At Least It Wasn’t Raining

Yesterday afternoon Ariel’s smiling face showed up on display as my cell phone rang. She immediately asked me if there was any trick to getting Heidi to start since turning the key was spinning the engine, but it wouldn’t catch. I told her no. She went to say it sounds different – not good. So, I went home last evening to prepare to do a ‘vair swap today. There were, however, a number of little things that Lucy needed taken care of before she would be ready to take to Pennsylvania. First, and foremost, I needed to replace a failed exhaust gasket which I did, but it took me a good hour-plus. Then, I installed the red welting from Ringo that covers the pinch welds in the door opening. This was part of the interior swap. Next, I removed the last two panels from Lucy’s interior that will go into Ringo. This exposed the fact that Lucy’s passenger door had no waterproof liner, so I made one from a piece of black plastic sheeting and installed with weatherstrip adhesive. With that in place I could reinstall the window cranks and door latch handle. Finally, I removed the non-working radio and radio housing since I was sick of listening to it rattle. With the wires all zip-tied neatly under the dash, I prepped her for towing by bolting on the tow-bar, attaching the safety chain, and routing the magnetic-based tow lights.

I’m really curious as to what the problem may be.

Oh yeah, almost forgot about the work I did on Glinda over the weekend. Thursday, Victoria had noticed a strong smell of gas when she turned the heater on. Turns out the fuel pump had sprung a leak. Thank God, nothing sparked a fire. Amazingly, the local Carquest had one in their warehouse and $50 later, Glinda had safe and reliable fuel delivery again. Also, she didn’t want to idle, so I cleared out some blockage in a carburetor by holding my hand over each opening and revving the engine using engine vacuum to suck all the crap out. It worked. She still has an issue with starter engagement that I’m afraid is going to require me to replace the torque converter since that’s where the ring gear is that engages with the starter pinion. Not a fun project since the engine has to come out. I need to do a close inspection of the gear teeth.