Thursday, August 15, 2013

Still Quiet on the Fleet Front

So it’s been two weeks since I last posted anything of significance. Yeah, work’s been REALLY busy (presentation was today), and yeah, home life’s pretty busy too (that won’t change any time soon), but no, there hasn’t really been anything worthy typing about. I’m sure the title of this post will result in breakdown or two.

Ringo has been behaving – no new complaints from Ariel other than a warning I’ll probably have to replace his starter again since there have been a few times, she’s turn the key and the Bendix has not engaged, but it’s never stranded her – yet.

Since Glinda is the only fleet member with issues, the rest of this post is about her. Last Saturday I filled the pickup’s bed with wheels and tires and drove to the local Firestone store. A couple hours and $60 later, her green wheels were shod with the best 185-80/13 tires I could pull from my stash. She’s sporting quite old-school look with her dog-dish hubcaps. The following shows her with her EM caps, but I’ve since changed to a set of LM that would have been stock for ‘68s.

While running relatively well getting me to and from work and a car show, is showing really low gas mileage and poor engine response both when I floor (it almost dies) and when I try accelerating at freeway speeds. I thought it was an electrical issue, so I gave her a full tune-up (new rotor, condenser, points, cap, and cleaned up the spark plugs [my apologies for the camera focusing on my knees instead of the more photogenic plug ends]). This decreased the high speed missing, but didn’t get rid of it altogether, but it hasn’t seemed to affect the mileage. I don’t want to believe the newly rebuilt carburetors are the issue, but I need to rule them out. I’m going to borrow Luna’s (even though I’m unsure of their provenance), and see if, after installation and balancing, I address at least the full-throttle frustration and high-speed disappointment.

Finally, I can report I did seal around her windshield and it appears I was successful in stopping the under-dash puddling.

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