A lot of life has happened in the last month. A good bit of it wasn't good. That's life, I guess.
Dad and I were able to get together on Saturday and make some progress. I started out looking under the hood with a mirror and a bright light trying to find where Christine is leaking oil from. Wherever it is, its not much. There was one small spot on the floor, that admittedly, I didn't look at very closely. I ended up rolling around over it with my coveralls and inadvertently cleaning it up before I got a chance to examine it. I had observed some oil on the plate for the PCV valve at the back of the intake when we stopped for gas on our first test drive since the latest build on the transmission. I pulled the bolts for the plate and put some thread sealant on them. I'll keep an eye on it....
I found some evidence of oil on the back of the passenger side head. It wasn't much. I cleaned it with surface cleaner (think pre-paint prep solvent) so now I know it is dry and will keep an eye on it. I suspect the passenger valve cover gasket but I'm not sure. I spent a lot of time under the car looking and wiping. Like I said, there wasn't much, but there was a little. There had been a little oil on top of the oil filter from pulling and replacing the oil pressure sender. I know that was some of it so I got that cleaned up. We just need to drive the car some more and see how it does at this point.
Meanwhile, Dad finished up the sound deadening in the trunk. He was nearly done with it and pulled off for some reason none of us remember. Probably to work on something else and the trunk was being used as storage for the project. Here he is working on it....
Finished up...
Followed by the mat, spare, jack, etc....
Sad story on the spare tire. Dad had the spare out of the trunk to install the Dynamat. In the meantime, it was in his shed, in the back yard. There were some utility workers back there installing a fiber optic cable. One of them stole his spare, along with some other things out of his shed. Needless to say, his shed and his gates are locked now, and it isn't likely that any utility workers will be allowed access without his supervision but it sucks. It was a 15" Kelsey-Hays wheel which is sort of rare. Few of these cars had 15's. Most had 14's. It is unlikely the wheel was usable so they probably threw it away. The tire was brand new. It cost Dad just under $300 by the time he bought a wheel (lucky he could find one), painted it, and put a new tire on it. We're both glad there is a spare in the trunk though. We want to start driving this car places so it needs a spare.
While Dad was working on the trunk, I jacked up the car and put it on stands. I pulled the drain plug on the GearVendors and replaced the sealing washer on it with a copper washer. Then I refilled it with fresh fluid so it got like a 70 mile oil change. Next I replaced the front emergency brake cable. There wasn't really anything wrong with the one on the car except that the little rubber dust boot where the steel cable comes out its housing was pretty decrepit. We couldn't find a replacement dust boot and Dad happened upon a NOS cable with a good boot so the car got an upgrade. There was a little bit involved with that project since you have to pull the pedal loose from the cowl to get the cabin end of the cable out it. It went smoothly and I went with a much less aggressive adjustment of the emergency brake that is much more to Dad's liking. Finally, Dad got under the car with me and we adjusted both of the tail pipes. Both were hard against the upper shock mount bolt on their respective side. They must have moved around on us while we had the intermediate part of the system out. It wasn't hard. We have a V-band clamp right before the tailpipe goes over the rear axle and then a strap type clamp at the muffler at the other end. It was just a matter of breaking both loose, rotating the pipe and then tightening each end while the other of us held the pipe to make sure it didn't walk on us.
That should have a good bit of the punch list I included in my last post done. Hopefully there is no more oil leak but I'm unconvinced at the moment. The next time I go over there I plan to pull the low pressure A/C line off and work on lengthening it to get it off of the driver's side valve cover. Then I want to pull another vacuum on the system and see how it holds. Once we get some warmer weather we'll charge the system.
Dad is still working on blocking the car but he is working towards getting it painted, hopefully this spring or early summer.
That's it for now gents. I'll update again as progress warrants. Until then, best wishes and thanks for the interest, likes and comments.
Sincerely,
--Jared
