Patching the Doors...

Been a while since my last post, but I have been busy working on the wagon. The engine is running great, but will need a little finer tuning. And, the bodywork continues.

I finally gave up on the two doors on the driver's side. The damage was pretty bad, and I was constantly struggling with trying to true up the doors. So, I purchased a couple of replacements. But, they came from a sedan, so I had to remove the window frame from the original door ans swap it onto the new one. Sorry, no pics on this process, but I do have some of the rust repair on the corner of one of the passenger's side doors.

Like many cars from this era, the dew wipes gave up years (decades?) ago, and contaminants and water made their way into the door. They formed a mud at the bottom, blocking the drains and eventually rotting the corner of the door from the inside out.

I don't have a picture showing the rust, but I did get one right after cutting away the rust.

I tried to keep away from the edge of the door and out of the body line. I also tried to keep it as small as possible. Once the hole was cut and everything cleaned up, I cut a patch to weld in place. It got a pretty nice fit.

I have a copper bar with magnets in it that I used to help hold the patch in place from the backside.

My welding could be better, but it got the job done.

A minute or two with the grinder, and it is ready for a little filler to clean it up. I'm giving the Eastwood filler a try, but so far, I'm not thrilled. It's green with a blue hardener making mixing by color almost impossible relative to Bondo. It also doesn't sand as easily.

Sand, and one more coat and it should be just about ready for primer!

Back to Work!

After a miserable Michigan Winter (one of the worst on record) I am back to work! Not a lot of time to work on it today, just enough to solve the mystery of the gasoline shooting out of the secondaries vent.

From my initial research, it had to be one of two things: bad/dirty needle/seat or leaky float. Either are fixed easily enough, but less to disassemble to replace the needle valve. So I pulled the assembly, cleaned and inspected it. It look as new as it did when I installed it when I rebuilt the carb, but you never know. I replaced it in the carb, turned on the fuel pump, and...fountain of gas.

Must be the float.

So I pulled the rear bowl (I used the reusable gaskets -- yes!), disassembled the float, replace it with the new one, reassembled everything, and...fountain of gas. CRAP!

Must be the needle valve. So I did a little looking online first. Maybe I missed something. Not a whole lot to the system to mess up. Apparently I used a different set of terms for my search today, because I round option #3 that hadn't been previously discussed: on some carbs, the secondary float needs to be plastic, not brass or it will hang on the metering block off plate. Really?

Back to the carb one more time. I pulled the float adjustment screw, and with a jewelers screwdriver I tried to move the float. It was wedged in place.

One more trip to the local speed shop, Diversified Creations, for a not-so-shiney new plastic float. Repeat step #2. Brass float out, plastic float in. The plastic float is well over 1/4" less deep than the brass float was. After reattaching the rear bowl I checked the float and it moved freely.

I turned the gas on, no fountain. Mission accomplished!

Next post will hopefully cover work on the new used doors I picked up...

Not Much to Report...

Between the passing of the holidays and an abnormally severe Michigan Winter, there isn't much to report. Too cold. Too busy. And, WAY too much snow. Maybe this coming weekend I can get out into the garage when it isn't below zero out...

It Runs!

Well, I did get it to finally start about 2 weeks ago, and it sounds great. I need to tune it at this point, but I am holding off because I first need to replace the float in the secondaries.

After solving my leak issues I found I had gas flowing up through the vent on the secondaries. After confirming the needle valve was good, it had to be related to the float. I hope to get a chance to work on that this weekend.

But in the meantime, I am able to run the engine on the primaries and plug the secondaries, and it sounds great. Very pleased!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Small Set Back...

Well, I went to fire it up, but when I kicked on the fuel pump, gas came spewing out from every connection. So I am now waiting on my new fuel regulator...