White '73 99LE Notchback

[DrewP]

In the spirit of posting more and complaining less, I did get a lot done on this car that I haven't put up yet.

David spent a while cleaning the interior and got the carpets and door panels looking really good. The driver's seat and rear bench seat are pretty shot, need to get those re-covered, and we pulled the engine out to clean the engine bay really good, and I had to pull the intake off to rebuild the water pump anyway.




Filthy.








Grossssss......








The guy I bought the car from said he put a new pump in it before he stopped driving it.... then it sat for 11 years. This is what happened.








It took a good hour to get the water pump cover off, it was REALLY on there. I had to put a length of pipe into the radiator hose spout to lever it off, and put a crack along the length of the spout. I cleaned it real good, put a nice V-notch the length of the crack and ran a tig bead and sanded it smooth again. It actually welded pretty nicely for being corrodey old casting alloy.

[nutcase]

Amazed it didn't just shatter! I tend to use a rubber mallet to rotate the cap free - but not had one that bad!

[Geoff]

I've found that the flares at the end of the spouts tend to be poorly formed which of course can lead to leaking hoses or hoses slipping off. If you've still got the thing off you might want to run a weld bead around the end of the spouts in bad looking areas.

[DrewP]

Amazed it didn't just shatter! I tend to use a rubber mallet to rotate the cap free - but not had one that bad!

I was too. I was using a combination of rubber mallet, lead mallet, paint scrapers and other spacers I could get between the block and the flange to work it up and off, but it did NOT want to come off.

I've found that the flares at the end of the spouts tend to be poorly formed which of course can lead to leaking hoses or hoses slipping off. If you've still got the thing off you might want to run a weld bead around the end of the spouts in bad looking areas.

I noticed that too, I hit around the inside edge with the flap disc while I had it off. That's a good suggestion, I may do this since it's still off. I need to grab a photo of it finished.

[DrewP]

Hopefully everybody is just taking advantage of the long days to work on super cool projects that they will be posting about any day now.

Have been getting work done on the white car!


Engine out to do some cleaning - 10 years of outside parking took a toll, lots of nests and things.







It's white in there again!





Pressure washed the EXTERIOR. Had never done that before... did wonders.






Ick.






Hose into the block drain to force all the gunk out the top. There was a lot of gunk.










David pried the tank out, which as per usual was all black. But it's actually yellow underneath!>?>?! Was not expecting to find that....











The 9000 gives an excellent reading angle for 99 shop manuals and beers.






Got some 8ft fluorescent fixtures that we were throwing away at work, but haven't hung them yet, so 99 got a halo.






Got the engine almost all the way back together with everything cleaned up, but when I went to re-time the distributor and pulled the cam cover off to verify TDC I found lots of corrosion around the #4 lifters and on the cam carrier, so we pulled it all apart for a good soak before trying to fire it.







Little Scotchbrite in the bores.

[Geoff]

Progress! The metal tanks have a cream-colored coating on them. I've seen some that people have sprayed undercoating on. I suppose it's possible that the factory could have given them a quick coat of black in the visible areas...

[DrewP]

This one was allll road gunk. The tank in the yellow car is practically black all the way around, but I didn't have my pressure washer until recently, so I'll see what color I uncover when I get back to working on that car. 4 (or 5 if I get ambitious enough to figure out why my '85 sticks in 5th) cars ahead in line right now.

[DrewP]

We put it all back together, replaced all the rubber fuel lines, monkeyed with an early D-jet fuel pump for a while, and got it to sort of fire, on one or two cylinders!

Wouldn't really run, and after a few tries we couldn't get it to fire again, fuel pressure and compression checks are next, but it's close!

[DougM]

Two easy things to check for a D-jet no start - the ground gang at the battery tray has to have good contact, or it will not start. The other thing is to set the points with a dwell meter - 50 degrees is where you want to be.

[nutcase]

Welcome Doug

[DrewP]

Thanks for the quick reply Doug.

Ooh. I feel like my battery negative is just the battery strap now that I think about it - I wonder if I lost some ground lugs in the shuffle.

The car had a Pertronix ignition trigger kit installed before I got it, was supposedly parked running.

I have strong spark when I spin the distributor over by hand with the ignition on, and I have fuel pump running during cranking and when distributor is turning.

When distributor is turning and I pull the injectors up out of the manifold all 4 trigger and look to have decent spray pattern.

Will report back when I have more time to sift through all the wiring again.

[DougM]

The battery strap is one, and the strap that goes to the trans is also grounded there. There is also a wire gang coming from the injectors that ground there too......but you have injectors spraying, so maybe it's a non-issue. Spark, fuel, compression, and the right timing - what's missing?

There wasn't much going on at the other forums, so I figured I had to join this one as well.

[Jordan]

We have lots of pretty pictures.

[DrewP]

We sometimes get off our asses and actually work on our cars!

[GOLFGURU]

Try using stock points and condencer,my rigg ran like crap with the pertronix bs...Also check trigger contacts for oxidation and wear...Also fuel preasure regulator and coil..Joe