It Runs - 10/23/2005

Made alot of progress today. The car actually ran! The transmission shifted! It's a miracle!



Gas tank in. The goobers down at the shop lost two of the pads, so we had to make some more and silicon them up to the tank to prevent the rattling of the tank against the fender.



New fuel lines run. Fuel gauge works well (reads 1/8 of a tank with 3.5 gallons dumped in).



Remains of the old air bags are removed.



New fuel filter installed. The line was flushed before hooking up. Some gunk that smelled like turpentine and dried out in less than 30 seconds sprayed out. At least the lines are in good shape! Would probably make a valve or two stick if it ran in the motor.



Flushing the heater core. I wanted to know if it was good before hooking it up and watching it leak hot water all over the floorboards. Flushing of water revealed no leaks inside and only a slight chocolate milk texture. Not too bad. Heater switch also still works!



Installing new heater hoses. Steve is more of a "doer" rather than a "watcher" as he admits, so it's hard for him to not be doing something when pictures are being taken.



Mostly hooked up. Final alternator picture didn't come out right (old camera). Fired up relatively quickly (was one plug off on all the wires). This setup is more for "let's see if it works" rather than a final setup for driving down the road.



Getting hot. 200 degrees. A completely wasted fan clutch probably didn't help this out much (ZERO airflow through the radiator).



It overheated after 25 minutes of high idling. 4 quarts of transmission fluid later and the transmission shifted decently into all 4 gears. Very smooth operation as I can't feel it much, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Speedometer read 75MPH in 3rd gear with the idle set around 2100RPM or so. Brakes seem to stop it decently (on the lift). It's quite an experience. Still no throttle control from inside, so it was like going for a ride rather than driving.



Lots of water blew everywhere (no radiator cap). Even though it was clean, it still puked up some brown gunk when it overheated (Steve has taught me to never put antifreeze in on the first few engine runs). After pressurizing the system to 10psi, it leaked only at the intake to water pump o-ring (naturally the worst place to leak). Probably leaked there due to the motor getting dropped (no joining bolt, but it never leaked before).



Putting in new shocks up front. It now stops bouncing after a little more than 1 complete cycle. Some of the best things in life are cheap.

Well, it runs and can likely be idled\driven anywhere it needs to go outside of the garage\lift area, which was the big important thing. Needs a new ignition coil (plus cover), radiator cap, fan clutch, and lots of vacuum hose to route to the AC controls (still looking for the AC compressor wiring somewhere under the hood). New universal power steering hoses were $15 each and appear like they will fit without any issues (long). NAPA only had one set of these in stock and I got them while I could. Like anyone else would be in soon to get them, but since I needed them they would disappear and be gone the next time I went back.

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Last updated October 23rd, 2005