captainOCD

This one hasn't been too bad to get in decent shape so far. So far the control arms needing replaced seems like it's going to be the biggest pain. The other 86.5 car now, that one's going to be a fight.

DR

This one was just a practice run for the other, should be just the right confidence boost you need to beat it back to life!

Great job with the saves you are doing, especially on keeping a pair of 86.5s out of the salvage yard and crusher.

Happy Friday,

Dave

captainOCD

...or nationwide is gonna screw things up again, so now nothing can be done until Monday. What a bunch of jagoffs.

captainOCD

Ok, so the car went for it's first venture out tonight. Just took it about 2 miles up the road to fill up with gas and then around the block to get home.

The car was running fine on the way to the gas station and on the way back until I decided to give it about 3/4 throttle pulling away from a redlight. It ran great up to about 4500rpm and then sounded like it backfired. I let off then and it seemed like it was running a little rough. I was only about 1/2 a mile from my neighborhood so I more or less just coasted it off the main road into the subdivision. It idled fine, but sounded like it was missing badly when you gave it any gas. I got it in the garage and shut it down and restarted it. Still seemed a little rough. Let it idle for 2 minutes or so and took it around the street here and it's running completely fine again. So I really don't know what was going on with it there. Seems more electrical than mechanical though.

Sucking down $50 of premium.


Brake torqued it a little too much in the garage. Surprisingly it left 2 marks.

soontobered84

Best looking car in the parking lot by far!

captainOCD

And the paint on that side is even half decent.

DR

Hi Matt,

Looking GREAT!! Your story about taking it easy and then getting on the way home made me laugh. Bought a 79 basket-case eons ago, babied that ole thing across metro Atlanta battling T-Storms, and broken wiper mechanisms taking 3 hours to get home that would normally be 45 min.

So I baby it all the way until I turned into my subdivision and got on it, it ran like a scalded dog and then died as I coasted to the bottom of a hill. Had to call a wrecker to tow it 300 yards to my house...grrrrrrr

Anyway, I discovered that fuel tank had all sorts of sediment from sitting and from being old and I stirred it all up when I nailed it and clogged everything up. This doesn't sound the same, but I can't recall if you mentioned inspecting your tanks?

Keep on keeping on,

Dave

captainOCD

I didn't inspect the tank, but I did drain out about 7 gallons of bad gas from it. Don't remember seeing anything coming out, but that was a couple months ago now. It got a new fuel pump and fuel filter then too.

I was going to put a timing light and a fuel pressure gauge on it to see if either of those looked strange, but it started behaving before I could.

I learned a couple years ago with my mom's vw cabrio (ignition coil died) that if I can make it to the top of the first hill in the neighborhood and don't have to stop for any other cars, I can make it the 2 miles through the neighborhood and into the yard with just gravity. Fortunately it didn't come to that though.

Shawn Stanford

You definitely need to bring it to Frenzy. It'll look great parked next to the Lump!

captainOCD

If it gets some trouble free miles under it's belt first I'll definitely try. Right now upper control arms, tires, and figuring out what made it run badly last night are at the top of the needs done list.

captainOCD

Took it for another drive today. Still running fine today. Kept it under 3500rpm this time though.

Mrmerlin

Looking good, that paint patina is brilliant

a4sfed928

That's exactly what I thought, don't paint it!

captainOCD

At the very least I need to do something about the rust spots on the roof and sunroof. Body work is low on the priority list compared to the mechanical stuff though.

captainOCD

Decided to poke around in the front suspension some more tonight and found that only the upper balljoint on the passenger's side is bad. The driver's side one is actually ok. The slop I felt in the driver's side is actually the wheel bearing. Looks like I need some special tool to get the cap off to get to the wheel bearing.

So now to decide if I should just replace that one control arm with a used or rebuilt one or still go with Carl's. Currently leaning towards doing the pair of them still so that the bushings and joints are the same on both sides.


While poking around I spotted what looks like a bulge on the left front tire. I know the tires are old and needed replaced, but that just got bumped up in priority. Had a coupon, so I ordered a set of general gmax rs tires.



Looks like an 05 manufacturing year, so they're old.