21-FEB-10

I’ve been working on the car, off and on, for the past couple of months.  I just haven’t logged anything.  Figured it was time to put something down.

Brakes.  Gotta have’em.  I replaced the master cylinder with the one I got out of my 240, since it was only a few years old, versus 32 years old.  I also replaced the front ATE calipers with Girling calipers, which necessitated replacing the hard lines.  I did this for two reasons – one, Girling pads are easier to get, and two, I had some nice Teflon-lined stainless steel lines to install.  Anyway, got it done.  This meant I had to bleed the brakes.  Rather than have the wife out there pressing on the brakes, I built a pressure bleeder using a small 1-gallon garden sprayer and miscellaneous hose and plumbing and a spare master cylinder cap.  Worked wonders and I was able to bleed the brakes by myself in under an hour.  Highly recommended.

I got the opera windows back in.  What a pain in the ass!  I put one in and then realized that I had to take it back out because the roof trim had to be put back in first.  I realized this after the fact.  Anyway, got it out and started over.  Oh, before I started, I took the windows out of the rubber so I could wash the gunk out.  After 32 years, there was alot of dirt in there!  In order to put the glass back in I knew I was going to need a thin rope to pull the seam in.  Using a standard clothes line, I ran it through a piece of paraffin to lubricated it.  A little bit of soap and water on the edge of the rubber and away we went.  Pretty easy.

While I was doing the passenger side glass, I paid close attention to the door.  I had noticed previously that it didn’t line up right and was hard to close because it would force the door up at the striker.  A 12mm socket made quick work of loosening the hinge bolts inside the car and, along with adjustment of the striker, it was straightened out.

Finally, I decided to start it up and run the car.  It started, but wow, did it have a rough idle!  It didn’t sound anywhere like what it did a couple of months ago, it had a horrible miss.  At first I thought it was the MegaSquirt, that the mixture was off.  Nope, nothing there.  That’s when I decided to take a small drift and tap on the injectors lightly, from one to four.  The first three yielded no changes, but as soon as I tapped number four, the idle smoothed out.  That makes me wonder if this will happen again.  Hmm.

Well, that’s it for this update.  I need to get it so I can close the hood and take it for a spin.  It needs to go through emissions and a vehicle inspection.  Almost there!