End of the year update!
So it's been a few months, no I haven't crushed it or sold it for parts. I've actually been dailying it when it isn't broken.
I've performed many repairs and had many break downs, I took pictures of some things but not of others. Sorry about that.
September exhaust fail, got tired of the fumes from this fun grandpa repair of the downpipe.
I couldn't find a new downpipe for a 1976 model so I just ordered one for a 1984 and later or whatever cut it down and welded it to the original system which is is decent shape.
A few weeks later one of the dryrotted ****ty tires the car came with let go in an extreme body roll freeway on ramp situation. I decided this was a great opportunity to make the car look more presentable. I had corona wheels on my old 244 in HS and always wish I could be one of the cool kids.
So I blasted and resprayed these baby's in some Sherwin-Williams dimension light silver single stage.
I even had all four center caps.
Wow that POS just got a lot sexier, mounted some Pirelli p6 tires on them to make it seem ever more like a factory turbo kinda sorta.
Despite this newfound beauty the winter cold had set in and it became apparent the car had a terrible cold starting issue, it would start then die, start then die.
I figured this may be the case as some previous owner has installed a pushbutton switch in the steering column ruining the plastic cover (thanks) I was told this switch was to be pressed to start the engine.
Here is the mess removed from the car.
So some brief investigation determined that this switch has been spliced into the power supply side of the cold start injector and ran from a hot lead in the fusebox.
Some further investigating found that the injector was not firing when the starter was cranking because there was an open circuit from the thermal time switch to the injector, fixed that and it was once again working as it should.
Unfortunately the car still started poorly and had to be kept running when cold with the throttle.
I decided to removed this thing:
and attempt to clean it up, I had read some information talking about how the regulator could become clogged over time because of fine mesh particulate screen inside it.
yikes.
well I cleaned it up as best I could and blew compressed air through the screens to remove any debris.
Once reinstalled to my surprise the car now cold started great and didn't need any help at all.
I also fixed a large power steering leak which was coming from the crimp join on this hose, I couldn't find a replacement so I had the end re-crimped locally with a new hose.
Moving on there were at least a few weeks of trouble free motoring before the brake failure warning light was fully illuminating every time you stopped and the brake pedal was going almost to the floor.
So yeah I don't have any pictures of this but I had to replace most of the braking system... Fun fun, new master cylinder along with new pads and new rear brake calipers as they were both seized, I also replaced the parking brakes while I was doing this since that also didn't work at all.
whew got that out of the way...
Oh wait no the starter **** the bed a week later and I had to replace the starter with a new one I also replaced all the wiring for the starter and battery with new because it looked like **** and was covered in orange electrical tape.
I also fixed the license plate light rear wiper and side markers somewhere along the way...
Alright moving on to more fun stuff.
IPD lowering springs were on sale woooo.
I also installed a reproduction hood release cable from IPD which broke on the second pull! 0/5 stars would not buy again. (I was able to modify the crimp on the end to be much more robust) also adjusted the hood fit so it didn't look so awful.
Also replaced most of the rubber bushings at the rear along with the front struts
car had a newer but blown KYB on the drivers side and a leaking and ruined mid 1980s looking Monroe on the passenger side for... better balance.
Nevertheless this made a huge difference to the way the car drove and handled, just the changing of the springs made the car ride and drive 1000x better than before.
While we're at it I installed all the missing badges on the car
along with a fresh set of factory mudflaps (had to paint the white myself)
Unfortunately the rear mudflap mounts were totally missing so I had to whistle some up myself.
welded them onto the car and bolted up the mudflaps.
Just before leaving on my xmas holidays in the car I changed the diff and trans oil since the trip is a few hundred miles long, while I was under there I replaced
this ruined transmission mount
and this busted reverse light switch so I now have working backup lights.
Unfortunately the car did not work well on the trip.
even though it test drove fine on the free way once on the highway it was clear replacing the saggy trans mount was a bad choice and the transmission or I think maybe even the yoke is hitting the trans tunnel I'm not sure why that would be but I have not investigated.
The more pressing issue is the stuttering the car began to develop.
I initially thought this could be the overdrive acting up but it was definitely an engine issue when it died on the side of the road, the car restarted and I was able to keep going but it persisted and grew worse and worse as the trip went on, the car stutters if you try and cruise on the highway at 65mph if you persist in driving at 65 it will buck and backfire out the exhaust and eventually die. you can cycle the key and drive for awhile but it starts doing it again. I thought this could be a fuel starvation concern like a clogged filter but the problem paradoxically goes away if you drive over 3500rpm in whatever gear on the highway I was able to drive home without issue but I was doing almost 90mph!
I think the issue may be ignition related since it reminds me of the way a car behaves if you get moisture in the distributer cap. The engine will stop and then just start running again.