Can I say that my winter of discontent is gone? Not quite, but the light at the end of the tunnel went from a hazy blur to a noticeable circle. Saturday had the beautiful weather that was predicted so working in the driveway was pleasurable. Attempting to stick to my to-do list of Friday’s post, I started by installing the pressure gauge using some 3/8” fuel hose, and a spare fuel pump nipple. With the engine idling the current fuel pump (call it pump #1) showed a reading of 10 psi (remember stock is 3-4). I was giddy with joy over this failure. It appeared that I’d found the source of Glinda’ horrendously low fuel mileage. Not to fix the failure. With two GUP pumps on the shelf, I decided to see if either of them has the right output before I popped open pump #1. Well, pump #2 was only slightly better at 9 psi, while pump #3 was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of fuel pumps with a reading of 14 psi. Not wanting to un-mount a pump again, I removed the five small cap screws holding the pump sandwich together, cut off about a half coil from the internal spring, and reassembled the pump. That brought the pressure down to about 12. It took five more disassemble/cut the spring/reassemble/test cycles before I got the pressure down to just a hair above 4 psi. In the end, I’d removed about two coils from the spring leaving only four. I didn’t have a chance to do a test drive to see if the quick-throttle bogging was gone, but once the rain washes the salt away, I’ll be able to get her back on the road.
The next task on the list was to install the new stereo. That went well, and the tunes that come out of the two six by nines on the package shelf sound awesome! At that point, it was time to knock off for the day.
Sunday afternoon it was Ringo, not Glinda, that kicked off the car-work. Ariel had gone to drive him to church Saturday morning and discovered his left rear tire was almost flat. She limped him over to the house, and I jacked up his left rear, pulled the tire, and quickly found the leak-causing nail. A few minutes later, the nail was out, the hole was plugged, the tire was tested and then re-installed on the car. When I’d gone to Ariel’s work to deal with the broken pin in Ringo’s door, I’d noticed the driver’s door was very difficult to latch. To address that problem, I moved the strike plate as far out as it would go. This made it possible to get the door to latch without slamming it and it doesn’t seem to have affected the fit. TYL.
With Ringo roadworthy again, I decided to divert from Glinda’s to-do list and focus on prepping the 4-speed swap parts as opposed to installing the pedal assembly. Out of the portable garage came the transmission and after some quality time on the receiving end of my grinder-mounted wire brush, it looks like something usable. As I was turning the housing around, clear 90 weight oil oozed out the hole in the differential mounting face and it looked clean. I’m not going to mess with the tranny since the optimist in me equates good oil with good transmission – it’s easy that way. Next out onto the grass for a good brushing was a bellhousing that had the letters LM written on it. I’m praying I marked it correctly. It too became clean-looking and was set in the garage for clean storage. I noted that I’ll need to replace the engine seal that is part of the bellhousing. Next I dug out the pressure plate, flywheel, and associated fasteners. The flywheel feels tight, so I’ll be able to replace the rivets with screws without any troubles (fingers-crossed). Finally, I gave a glance at differential that came out of Phil’s Corsa and the broken end of the output shaft reminded me I need get a replacement differential or rebuild this one with a new shaft. I’m going with option number one if I can score a stock open one for less than $100.
What a joy it was to make some headway in getting Glinda’s transmission swap. There are a lot of work left to do, but I’m confident now that I’ll be able to squeeze it all in before the Memorial Day weekend track day scheduled in New York.
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