 |
PM |  | |
Quote | | |
Reply | | |
Full Topic | |
| Joined: | 09-17-2007 |
| Location: | San Francisco, California USA |
| Posts: | 221 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
Started to travel more for work and ended up leaving her with a friend who had a garage when I moved to a new place that didn't have one. The plan originally was just to have her set there for a bit while I finished some extended trips. Disaster: friend left her out in the rain one night. I had a nicely made top on her at the time but it rained and it leaked pretty bad. He did this for a few days, then put her back in the garage when I yelled at him.
When I got back from the trip it was damp inside. I was furious and pulled the mats to discover some nice surface rust formed over the weeks it was sitting in the water. I ended up pulling the entire floor mats and spending ridiculous hours media blasting, grinding, and prepping the floors and then putting down some heavy epoxy paint. It was again 100% rust free. This process took weeks for me working very part time as real world work was extremely heavy.
Moved to a JHPS 4 piston front setup and rebuilt the entire brake system in late 2008. Went to a Petronix Ignitor instead of points, still endlessly messing with that decel popping problem.
Coming back from a Sharks game in 2008 with a friend we achieved a hella of a speed coming back on 280 north! No rev limiter and this thing was pushing max rpms, a nice little treat (of course at legal :) speeds).
All of a sudden carb popping was worse. I had eliminated the ballast resistor and went to a Petronix coil. I suspected ignition, but wasn't particularly knowledgeable and messed with it in bad ways, reversing polarity by mistake and leaving the ignition on without the car running. I believe that to the problem now, but at the time I was unsure and started to think carbs.
I ended up rebuilding the carbs, Italian DCOE 45's. I felt like the accelerator pump piston might be worn but I really didn't know better, and started to think - maybe I should just get new carbs. Ended up selling the Italians and got a new pair of Spanish Webers, which I now feel was foolish. It was a 1:1 trade at least, but the Italians were just nicer in general.
I went crazy with different Jet/Choke/Venturi etc settings. I got good advice from this board and things improved a bit. One mystery was the extremely lean main jets that the car had originally. 125's! The engine was set up with a 107 style high rev high power at the top end, or at least this was the best guess as I never got the originally cam specs.
Had an engine fire. Was swapping jets and didn't tighten down the fuel line to the carb well enough and it sprayed a little and whoosh! Fairly minor as I had an extinguisher on hand and got it out in a few seconds, didn't even really burn anything. Replaced the distributor cap and spent 20 hours cleaning out all the Halon dust from the engine compartment. Live and learn.
Work was crazy and I had so many other restoration projects I started to drive her less and less. I had put 20k miles in 3 years and then all of a sudden it was sitting, garaged and covered. It had some really bad days starting and running and I was confused as to the cause, and so many other restoration projects- A 69 BMW R60/2, a 67 BSA Lightning, lots of Porsche's and a ton of friend's projects, etc. A Harley chopper, etc. You know the usual excuses!
I remember fitting some Lotus cam covers off an Esprit I picked up at a swap meet. Looked amazing! This period off the road gradually developed into 12 years!
