Monday, December 13, 2010

A Tale of Two Corvairs

On the drive home from school Friday, Ariel told me that Lucy's TEMP/PRESS light was on for most of the drive and complained that his engine wouldn’t idle. Every time she put him in neutral, the engine would die. Saturday evening I fired him up and immediately saw that the right side was the culprit. While there was visible steamy exhaust out the left tailpipe, the right side was just blowing cold air. I put my hand over the top of the right carb and the idle smoothed out – big vacuum leak in the carburetor. I pulled that carb and installed one of my racing carbs, re-fired the engine, and it idled smoothly. After balancing the carbs using my clear piece of tubing and adjusting the linkage, he was good-to-go. Ariel confirmed success when she told me last evening the light had stayed off during her entire drive back to school and he idled properly. I guess the right side was running VERY lean and actually WAS too hot.

On the negative side, Glinda spent Saturday afternoon in the heated garage with a new, extensive layer of Silicone around the windshield and backlight. After feeling cured to the touch, I put him out in the rain. After a few hours, I checked, and all seemed dry. But then Victoria took him out to run some errands and found some dark, wet spots on the front carpet. I am majorly bummed about that.

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