Maiden Voyage= Failure

[FrankWest]

Wow! What and exiting first ride. Sorry to hear about misfortunes..But with these cars, you never know. I think Charles Lindbergh had a less eventful trip across the Atlantic! Great memories.
Not as exciting but funny.
My first car was a 1963 chevy convair convertable. Bought it for 300 dollars.
Lived in NYC..My older brother was unemployed so he spent 2 month compounting and shinning up this lemon. That car looked so good, it was stolen. But it only looked good...Broke down several blocks from where they stole it. Funny.

You and you Grandfather should watch this Munsters episode about buying a used car.
Funny...You and Grandpa Need a laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnRKs-JV2Lg

[DJ S]

Well if any of you were wondering, it was late timing and lean mixture that caused the overheating! We fixed both of those problems shortly after the drive. Now the car runs remarkably!

[FrankWest]

Originally Posted by DJ S

Well if any of you were wondering, it was late timing and lean mixture that caused the overheating! We fixed both of those problems shortly after the drive. Now the car runs remarkably!

Fastastic.....You are a genius!!!!

[bobpo1]

Originally Posted by DJ S

Well if any of you were wondering, it was late timing and lean mixture that caused the overheating! We fixed both of those problems shortly after the drive. Now the car runs remarkably!

I learned early on in my restoration, the AA crowd lives by "One day at a time". The Model A crowd term it, "One fix at a time". Enjoy you car.

[Terry, NJ]

Clutch chatter, Did you remove the transmission and the flywheel housing? If so, did you replace the .010 shim at the top two bolts? Yes, I know it's weird! But without that shim and proper alignment with a test dial indicator (up, down, L, R.) + - .010. Any one out will cause chatter.

It sounds like you have a "Death wobble" in your steering. This can be caused by just about anything that's loose or has too much play. the best thing to do is jack the front end and shake the wheels and see what's not right. Remove the drag link off the pitman arm and check the ball joints on the pitman arm it should not be more than .025 out of round. Check the other ball joints for wear. They should be 1.000 and round. Check the wheel brgs and king pins. any shake or looseness can cause wobble. Check the spring perches and the spring bushings L and R . These are all the cheap fixes, now I'll go into the not so cheap cause. The steering box! Rebuilding one can cost over $300 just for parts and it may take some skills you may not have. But first there are four adjustments, before a rebuild, make sure these adjustments are all taken up.

Rear wheel wobble is usually caused by bent wheels or a bent axle. Jack it up and spin the wheels.

Running excessively hot is usually caused by retarded timing. It's best to go to almost full advance right after starting.
Terry

Originally Posted by DJ S

After what seemed to be endless Sunday afternoons, we finally got the new Tudor road worthy, at least so we thought.

My grandfather and I have been looking forward to this day for weeks now and we finally got the car ready. We spent the entire day rechecking our work, cleaning the plugs, and packing supplies that we may need in case the car decided to quit on us. You could have sworn we were packing in preparation for an apocalyptic event.

The car had been progressively losing power over the last two weeks. I had noticed, a couple of weeks back that a manifold washer was missing and appeared to have broken and fallen off. We didn't think much of it because we sprayed carburetor cleaner around the edges of the intake manifold ports and noticed no change in idle which caused us to make the conclusion that there was no vacuum leak. We never however retested for a vacuum leak as the loss of power became an apparent problem. With these problems in mind we still believed that we should take the car for a ride.

We climbed into the car and drove straight to the gas station where we filled up on gas. The gas tank has a minor leakage so he cautiously added a gallon of gas at a time, as I closely monitoring the gas tank. We made it up to half a tank when we decided that we shouldn't push our luck any further. Now with a half a tank of gas, we were defiantly ready!

Once again, we climbed into the car and set off down the road. The car quickly displayed its flaws! The clutch chattered like crazy! Not only does it chatter but the clutch engaged extremely high. The clutch wasn't the only problem we I quickly picked up on... the front end was also a very obvious problem! If the car hit a moderate bump going 35 mph, the front tires shook unbelievably!

Along with the problems addressed above, the engine was sputtering and "chugging". The car felt like it wanted to get up and go but once you hit the accelerator peddle, there was no power what so ever!!! At 40 mph the car felt almost over worked. In response, we tried to be easy on the old car and drove at a more comfortable speed. All of these observations were made in under 3 miles of driving!

We were just 3 miles from the house when we reached a slit incline. As we reached the top of the incline when all HELL broke loose!!! A shower of anti-freeze came at us and splashed all over the windshield (thank god for windshields)!!! The car started sputtering and backfiring like crazy!! I quickly cut the ignition and my grandpa pulled over to the side of the road. As we were sitting there in complete shock i looked down a small hole in the fire wall and saw an orange flickering coming from the engine compartment! Without hesitation I leaped over the seat and grabbed the fire extinguisher! There was no way that car was going to end its life in a blaze! NOT ON MY WATCH! I ran out of the car and opened that hood quicker than i had ever before and saw some flames coming for the exhaust manifold that quickly went out on its own. I was so relieved that there was no major fire that involved the fuel system.

My Grandpa quickly joined me leaning over the car. We immediately got to work drying the wires. After we got the wires all dried, we realized we had forgotten WATER! Of all things we forgot WATER! My grandpa approached a nearby house where he got water while I got a hold of my uncle who followed my grandpa as he attempted to drive the car back to the house after it had cooled off. I got in with my uncle because i was awfully shaken up! While I was watching the car, I noticed the rear tires wobbled quite a bit... The car was SO CLOSE to the house when it overheated again! My Grandpa made it to the top of a hill when it quit! It was all downhill to the house but the hill didn't give the car enough momentum to make it back so my uncle had me jump out of the car and push my grandpa the rest of the way home! Once I began pushing my Grandpa yelled "Hey! Extra horsepower"! Boy did I look like a fool pushing that car and it sure was a lot of work! I made it a little over 1/2 the way to the house when my uncle had to jump out of his car and lend me a hand. We finally got the car in front of the house!

After the car cooled off, we couldn't get the starter to turn over! We cleaned all the electrical connections going to and from the battery and finally got the car started again. While it was runny I tried to run some diagnostic on why it over heated and why we had such a substantial power loss. I quickly grabbed the carb cleaner to check for a vacuum leak and what do ya know! The car has a MASSIVE vacuum leak. I suspected this to be the root cause of the power loss from the beginning but my Grandpa down played the fact that one of the nuts weren't apply any pressure on the manifold. I warned him before we left that the missing washer is a big deal and could cause us to break down but he didn't believe me! I gave him a big I TOLD U SO when we got home! The radiator seems to be in excellent shape and seemed to keep the engine temperature at normal operating temperatures when we drove the car up and down the neighborhood and at a high idle for 15+ minutes so we don't believe that the cooling system is failing us.

What a heck of a day!!! This experience leaves me with a quite a few questions...
1.) What could be done to resolve the clutch chatter?
2.) What could be causing the front end to shake like crazy and how could this be resolved?
3.) What could be causing the rear tires to wobble and how can this be resolved?
4.) A vacuum leak can clearly cause improper performance but can this cause the engine to run hotter than usual and cause it to over heat?

Here's a picture of it stranded on the side of the road...

[Big hammer]

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Grab a car gal and go for a long ride, you deserve it! :-)

[Larry Jenkins]

Now, to complete the front end to prevent the "wobble," check your shock absorbers to ensure they function properly.

Larry