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1963 PV544 rat rod

The 10 year old battery is just dead. I had it on a charger all day yesterday, it was peppy as can be on the first start, but was groaning and dead on the second try. I already ordered a cute little PC680 battery for it.

That, plus a new rotor (I'm guessing) and it will be as good as new. Well, missing one foam filter. I'm starting to think those are not a good idea, though. Catching fire like that sure places some doubts in your head. Fire bad.
 
I remembered it sounding like crap last time I parked it. I started it up yesterday and it sounded like *CRAP*. Stuck my hand under the carbs and I could feel huge puffs of air shooting out. Yeah, the header is toast again. Took 10 minutes to whip off the carbs and pull the header. It's so refreshingly damn simple.

And 3 out of the 4 header pipes were cracked at the flange, one completely separated. The only one that wasn't cracked is the one I sloppily re-welded last year.

Time for another header, I think my $75 Amazon special Patriot header has reached the end of the road.
 
Got a peculiarly shaped packaged in the mail today, from Sweden via France:
20160404_170438_zpsae7bf5bc.jpg


What could it be???
 
Lol, it's a header from KGTrimning:
20160404_171319_HDR_zpsqxfsuzkn.jpg


A nice solid 4:2:1 style header.
20160404_171328_HDR_zpswmkzr57x.jpg


Not a crappy flimsy 4:1 header like I had last time:
20160404_171404_HDR_zpsnvtkvfif.jpg


It will take a little work to fit this, not too bad. I already have a 2.5" v-band clamp set to use. I just need to trim my exhaust a bit further back on the car, and maybe clearance the header/car a little here and there. And drill out a hole on the header for clearance on the 'fuel injection' guide pin my head has under the center exhaust ports.
 
3 out of the 4 runners are cracked at the exhaust flange. And the one that isn't was somewhat sloppily rewelded by me.

I'm thinking I'm going to pitch it. I got it for the sum of $78-ish bucks shipped on Amazon a while ago. Closeout? Dunno, but I snagged one quickly at that price. It lasted a good while. I'm pretty sure most of the failure it's suffered is because of me - a little ill advised porting in the exhaust runners. But it was built 'backwards' - pipes were stuck in the flange and then thick and blobby welded on the inside. It looked nasty, I cleaned it up some with a carbide burr. I probably should have left it alone.
 
3 out of the 4 runners are cracked at the exhaust flange. And the one that isn't was somewhat sloppily rewelded by me.

I'm thinking I'm going to pitch it. I got it for the sum of $78-ish bucks shipped on Amazon a while ago. Closeout? Dunno, but I snagged one quickly at that price. It lasted a good while. I'm pretty sure most of the failure it's suffered is because of me - a little ill advised porting in the exhaust runners. But it was built 'backwards' - pipes were stuck in the flange and then thick and blobby welded on the inside. It looked nasty, I cleaned it up some with a carbide burr. I probably should have left it alone.

Thats how mine was done too, wanna a cut the flange off an mail it to me :oogle: before you pitch it? I'm wanting to build a new turbo mani, and the local CNC guy wants a pretty big dime for a 3/4" thick gasket cut out of mild steel.
 
I could certainly do that. The flange isn't terribly thick on it though...

*runs out and measures*

.52 inches. Not as thin as I was thinking.
 
I could certainly do that. The flange isn't terribly thick on it though...

*runs out and measures*

.52 inches. Not as thin as I was thinking.

I think I could work with that... I'll take it if you are just gonna ditch it. :) just pm me a $ that you feel comfy with and your paypal address.
 
Frickin spring weather and potholes. I got the PV out of winter mothballs and drove it two days last week. And on Friday, I didn't see some damn pothole. It was in an already patched piece of pavement, gray hole in a gray patch in gray overcast dim morning light. *WHAM*, very square edged hit. Kept driving the rest of the way home with a slowly increasing pull toward the side that got whomped. It was only a mile or so. Got home and the RF tire was slowly going flat. The tire itself didn't seem damaged, but the wheel rim was bent.

They're Torq Thrust II's, with an extruded rim welded to a cast hub, shouldn't have any issues having it straightened. Hopefully.
 
Now the PV has bright lights!

I recently drove it 1450 miles down to Mountain Meet 2017 and back. Which was a blast, but the charging system acted up.

The previous owner had bodged in some ancient Dodge alternator, with some iffy wiring, running through a cheap ammeter. About 16 or 17 years ago I swapped the tired old B18 for a B20E from a 145E, and along with that came the 145's French Marchal alternator (Volvo used both Marchal and Bosch, with the latter being far more common). Since then, it's always sort of worked, just not great. But not bad enough to really get me to mess with it.

Well, at one point the cheap ammeter *caught fire* at an intersection, which was entertaining. Just sitting there, waiting for a green light, when a faint whiff of hot insulation was followed by huge amounts of burning insulation smoke. I opened the hood, hopped out, and yanked off one of the battery cables. Then had to push the dead still smoking car through the intersection and into a parking lot. After a little tinkering I realized the ammeter had shorted internally - took the wires off it and stuck them together, car was alive again.

The whole car has always seemed a bit starved for volts. The headlights were yellowish. You could hear the fuel pump slowing down when the turnsignals were on. Everything would dim when the heater fan was on, or the brake lights were on. But it all worked... well enough... for me to not bother with it too much. It usually had enough juice to start, unless it had been sitting for more than a week or two.

Anyhow, at MM it started overcharging, 17, 18 volts on the meter. I tried unplugging the field wire off the alternator but it kept on doing it. Some sort of internal fault. So I just turned on everything electrical 9which isn't much in a PV) and started off on the 10 hour drive back home. After a few hours of 17 volts, it dropped to 12.5, the alternator had failed. So I turned everything off again and kept on driving, watching the volt meter slowly dropping. Before it got too low, I went to a Wal Mart and got a cheap full sized battery. And kept on driving as the cute little PC680 discharged. When it got down to about 8 volts, the car was still running fine, but the tachometer was starting to drop. I pulled over and swapped the batteries, and the full sized had no issues getting me the rest of the 4 hours home. Only dropped from 12.5 to 12.2-ish.

Ron Kwas/Swedish Embassy sells a bracket that mounts a 10/12SI style alternator on, I got one of those and a $55 (new, shipped) alternator from eBay. And then I replaced a bunch of cracked wiring, ancient crimped fittings (some from the P.O., some from me). And replaced the battery cable. And redid the flaky wiring where it used to run all the current through the ammeter, but the ammeter was replaced by a voltmeter after it caught fire, so all the current feeding into the car went through 3 feet of wiring for no real reason anymore.

Finished it up last night, and even before I started it I noticed all the lights were a lot brighter. Apparently, a lot of resistance in that old flaky wiring running all over the place. Started it up and voila - 14.5 rock solid volts on the meter, bright lights, yee hah.

Alls well until the $55 Chinesium alternator craps out. Heh.
 
Cool! At $55 you can't feel too bad if it craps the bed in a year. I've had good luck with one wire alternators but they're pricey.
 
I thought about the 1 wire, but you don't get a charging idiot light. Also, it regulates at 14.5 at the alternator output, not at the fuse block.

The SWEM kit came with a wiring harness that looped the reference voltage a couple of inches around to the alternator output, but I went ahead and ran a wire over to switched 12V at the fuseblock.
 
Now the PV has bright lights!...Apparently, a lot of resistance in that old flaky wiring running all over the place. Started it up and voila - 14.5 rock solid volts on the meter, bright lights, yee hah.

For years, OEMs built resistance into headlight wiring...if a DIYer has replaced this wiring, then your headlights will be brighter.

Post via another forum on this topic
 
The brake pedal feel had been going downhill for a little bit. Obviously, not power brakes on this old thing, single circuit unassisted system.

Usually, it has a rock-solid pedal feel, just a gradually (over months and seasons) sinking engagement point as the rear shoes slowly wear - you have to get under it back there every once in a great while with a screwdriver and adjust them. Or cheat a bit by leaving the parking brake up a few clicks...

But the pedal had started to sink down a little, in a way that the parking brake didn't correct. And it started to feel a little squishy. Like air in the system. But how did it get in there? The reservoir was 2/3rd's full of DOT 5.1 (a little concession to the unvented front disc brakes - single circuit brakes make me nervous about boiled fluid).

Anyhow, I decided to bleed the brakes yesterday to see what the issue was. And weirdness ensued. I started to get lots of air out of the FL caliper. Lots of ait, and it kept coming. Actually, more and more aid the more my son pumped the brake. The reservoir level was going down slowly while this was happening, but the air never went away. And the fluid coming out was foamy, frothed, along with large bubbles. And clean, since we'd worked all the old fluid through the system.

Yeah... bad master cylinder. On the back stroke, instead of pulling more fluid in from the reservoir, it was pulling air in from around the seal (I'm guessing). Not gonna fix that by bleeding.

I initially restored this about 20 years ago after it had sat in an open-sided carport for 16 - 17 years (parked when one of the rear brakes seized). At that point in time, I couldn't find a replacement master cylinder, and the one I had was fairly pitted from rust in the bore. I honed it a bunch, pondered the pits, then put it together with a rebuild kit and it's worked remarkably well for the ensuing 2 decades. It often had a droplet of fluid hanging out from the open end (leaking past the seals) but it didn't really need to have fluid added enough to be of any concern. Maybe top off the tiny reservoir every year or so?

To ze googles! Now you *can* get the master cylinder. Multiple sources, ranging from about $200 to $82. $82 was CVI, but their website says they got flooded by their upstairs neighbor and won't be open until Feb or March. Vp Autoparts was next cheapest at $92 - sold!

I was about to put the thing back in the garage when I noticed that the alternator belt looked a little loose. Wiggled it, and the newly installed GM alternator wiggled around Turns out the pivot bolt on the bottom broke in the middle. Still holding the alternator in with the broken ends, but not securely. Oy vey. One trip to the hardware store later and that's fixed again.
 
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