After a summer of driving last year where the Mitchell unit seemed to be difficult to shift in and out of high and a number of phone calls to the fine folks at Mitchell Mfg, it became apparent that the unit would need to be taken out and sent back for inspection/rebuild. Long story short, needed to jack and block up the rear of the car and pull the driveline out. Got it done and UPS arrived with a call tag to ship the unit back to CA (thankfully I still had the old box). This occurred in November and given the holidays and such combined with the fact that there's Covid going on it took a bit longer than usual to get the unit back. Thankfully it was a mild winter in January and I was able to reinstall the rear driveline. . February was downright cold and pretty messy so not much happened in the garage and ability to test drive was limited. The led me to finally find the "Round Toit" and fix a number of small but irritating issues that have popped up during the eight seasons this car has been on the road. First change was in the front end. The decision was made to take out the reversed eye front spring main leaf and put back in a stock main leaf. With the dropped axel, the reversed eye spring may have been too much and not allow proper clearances. I still have plenty of rake between the dropped axel and the big n little factor, so seemed to be a good move. Next came the front brakes. When I did get out for a limited test drive, I noticed the car pulling to the left on hard stop. Adjusting did not change the situation. When I removed the front drums, saw no obvious leaks, however when I pulled the boots off the wheel cylinders, found a small amount of fluid. Sitting around I guess not good for these things. New wheel cylinders, shoes and front brake hoses installed. Might as well get it all done was the approach. A few test drives and adjustments to the linkage to the Mitchell and appears all is well there. Shifts fine and crisp. Brakes work well. Car seemed to stumble on acceleration. Figured I'd pull the plugs and take a look. Finding nothing major incriminating, I reinstalled a set of champions I had from back when I originally put the car together that had very few miles on them. Restarted the car to hear some faint ticking. Shut the lights off in the garage and could see spark from the Badger spark plug covers shorting out on the head on a couple of plugs. Easy decision (despite the fact I love the look of these seemingly rare things) to retire them to the shelf. Car runs very well now. Will get some new spark plug boots and retry the Badgers soon as my plugs get new boots. Now with the car running and stopping pretty well, I needed to get the speedometer calibrated. Thankfully I bought a set of gears with different teeth to get a better reading. In the end, I tried them all with the fourth one providing the most accurate reading as best I can tell from the speedometer app on my phone. Despite the needed 4 tries, making the changes is pretty easy. (60 @60) Nest step was to change out the ratty old rod I had between the gas pedal bell crank arm and carburetor in favor of one that looked more in keeping with something on a hot rod. After cutting and rethreading and painting what I had picked up somewhere in my travels, it worked out fine, but uncovered another problem: Sometimes the car would not properly idle down but rather stay at a high idle (closer to 1000 rpm). This led me to an issue with the spring on the old Ford spoon mechanism. Seemed that the way I had set this up led the spring on the bell crank to sometimes push the lever a bit to the right and thereby rub against the opening in the firewall. Ok some quick work here on "persuading" the bell crank a bit to the left and safety wiring the spring loop to the post to prevent right way drift will help. A few more 50+ mile test rides bear out that it will consistently idle down properly. Now to the cosmetic end of the spectrum: The left signal light indicator had gone dark at some point. While I can hear the signal working by the ticking sound and can see the lights on the car functioning, it was time to take out the instrument cluster and fix this. Thinking I used green LEDs for this it would have been surprising it would have died. Much to my surprise it was no more complicated that the socket holding the bulb had somehow popped out of the back of the instrument cluster. Pretty easy. Finally the clock. Some years back we drove the car to the September Adirondacks event at Lake George. It became apparent there was going to be much rain both later in the second day continuing on through the remainder of the weekend. We decided to head home late that second afternoon and in so doing drove about 100 miles in some pretty significant rain and wind before driving out of the storm. Sometime after that, though we were amazingly dry in the car, the inside of the clock face showed moisture. The clock continued to run nonetheless. The fogged appearance never seemed to go away so my thought was to take the clock out of the dash and put it in desiccant to dry it out. After a few days in the jar of desiccant led to no change, the decision was made to take apart the clock and wipe it dry. Leaning towards "it's not broke, don't fix it" and remembering as a kid taking apart a couple of clocks it seemed I was better at taking them apart than putting them back together I finally figured I needed to do this. As it turns out, the inside of the face was not wet but had a haze to it as if it were etched. Not sure what to do, I came to the decision that it was already foggy, why not try some Maguires polish on a DA buffer. Son of a gun it cleared the lens. Even better, the clock again jumped back to life. So much so that I caused a short and blew a fuse on reinstallation. The fuse got replaced too. So there' my complication of garage adventures this winter. Happy to report the car is running better than ever, stops fine and still looks pretty good, even without the Badgers. Thank you for reading this. Now on to the pickup!
So-o-o satisfying to take care of the little niggling things, isn't it. Sometime it doesn't really even take that long to do it more like you said, getting around to-it. Lynn
Thank you and sure hope so. Logged a bunch of test runs and seems to be fine at this point. While it’s supposed to be about the journey, let’s hope there’s a bunch of great destinations this year!
Hello, Your own mechanics seem like what we did for months on end to get our last 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery to the place where we felt safe to drive it anywhere during our road trips. When we bought it, I kept saying to myself that when I get around to it, I will fix the hood latch, the leaky manifold, the noise from the back cave, etc. They were all there, but the sedan delivery moved from one place to another, so I was ok with that. At least it started every time and never faltered. That was the starting point of every hot rod and station wagon we have ever owned and driven. It had to start with the first click. The sedan delivery drove, but it had a high speed wobble and tire/alignment problem that was driving my wife cuckoo. I could get over it because of being able to drive such a cool car to photo shoots and to the local surf spots in So Cal. But the “get around to it” slogan rang true for a while. Finally, my wife wanted to drive it by herself to visit her friends and family. Since it was the only car we owned that had A/C, it was a workhorse. The El Camino was cool for long hauls to Northern California and all over the place during the cool months, but in the summer and spring, So Cal does get hot. So, my wife found this wooden 50 cent piece size of a wooden chip. It had a slogan that took me a second to figure out what it meant and it has been with us for over 40 plus years. She thought it was a nice way to get the ball rolling without having to make constant suggestions as to the quality of the sedan delivery and our comfort when driving. Also, when she drove it by herself, she liked the feeling of something different than the cars she used to drive, even the El Camino did not compare to being in the 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery. Jnaki I spent weeks and then it got to a point that was beyond my expertise, so I took the sedan delivery to my friend’s wheel and tire shop. He had done special work on all of our cars going back to the black 58 Impala and my first high school, Flathead Ford Sedan Delivery. He knew his stuff and I was in a place where he could solve our puzzle. Luckily, he had moved to the OC and was close by versus making the long trip to the Santa Monica area, near the 405 Freeway. He spent days working on his solution to the ill handling and riding sedan delivery. He put in some new necessary parts, did his full balancing and alignment stuff, changed the brake parts, shoes and shocks, all around. He kept the sedan delivery for two weeks and drove it all over to check out the difficulties of handling and safety. Now, it could stop with ease, turn corners without dipping and not make any noise while doing the standard car motion, and finally, on the high speed freeway speeds, the sedan delivery handled like a dream, straight and with no weaving. The two weeks was well worth the effort It all started with the round “Tuit” chip that my wife gave to me, as subtle as she was, and still is to this day… Thanks…
Lynn, can’t agree more. Seems like at times you’re enjoying the fun of getting out there so much, you hate to tie the car up with a “small thing”. Over time you wind up with a mess to clean up. Thankfully some of this could be done while waiting for other stuff to get finished. Maybe as HRP noted last week there’s a degree of procrastination as well!
"It's still running....what's to fix?" Heck, I've had a check engine light on on my OT daily for around 200,000 miles. Lynn
That's one heck of a Spring Tune-up @AVater...glad it's all together now...I have a number of things that need attention too...we are in lockdown here for several weeks so no Hotrod......maybe I'll tackle some things myself...oil change for starters...this is turning out to be a write off of a year also so far...I got one ride in so far this year...felt good while it lasted...
man , I am a bit slow Only looked on this thread because I was curious what a round tuit was Took another look this morning and now I know!
I’ve been playing the roundtoit song all winter and beyond and for the first time in 9 years when I uncover our car in the garage on Fridays I can truthfully say I only need to wipe it off for Saturday and Sunday. To be honest I’m a little bored but that’s ok. For some reason all the little nick picky things have decided to go away or at least not come back the last few times out. AVater..... enjoy it.. I sure am with mine even though I thought the day would never come..
Stogy, kind of got to the point where either I addressed the issues or the car would stagnate. It ran and never left me anywhere but I felt it could be so much better. So far so good. Can they lock down the streets? Not here not yet. Enjoy it every chance you get!
Having missed “the Badgers” for a couple of weeks now decided to buy some new spark plug boots and see if I can make them work again without arcing. Boots arrived today after I had the car out for a 50 mile run featuring mostly two lanes they were happily installed. Car appeared to run well with no arcing in the garage. Maybe we are good to go here and I can add to my bug collection. May flies big time around here. Test drive Sat.
The Jalopy Journal
