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Duder (CFlo's) Pea Green 1975 245 DL - Survivor Wagon

soclosenotnear said:
Looks great. Love that color/era of 240s.
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Tfrasca said:
Such a good color.
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SquareD said:
I still love this car. It needs to be "brickboarded" and kept stock forever.
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TIPSP said:
So clean!
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Thanks guys! The green machine seemed to be a hit at the show. We had 5 or 6 propositions from people who wanted to buy the car, no real offers, but I have no plans to sell anyway. Last minute roof paint buffing went well on Saturday after I grabbed a cheap Harbor Freight DA to finish the biggest panel on the car. Too bad I couldn't get the cracked windshield and cracked dash replaced before the show, but I have nice fresh parts waiting in the garage for the car.

Had a good road trip to and from Davis, made it without any issues except for the water pump starting to weep some green slime last night. No overheating though. B20 managed about 21-22mpg at maybe 73mph average speed, correcting for speedo/odo error of about 10%. I timed it to run on 91 without pinging and this gave me enough power to pull up both sides of the Grapevine in 4th gear without much strain. There's a wheel imbalance shimmy at about 75mph so I kept it below that point for most of the drive.

Fun stuff. Will post photos later.

Tfrasca: good to meet you in person and check out your 142 finally!
 
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Also I have a few plans to upgrade this thing but nothing drastic. Mostly drivability and convenience stuff. I won't change the appearance too much. It's already not 100% stock though since it does have ipd bars and stainless brake lines, and the air injection system is gone. Brickboard guys would be pissed! :run:
 
Good seeing you two at the show! I think just those couple of cheap things we talked about will really help it out as well, get you up from 96 to 115hp or so. lol
 
Duder said:
Thanks guys! The green machine seemed to be a hit at the show. We had 5 or 6 propositions from people who wanted to buy the car, no real offers, but I have no plans to sell anyway. Last minute roof paint buffing went well on Saturday after I grabbed a cheap Harbor Freight DA to finish the biggest panel on the car. Too bad I couldn't get the cracked windshield and cracked dash replaced before the show, but I have nice fresh parts waiting in the garage for the car.

Had a good road trip to and from Davis, made it without any issues except for the water pump starting to weep some green slime last night. No overheating though. B20 managed about 21-22mpg at maybe 73mph average speed, correcting for speedo/odo error of about 10%. I timed it to run on 91 without pining and this gave me enough power to pull up both sides of the Grapevine in 4th gear without much strain. There's a wheel imbalance shimmy at about 75mph so I kept it below that point for most of the drive.

Fun stuff. Will post photos later.

Tfrasca: good to meet you in person and check out your 142 finally!
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It was good to talk to you for a bit too, and glad the old 245 could make the trip. Such a cool car.
 
gsellstr said:
Good seeing you two at the show! I think just those couple of cheap things we talked about will really help it out as well, get you up from 96 to 115hp or so. lol
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Well, a 20% power increase would be worth a bit of effort! I'm trying to remember everything we talked about...

-Thinner head gasket (0.030" or so?)
-De-shrouding exhaust ports that are terribly restrictive
-Bigger valves (don't remember which diameters you suggested)
-Header?
-Cam?

What else was there?

Tfrasca said:
It was good to talk to you for a bit too, and glad the old 245 could make the trip. Such a cool car.
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Thanks, I appreciate the kind words. It was a last-minute decision to take this car over the 242 but I'm glad I did. Got me thinking about what direction I should go with it, and there's nothing like the imminent pressure of a big road trip with an old car to make me finally start getting stuff done.
 
Ditch the k-jet for something better, but that's about it. Just pulling the head, porting it a bit, and a tight squish headgasket should make a big difference for minimal cash. If you go header, go tri-y. VV61 is a decent readily available torque cam, runs out around 5k-5500, but pulls like mad from idle.
 
gsellstr said:
Ditch the k-jet for something better, but that's about it. Just pulling the head, porting it a bit, and a tight squish headgasket should make a big difference for minimal cash. If you go header, go tri-y. VV61 is a decent readily available torque cam, runs out around 5k-5500, but pulls like mad from idle.
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Cool, gotcha. MS3 and turbo would be a fun direction to take this too. Probably makes sense to do head work first though and get a bit more NA power out of it in the meantime.

A few photos...

Michele tries out the bench seat on the drive to Davis on Friday afternoon

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Hotel parking lot

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Driving back, it was nice and cool on Sunday so we kept the windows up and enjoyed the lack of wind noise. No AC in the 75. "Trophy Boy" Alex following in his first place winning '83 242.

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Wonderful green slime weeping from the water pump, maybe from the top seal.

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Photos from the show are on my DSLR; haven't uploaded those yet.


Went to Hi Performance Auto a few days ago to drop off a transmission from Ken, saw this P1900 project car! Ian and Eric rebuilt the B16 engine and were getting ready to reinstall. This is a full-frame fiberglass vehicle with lots of weird details.

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Car looks greats! Wish i could of drove up with you. Next year for sure!

I also saw that 1900 last year. So cool. They have a pretty sweet black on black 1800 project car I would like to grab from them... one day :)
 
I've been driving this old greenie a few days per week lately, but it just started acting up. It died a few times last time I drove it, hard to start but I managed to get it going again and make it to my destination. Now it is very grumpy and not easy to start at all, puffing white smoke while cranking over. Methinks it's a spark problem. Will be diagnosing in the next few days.

Mostly just posting this for my own future reference, but if anyone has ideas I'm open to suggestion.

I've already spun the fuses and checked that they are all making contact & not blown.
 
Duder said:
I've been driving this old greenie a few days per week lately, but it just started acting up. It died a few times last time I drove it, hard to start but I managed to get it going again and make it to my destination. Now it is very grumpy and not easy to start at all, puffing white smoke while cranking over. Methinks it's a spark problem. Will be diagnosing in the next few days.

Mostly just posting this for my own future reference, but if anyone has ideas I'm open to suggestion.

I've already spun the fuses and checked that they are all making contact & not blown.
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Check your plugs, coolant for oil, and oil for water. Could be your head gasket messing with the plugs if you had problems with green slime as described earlier.

But most likely you just need to overhaul your ignition with some new parts.

I assume you have a single carb? Check the membrane inside as well.
 
Scaramanga said:
Check your plugs, coolant for oil, and oil for water. Could be your head gasket messing with the plugs if you had problems with green slime as described earlier.

But most likely you just need to overhaul your ignition with some new parts.

I assume you have a single carb? Check the membrane inside as well.
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Thanks for the ideas. Oil and water both look fine. This car being a '75 US-spec has K-jet injection. I think I'm going to concentrate on ignition when I have some time in a few days: ensuring good grounds, clean connections, and continuity everywhere I can. Will check the plugs too.
 
122power said:
Hmmm might wanna check the fuel pressure as well to least to rule that out.
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Thanks for the idea...it was sort of acting like fuel starvation, but luckily I think I've solved it without having to break out K-jet tools!

Took some time today to carefully go through the ignition system. I had good incentive to get the car running again, since it was dead in my driveway and blocking all access. I followed the ignition troubleshooting flow chart in the factory service manual, to start with.

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Step 1: "Run starter and hold high tension lead from coil approx. 3/4" from engine ground. Spark available?"
>>Result: kinda sorta... spark is "available" sometimes. Although it didn't seem consistent, it would indeed arc from the coil wire to the engine while cranking. I thought maybe the issue was intermittent spark, so I proceeded down the "No" path.

Step 2: "Check if coil terminal 15 is live by connecting voltmeter across it and ground. Coil terminal 15 live?"
>>Result: yes, I got something like 8 volts at terminal 15 (power side of coil) with ignition switch in position 2.

Step 3: "Check the voltage drop across the transistor [resistor?] by connecting voltmeter to coil terminal 1 and ground. Voltmeter reading 0.5 - 2.0 volts?"
>>Result: yes, it was 1.something volts at terminal 15 with switch in pos. 2.

Step 4: "Check impulse sender [inside distributor] resistance by connecting ohmmeter across terminals 7 and 31d in removed connection plug [at the breakerless ignition module connector]. Correct value at 75F is 950 - 1250 ohms for the 240. Impulse sender resistance correct?"
>>Result: yes, I measured 1000 ohms.

Step 5: "Check for grounded circuit in coil of impulse sender by connecting ohmmeter to one of the impulse sender terminals and ground. Reading should be indefinite [open circuit]. Coil grounded (ohmmeter reading not indefinite)?"
>>Result: no, the impulse sender coil wasn't grounded when I checked. But this step did get me interested in the 2-wire harness going to the distributor. Sure enough I found them bare and touching each other right where they go into the connector. I spread them apart thusly:

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After this, the B20 fired up and ran fine. No random stalling, no misfiring. So I'm pretty confident it's mystery solved. I should probably figure out a way to heat shrink or otherwise insulate these two wires so they don't short anymore.

In the process of checking all this stuff I removed the ignition module, cleaned behind it, cleaned all the pins in the connector and the module, removed about 5 lbs of dirt from inside the shock tower, cleaned up all the grounds in this area, and reassembled.
 
Here's a terribly exciting video of the B20 running after going through the ignition troubleshooting.

https://youtu.be/Fe3FXpwjbB4

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fe3FXpwjbB4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Harlard said:
I'd use a bit of self fusing silicone tape or Sugru to patch up those distributor wires.
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Good idea. That reminds me, I have some "liquid electrical tape" goojum that might work well if it hasn't solidified into a useless clod by now.
 
Great car, great story, great save!

Eric is a great guy over at Hi-performance, he deserves a thanks for all the work he does.
 
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