Before diving into discussing the work accomplished over the weekend, I need to share a couple events in Glinda’s life. I thought I’d already blogged about them, but a quick search proved a complete lack of documentation. First is an air cleaner modification. Back in the days of Lucy, I’d bought PVC couplers that were supposed to fit between the air cleaners and the carburetors to increase the straightaway the incoming air travelled before entering the carb. That modification lasted about a week when I found the air cleaners sitting askew atop the carbs. I reverted back to stock and squirreled away the PVC pieces. With some time to kill a few weekends back, I installed extensions between each of Glinda’s two carburetors and the associated end of the air cleaner cross-tube. In order to accommodate the increased height of the air-filter housing, I needed to increase the length of the stud that retains the cover. To do this, I ran two of the correct-sized nuts together onto a piece of all-thread and welded two nuts together. After letting the fabrication cool, I unscrewed it from the all-thread and installed it part-way onto the existing stud. Into the open end of the welded nuts, I then screwed in a 4” long piece of all-thread and snugged it against the end of the stud to lock it in place. It was the perfect length for the top wing-nut to hold the air cleaner cover in place. Zip-ties held the ends of the crossover tube to the carburetors.
The other undocumented work was the voltage regulator I’d mentioned in my last post. Well, it arrived from Amazon, and, once installed, actually increased the voltage reading rather than reducing it. It went back to Amazon, and I’ve chastised myself (again) for not supporting a Corvair parts’ vendor. The old regulator is back in place and borrowing Luna’s for another test is on the to-do list.Now back to yesterday’s activities – which were focused on Glinda.
First issue to address was her clunking clutch. After backing her up onto the ramps, I tried all the linkage adjustments I could from one extreme to the other. Sadly, it was all for naught. Here’s a video of the issue as it now stands: https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=xOwfakkv-8o. I posted my problem on VirtualVairs and the first few responses I got all point to the clutch fork incorrectly installed. One responder’s sharp eye spotted a slight sideways movement of the rod that pushes the fork right as the clunk occurs. That, to me, is an excellent clue the fork’s got an installation issue. This wouldn’t surprise me since, at one point in my working on this car, I accidentally popped the fork off the pivot ball. I’d thought, at the time, that I’d properly popped it back into place, but that sounds doubtful now. Sadly, I don’t think it’s possible to access the fork’s attachment point through the small hole in the bell-housing. I think, however, I can drop the drivetrain enough to slide the engine rearward to access the clutch area. My hope and prayer is that I do NOT need to disconnect axles and control arms. There’s rain in the forecast and taxes to be done, so this project, however involved it gets, will have to wait a week.
The second issue I addressed was the stumbling performance under heavy acceleration. In keeping with my bad luck with Pertronix, I swapped out the Ignitor II for Glinda’s original points’ plate and made the necessary dwell and timing adjustments. The whole clutch thing will keep me from finding out if I’ve solved the problem until that’s resolved.
The third issue I fixed was the sticking throttle. I'd installed one of the new engine carburetor linkage pieces too close to it's neighbor and they were binding at wide-open-throttle. I moved the part slightly and the binding is history.
The final thing I did was finally install the last throttle linkage pivot subassembly. This was a piece I got a while ago, but was unable to use as-is since I couldn’t use the later transmission. The maker of this fine product, Roger Parent, sent me an adapter bracket that accommodates bolting his pivot onto the early transmission, so that’s just what I did. It looks and works wonderfully - nice and smooth actuation.
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