She runs!
Published Thu, Oct 22 2009 7:17 PM
Three and a half weeks ago I wrote about cars, the street rod I want to build, the Mustang I’m still trying to get titled, and my Corvette. If you recall, I had just pushed the car out of the garage and washed it. The car had been sitting in the garage for five years, and there was a lot that needed to be done to get it ready to drive again. One of the first things I did was wash the car. Well, after sitting in the driveway for three weeks, I need to wash it again. I also need to clean out the interior again. There are a few minor leaks, and the interior has gotten musty – not to mention the other reasons for cleaning it out. So, tomorrow it’s time to get out the upholstery cleaner and clean the carpet, and to dust off the dashboard and wash the interior glass. I’ll also need to freshen the air a bit, but I don’t think I’ll use one of those pine scented cardboard trees.
The exterior needs another wash too. It’s time to take the clay bar to the paint and strip off the old wax as well as some of the more stubborn dirt. I need to apply a bit of rubbing compound in a couple of places too and polish away a couple of minor scratches. And then I get to apply the wax.
All of that though is merely cosmetic work. Sitting in the garage for five years has resulted in the need for other work too. For example, the battery was completely discharged. It had been drained to the point where it wouldn’t even hold a charge overnight. I replaced that last week.
I changed the oil and the oil filter a couple of days ago. That’s trivial work – except that I broke my filter wrench when I tried to remove the old oil filter, so I had to go get another one. One new filter wrench, a new filter, and five quarts of fresh oil later and I was ready to try starting the car. Or so I thought.
Of course the gasoline in the tank was bad. I expected that though. Instead of siphoning it off, I put some additives into it to stabilize it and remove the water. Since the tank was between half full and three quarters full, I put some fresh gasoline in to add some of the more volatile chemicals back in and bought a can of starting fluid (ether). This isn’t the best way to start a car after that long, but disposing of eleven gallons of old gasoline isn’t exactly straightforward. You can’t dump it down the drain, and even if it’s lost most of the volatile compounds you still can’t just set fire to it either. I have no idea where to recycle it.
Anyway, the car just wouldn’t start. Oh the motor would crank over, but it wouldn’t run. With the starting fluid the engine would run – but only so long as someone kept spraying it into the carburetor. The fact that the car would run at all was proof to me that the ignition system was working, and with the air cleaner removed so that the starting fluid could be applied it was clear that the engine was getting air. That left just one component of the combustion triangle missing – fuel.
So yesterday I went to look it over again. The fuel hose between the hard line and the pump was old and brittle, and there were obvious cracks in the smaller hose leading to the evaporative emissions canister. There weren’t any obvious cracks in the supply line, but it too was hard and unyielding. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I had found the problem.
So tonight I went and bought some fresh fuel hose. I took off the old hose and it was dry as a bone on the inside. There was no fuel in it at all – of course there wasn’t any getting to the carburetor, the fuel pump was sucking air. I noticed a lot of cracks in the old supply hose, but none that looked like they went all the way through the rubber. I replaced the hose anyway, since I had a fresh one.
Once the car was off of the jack stands, I fired it up. At first it only ran for a second or two. I wasn’t sure it was going to keep running. The second time it fired right up and ran independently. I put the starting fluid away, and waited. It kept running. I put the air cleaner back on and sealed it up, got in and kicked the idle down with the accelerator. The idle dropped to 800 RPM, right where it was supposed to be and it sounded good. I looked, and there are no fuel leaks.
I wish I could say the same about how it smelled and looked. Ugly white clouds and foul smells were emanating from the exhaust pipes. Happily though the white clouds cleared up after only a few minutes of idling. I think that most of that was moisture in the exhaust pipes. The smell is still bad, but I don’t think that will change much until I burn through this tank of gas.
I let the car sit there and idle for about twenty minutes, warming up. Then, I checked the transmission and added a bottle of transmission fluid treatment. This stuff basically replaces the additives in the old fluid and re-conditions the seals and bands. I’ve used it before and it really works.
I still haven’t quite got the car ready to drive though. After sitting in the garage for five years, the brake fluid needs replacing. I’ll be replacing that and bleeding the brakes tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll drain the old coolant and replace it with new coolant and take the old fluids down to the parts store for recycling. By Saturday it will finally be time for a shakedown cruise. The car is already tagged and insured.
By next Saturday, the car will be ready to see some regular use. After five years it’s about time.
Yes, I know the picture is dark. What can I say? It’s late. I’ll have something better to show once the brakes have been taken care of and she’s been around the block.
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T F Stern responded with:
 | One way to get rid of a tank of bad gasoline is to leave the car at the local shopping mall where thieves will do the job for you.
I once topped of the second tank of my truck only to find it had water in it. Instead of being stranded I simply flipped the lever and used the other gas tank for the week, expecting to drain the bad gas on the weekend. To my great surprise a gas thief stole all my bad gas, drained the tank dry while I was at the mall. They also tried to get into the camper part where my locksmith stuff was. A mall cop scared them off. |
Glenn Cassel AMH1(AW) USN Retired responded with:
 | I hate bleeding brakes. And try it on an airplane with a 3000 psi system! On Deck. In the rain, wind and a yellowshirt screaming at you! Just a fond memory of those halcyon days in Naval Air.
At least now when I do it on the daughter's car, I have garage space.
Nice to see it out and ready to roll. |
Perri Nelson responded with: Changing brake fluid in the rain.
 | Well Glenn, it's not a 3000 psi system, but it is raining. I have garage space, but not enough to do all four brakes without pushing the car into the garage, then out and turning it around and back in. That's actually one of the main reasons the car is sitting outside as I do most of the work on it, a lack of side clearance. Since I can't change the fluid under cover, and since it's raining, and since it really has to be changed (there's not enough of it in the master cylinder, and it looks dark and murky - not a good sign), I'm going to wait until tomorrow when the weather's a bit better. Oh, and T.F., while that might work, I think it might take a bit of time before someone enterprising enough to steal my gas but not quite enterprising enough to steal the car too came along. Thanks for the "suggestion", but I think I'll just drive it off and keep an eye on things for a while. That does leave me wondering though... what did they do with your gas after they stole it? |
T F Stern responded with:
| Perry, My guess is they got about a block before they had to get a wrecker. Payback is a wonderful thing sometimes. |
Glenn Cassel AMH1(AW) USN Retired responded with:
| Point well taken, there Perri. I understand completely. I did a radiator fan motor on the Wife's PT cruiser awhile back. It was serious surgery to get it done. Even the grille has to come off! |
Perri Nelson responded with: PT Cruisers.
| I've got a PT Cruiser. A couple of years ago it started acting really funny. I would start it and the speedometer would whip around and slam against the stop peg, then back. As I was driving it down the road the transmission would occasionally surge and the speedometer would whip over to 120 mph and then down again. The car would suddenly downshift at strange times, and became undriveable. I really like older technology in cars. It's so simple. Computers that control everything can be a pain in the neck when the sensors start to go bad - and they eventually do in the environment they're exposed to. We diagnosed the problem as a bad speed sensor. It turns out the PT Cruiser has two of them, one on the input side of the transmission and one on the output side. I bought them both and put the car up on jack stands to change them. Funny thing that. I couldn't get to them from under the car. I had to remove the air cleaner assembly, then the battery to get to them. Then I was able to take out one of them, and sliced the back of my hand doing it on the fan mounts protruding through the radiator. The instruction manual told me that to replace the other sensor I would have to remove the battery mounting bracket. Fat chance. I have an early model of the PT Cruiser and when I looked for the bolts it was mounted with there weren't any. The bracket was welded on. Since I'm the original owner I can testify to the fact that it hadn't gone through a shoddy repair job. Fortunately for me, the one sensor I was able to change was the one that needed changing. That car's got nearly 170,000 miles on it. Now the computer's starting to act weird again. At random times it simply shuts everything off. Then things work again. The first time this happened it turned out that the battery cables had corroded to the point that the positive cable was able to break loose on a severe bump. (Hey, it's a maintenance free battery and you have to remove quite a few things to even get to where you can see the thing!) I replaced them and the problem went away. For a while. Then I gave a friend a jump - and my car died as soon as he tried to start his. I ended up replacing the battery and things seem to have been fixed - at least the car hasn't acted up in three months. The thing is - I just don't trust it anymore. Mechanical linkages wear out. I can understand that. Computer controlled engines ought to be straightforward - and they are, until they fail. Then diagnostics gets to be a real pain, especially when there are no codes to read. Technology. Sometimes advances just aren't worth the trouble. Maybe that is why I love old cars. |