It’s been a while, and, fortunately, nothing very noteworthy has happened in the month or so since I last posted. I’ve been switching back-and-forth driving Glinda one day, Ringo the next. Last Friday evening, after struggling to see though the foggy windshield during my drive in the rain, I decided to spend some time on Ringo addressing his defroster/heater and some other niggling issues. First on the list was adjusting the latch plate on the driver’s door again. A little adjustment out, and latching was again accomplished without slamming.
Moving on to adjusting the idle speed of the engine, I connected the dwell meter to the coil terminal and ground to read rpm. The meter’s switch was set to dwell and I noticed the dwell changing as I blipped the throttle. Hmmm. Off came the vacuum advance hose, and subsequent blipping showed no movement in dwell. Unfortunately, the dwell was off by a few degrees, so I had to adjust that back to around 32 degrees, but not until I’d plugged the vacuum hose with a golf tee. Once the dwell was to spec., I readjusted the timing to about 12 degrees BTDC. Finally, I could give the idle screws a few tweaks to bring the idle speed to a little over 500 rpm with the transmission in Drive.
Next on the list was heater/defroster. I climbed under the dash, removed the three retaining screws, and dropped the controls so I could make sure all the levers were unbroken and properly set. They weren’t. The air one was bent (didn’t need it anyway), the heater one was pulled from its bracket, and one of the two defroster cable ends was also out of place. Knowing the cable was actually seized and that I was going to adjust the heater at the flapper under car, I left the heater one alone, but did re-seat the misplaced defroster. Turning my attention to the defroster doors in the rocker tunnels, I checked their operation and they were good-to-go.
Once I backed the car up on the ramps, I blocked the front wheels and released the parking brake. With 7/16ths and ½ inch wrenches in hand, I slid under the lifted rear and pushed the heater box door wide open. Next, I tightened the parking brake cable nut a half-dozen turns or so.
By that time it was late, so I called it a day.
Monday and Tuesday were Glinda days, but yesterday morning I grabbed Ringo’s keys and slid behind his wheel for my morning drive. I noticed, as I accelerated to get on the beltway, that the throttle response was not a good as the last time I’d driven him. Looks like I need to bump up the timing. Today he again was my chosen whip, and, while I could still stay up with 65-70 mph traffic, I wasn’t happy with the loping at part throttle. I’ll also be checking dwell and looking for vacuum leaks the next time I’m under his engine lid.
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