May 9, 2003

Cracked Head Caught my dad’s cold on vacation, so I haven’t done much on the car lately except stress out about how in the hell I’m going to drop the engine to change the heads. I know people have done this a million times, but it will be my first time doing it. I ended up tearing down most of the $50 engine over the last weekend in April. That was way cool. Found out the metal around the spark plug holes had major cracks around them reaching to the valve seats. Along with that, cylinders three and four had lots of pitting on the top of the cylinder. I have no idea what that means happened, but I’d gather that the engine was not terribly well cared for. The oil was blacker than any I’d seen and the sludge on the drain plate was pretty thick. I haven’t cracked the case yet because I need to figure out how to get the gland nut off the torque converter plate on the crank. I’m going to try the “two screw” trick on the fan on the other side. Just ordered another floor jack from Sears, this one goes up to 21″ so it should be high enough to get the back end of the car high enough to drop the engine. I guess it’s just something I shouldn’t think too much about and should just do it. Once that’s done, I think it’s just the brakes I have to do and she should be running after that, hopefully ready for inspection & registration. Hope to get to some of that this weekend.

April 21, 2003

Chewed Gland Nut Wife and I went to a beautiful suburb of Philadelphia today to pick up a new engine and transmission for the Square. The Transmission is going up to my parents’ house in New Hampshire until I (hopefully never) need it, or until we get our house another year or so from now. The transmission is an automatic out of a marina blue 71, just like mine. The engine was out of the same car, which had been converted to carbs (the pain!)… I’ll have to check the engine number and see if it’s at all close to mine. The car had been abandoned on the streets of Philly and was sold by the city for spare parts because it had no title. At least that’s what the guy who bought it told me. I guess you can’t get a title for an abandoned car? Anyway, it looks like it had been left there because the pulley had sheared off the crankshaft. Yipes. It also looks like someone had a go-around with the gland nut on the other side. I guess I’ll start tearing this one apart on my vacation next week. Hopefully just about everything is good inside and I can rebuild it to get a few more thousand miles from it. I’m going to be doing this on my deck, so it should be lots of fun. (ugh) When we get our house I will, of course, be revisiting this, but hopefully this will get me going until then. Will probably need a new crankshaft. Once I replace this motor, I will probably disassemble the one currently in the car to see what’s going on with that bad cylinder (I imagine I will not have to go far to find out). What an adventure this is turning out to be!

April 20, 2003

Decided to actually pull the back of the car out of the garage to double-check the valves and torque down the lower part of the heads to see if that was causing my low compression reading on cylinder #3. I realized when I tried to check the valves on Thursday night that I had the engine in the complete wrong position. For some reason I hadn’t been able to see the notch in the distributor that signified cylinder #1. I left Thursday night thinking I had done something very wrong, and a couple people on the Type 3 list mentioned that I must have had the engine turned 360 degrees incorrectly if I couldn’t adjust the valves. That’s exactly what had happened. So I turned the engine over to where it should be for cylinder #3 and took the valve cover off, removed the rocker arms and checked the torque on the heads. They were way loose and I was hoping this was my problem. Put the rocker arms back on, torqued them up, did a complete valve adjustment, then did the compression test. I gained 10psi on cylinder #3, but that still only brought it to 60psi, which means either way I’m going to have to pull the engine out. Decided *not* to do that today. Instead, I jacked up the front of the car to get a good look at the underneath of the gas tank & to replace the fuel lines in the front. I discovered a little canister on the front of the torsion bar beam and didn’t know what it was. It went to the pressure outlet of the fuel pump and then to a line in the tunnel. A few posts on the Type 3 list noted that this was a “fuel muffler,” and that most cars either had it removed by now, or could have it removed. I decided to leave it on though and replaced its fuel hoses. The only one I did not do was the one from the three-way plastic plug to the tank itself. I was going to put a long hose on that one so the tank would be easier to take out if and when necessary, but Jim Adney suggested that I leave the tank because it’s tough to seal it up sometimes after you get it out. I’m leaving it. I took the fuel pump with me because I wanted to take it apart, but knowing how much it costs, I think I’ll leave the taking apart for when I have some more cash (or until I it actually fails) in case I futz it up. I do need to get at least one new mounting bracket for the pump though, as it looks like the rubber sheared off from the clamp that holds the pump. The pump was just kind of “resting” on the bushing. Also replaced the fuel filter as well.

April 16, 2003

Another beautiful night last night, and my wife was in Manhattan with my stepson attending an open house at a school for holistic medicine, so I figured I’d stop by the car on my way home & finally do the compression check. Got all the plugs out and screwed in the plug for the tester. Took all the wires off the distributor cap as I needed to sort out the order anyway, and I have a new set coming from Aircooled.net. Got in the car, turned the key for a couple seconds & went back to take a look at the gauge. 120psi. Much better than I had hoped for. Took the hose and adapter out of cylinder 2 and did cylinder 1. 128psi. Nice. Got to cylinder 3. 50psi. Yipes. Did cylinder 4, 120psi and then went back to cylinder 3 to check it again. Again, 50psi. Not good. At this point I was thinking it was most likely valve related, as I didn’t think the rings could be that far gone on only one cylinder. It started raining so I packed up & went home, trying to figure out what to do next. A couple people on the Type3 list said I should check my valve adjustment (will do that tonight or Saturday) and Russ mentioned that there’s a chance that a piece of carbon might be caught in the valve keeping it from sealing shut.

April 15, 2003

Gas Tank I had grand ambitions tonight, but ended up doing just a few things. I was glad to see the battery was still fine and that I didn’t have any mysterious drainage from anything. However, I realized the clock actually didn’t work. It ticks, but it doesn’t keep time. Not a priority in any case. As recommended by Jim Adney off the type 3 list, I checked the starter terminal connections to see if they were mixed up, as that could be causing the problem where I don’t hear the fuel pump relay clicking off after a second or two of the ignition being on and the car not starting. Wires were on the correct terminals but there was a lot of corrosion on the red/white terminal. Cleaned it off a bit and wondered why there wasn’t a plastic boot on it to protect it from the elements. I had been wanting to check the trigger points in the distributor, so I finally loosened the adjustment screw and got the distributor out. Pulled out the trigger points module and everything in there was very clean. I took whatever little gunk was off the plastic tabs that hit the distributor cam lobes, put just a dab of lube on the cam and put the points back in. Sometime during this operation, a couple plug wires came off the distributor cap. Damn. Decided to order a new set & just make sure everything is rewired properly when I put the new wire set on. Old ones were questionable anyway.

Also, in my first most embarrassing moment, I realized that the gas tank is most likely empty. The Muir book says to watch out for this, but did I pay attention to that? Nope. Turned the key and for the first time watched the gas gauge go… NOWHERE. Got out and pushed on the side of the car with the hood open to see if I could hear any sloshing. Nothing. I figure now would be a good time to change all my fuel lines. I’ll take care of that Saturday before putting any gasoline in the tank. It probably might not be a bad idea to check the status of the tank as well. Listened to a little bit of the Bruins game 4 on the Wolfsburg radio. Sweet.