer, now that I had the right gasket to refit. The strainer itself was quite clean. Transmission oil still had some fine metal particles, so I might do another drain and fill until it is clean.
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| June 18, 2006 (Sunday) |
N/A |
Cleaned electrical connections in fusebox. Read up on & gained familiarity with SU carbs. Lost second auction on GT steering wheel horn button. |
| June 25, 2006 (Sunday) |
N/A |
Spent time tuning the SU carbs and working interior issues. Got drivers door panel off well enough to lubricate lock. However, can't get the circlip off the window winder to get the whole panel off, even with the special IPD tool. Not too important for now. It seemed that I got the carbs running well. |
| June 29, 2006 (Thursday) |
N/A |
I spoke too soon about the carbs being in good condition. Everything was running so well, and I wanted to see how my mileage was doing, so
I drove the car down to Santa Clara. Got 26 mpg on the trip down... but started hesitating on the way back under load. Thinking it was the heat and humidity, I retuned things and drove back on the street. Well, turned out one of the jets was on it's last legs, as the integrated bowl-jet fuel pipe was coming apart at the jet, and finally started to drip fuel out of the bottom of the carb! Deciding that it was much better to get new parts than drive with a cobbled-together fuel system, I ended up leaving the car on El Camino Real in Redwood City Monday night and took the train home. Bought new jets, needles, gaskets on Tuesday, went back to fix the car Wednesday night . It seems someone in the past had glued the pipe on at the jet, rather than replacing it for $40, as there was evidence of glue in the whole works! I also believe the front carb has been switched with the rear carb, as I had to put the "rear jet" in the front, and the bowls are in the center rather than the outside, which I hadn't noticed before. Going to figure this out on the weekend when I get the carbs off, I suspect this was done for some reason like worn parts. Anyways, got the new jet in no problem (without removing the carb, since it was a roadside repair) and carbs retuned... but there still seems to be some significant fuel delivery problem as it runs super at idle and revving in neutral, but I could only gently coax the car back home at 25-35 mph on city streets. Well, I can now at least say that I have driven the entire length of El Camino Real! Going to take everything apart this weekend and see what's up, I bet it's something minor. Suspect there's something clogged in the fuel line, bowl(s), etc... but will check all the other potential suspects too. It's statistically improbable to have more than one new problem at a time, so I suspect something related to the jet issue. Got new heater and radiator hoses, radiator bushings too, and a timing gear cover gasket (as well as lots of good advice) from RPR in Albany for when I inspect the gear.
I also got my GT steering wheel emblem (complete with what looks like a larger version of the Motolita wheel) on eBay! I was expecting at least this number of issues on a neglected 40 year old car in testing its boundaries a bit.
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