In The Bag
In The Bag
In The Bag
No, not me. Not on New Year’s Eve... a few little clean up/fix up things today.
First of all, repair some cracks in the windshield washer bag with hot glue, a tip I picked up from something I read in one of the online forums, which one I can’t recall. This is nice, as it allows me to use the original washer fluid reservoir and not have to buy a new one that would look really out of place in the engine compartment. I still have to figure out which line goes to which fitting, but I’ll do some consulting of the service manual which I am sure will have the information.
Next, I installed new rubber insulating boots on the ignition coil terminals. The old one was in pretty bad shape, and there wasn’t one on the distributor side of the coil at all. It’s all in the details...
Next was to replace a really sad looking rubber elbow on the throttle plate vacuum line along with a breather line going to the air cleaner housing. Here’s the old elbow:
Yeah, I truly believe there were some serious vacuum leaks here. Yuck. And of course the old braided hose on the air cleaner wasn’t much better:
And yes, I have a new bellows for the connection between the throttle plate housing and air cleaner on the way from Germany. That one’s in pretty poor shape as well.
Ran a new hard plastic line to the distributor vacuum advance as the old one was patched with flexible hose in several places. Discovered that the connection at the vacuum advance was a compression fitting with a metric ferrule, something the Ace Hardware “majik boxes” couldn’t even produce, so I cut off the piece and spliced it into the new line with some hose. Put a ferrule on my dealer stock order.
I was bummed, as my order of hoses from BelMetric got misrouted and is languishing in the USPS routing center in Opa Locka. But, something did come today that I have been waiting for - a set of NOS front turn signal lenses! Here’s old and new to compare and contrast:
I had someone suggest that my turn signal lenses might have been Euro versions, as apparently there were versions that were half clear, half orange/yellow, or o they claimed. Looks like mine were just faded from UV exposure. But the new ones sure look nice!
And not only did the turn signal lenses show up today, so did a can of aircraft stripper, so it’s time to do some stripping of wood trim! Here’s the lower windshield/dash pieces after a couple of coats of stripper and some scraping:
And now after rinsing and some more cleaning:
They look pretty blotchy, but that’s normal and will go away as they dry out. Despite some potential damage from the elements in the corners, they are amazingly intact and should finish up nicely. Tomorrow I’m going to start in on the other windshield surround pieces and the door trim, too. Fun!
Monday, December 31, 2018