Saturday I took my first drive around the neighborhood in Glinda. Believe it or not, this was my first time behind the wheel of a LM. Surprise, surprise - I really liked it. It definitely feels different than the EMs I’ve tooling around in. Before I took it on the road, however, I dealt with the leaky return fuel hose. I ended up replacing both rubber hoses (supply and return) since I had the wheel off and the car up on the jackstand. Wouldn’t you know it, fixing that end of the line exposed the fact that the other end – the one that dumps the returned fuel back into the filler pipe also leaked. Since it was not spewing out madly, I decided the car was safe for my maiden drive.
The real purpose of the drive was to make sure there weren’t any more issues that needed adding to the to-do list. Unfortunately a couple things popped up – new cups on the carburetors’ accelerator pumps and a bump down in timing to reduce the pinging under load. The latter may go away with the carb repair – we’ll see.
With the drive over, I drove Glinda’s front end up on the ramps to replace the leaky rubber hose. What a joy it is to work a project with gas running down one’s arm. NOT! I was ready to catch the fuel with a drain pan when the old hose just pulled apart. What I wasn’t ready for was the constant dribbling of gas as I cleaned the outside of the tube. Here’s a newsflash - gas burns! Not only that flaming kind of burn, but the skin hurting kind of burn. With the rubber residue gone, I slipped the end of the hose over the tube and the dribbling ceased. Fortunately, I had just enough hose left from the two foot length I’d bought to bridge the gap between tube ends. With new clamps tightened that task can be crossed off the list. I did take a close look and feel of the last piece of fuel hose – the one between the outlet of the tank and supply tube. It still feels flexible and showed no signs of cracking. I would have liked to have replaced it, but the full tank of high-test convinced me otherwise.
Yesterday, Victoria and I worked together on her car. We moved Glinda out into the driveway where Victoria cleaned off all the Bondo dust wiping and vacuuming every surface. I reinstalled the ductwork and front pan. Then we pushed the car back into the garage where she scraped all the tape residue off the windows and began the arduous task of masking off the areas that aren’t going to be painted. While she toiled away on that, I cleaned and repacked the right front wheel bearing. With that side of the car on a jackstand, Victoria cleaned the Zerk fittings in preparation for the shots of grease. Sadly, we only got one balljoint filled before the gun ran out of grease. Another FLAPS trip is in my future. Issues with other family vehicles prevented me from doing the passenger side wheelbearings, but I’ll get to those this evening.
My hope is that I’ll be able to shoot a couple coats of epoxy primer Wednesday. With that waterproof primer in place and the rest of the lubrication completed, the car will be good to drive. To get there, we’ve still got quite a bit of masking left to do.
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