Progressish

I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed, but I was really hoping to at least hear her run over the weekend. And maybe take her for a spin around the block. Sometimes I forget why I named her Pandora…

I did manage to get the new gas tank installed. She’s not had one of those for about 10 years now.

The original plan was to rebuild the carburetor, since it was probably full of the same crusty gunk that prompted me to get rid of the old tank, but I got excited and wanted some incentive. I put oil in her, hooked up a battery, detached the coil wire and cranked. And I got oil pressure! I plugged the coil back in, bolted on the carb, dumped a little gas down her throat and tried again. And I still had oil pressure! But otherwise nothing. Checking lights, the front end seems good, but all of the back lights are dim, so there’s definitely a problem there. The resistances on both coils I found under the hood were a little suspect, too, so a new coil will be installed.

Since chasing down electrical problems is one of my least favorite things to do, I decided to rebuild the carb since it would only take an hour or so. Once apart, I found the base was cracked. Fortunately, I have four spare Quadrajets lying around and took another apart only to discover one vacuum port was snapped off. Four hours later, I had four carburetors apart and enough parts cleaned up to build a single working one.

By this time I was running on fumes – gasoline and carburetor cleaner, mostly. I’ll assemble everything tonight and, if I can get a coil, try to start her again!