57 Wagon Holiday Thrash

[Russell]

I have never droped one in the pan before (knock on wood) but thry have caused me hours of four letter words! The worst was the time I did not put the shaft in a new motor. Found out when I went to prime the pump. What a pain to drop in from the top. The one in my capri likes to come out of place when you pull the dissy.

[milner351]

UGH! this thing is testing your patience - I try to remember to put the lock ring on when I insert the pump shaft from the bottom while installing the pump - that prevents it from being pulled up with the distributor - the hex fits are tight in some distributors - making it just about impossible without the lock ring, to keep the shaft in the pump.

I hope your ignition problems are over!

[mrocketscience]

Still have the old Y block? *G*

Lol.. Nope, sold that to a restorer. But I'll tell ya, the frustration level was getting pretty high there for a bit.

[mrocketscience]

UGH! this thing is testing your patience - I try to remember to put the lock ring on when I insert the pump shaft from the bottom while installing the pump - that prevents it from being pulled up with the distributor - the hex fits are tight in some distributors - making it just about impossible without the lock ring, to keep the shaft in the pump.

I hope your ignition problems are over!

Testing my patience indeed... However, I know the final result will be worth it. Drove it around a bit, to the supermarket and back, and it behaved itself very nicely. I have to be careful when stepping on gas pedal from a dead stop, it's really a lot more responsive than the old 312.

[milner351]

So did you isolate the problem to a faulty distributor or the wiring to the coil or the coil itself?

[mrocketscience]

It's a bad distributor. I replaced it and the coil ( there is a specific coil to be used with that distributor). I replaced it with an Accel Super Stock coil I had, and stock Ford distributor with a Pertronix Ignitor in it. The wiring seems to be fine as is.

[milner351]

Great news - I can't wait until I'm at that point with the falcon.

[racingsnake440]

Actually what I did on my 66 was to buy an auxiliary 6 terminal fuse block fed by a #10 wire with a 30 amp fuse which is controlled by the relay off the ignition switch. I have a switch source of power when the ignition switch is in the "on" position now. If I want to add a radio, lights ect, I have a source. Look at the factory wiring, it was never designed to supply any real amount of power. It has small gauge wire that has a lot of voltage drop.

I originally had my choke fed off the ignition switch before the ignition resistor wire in my car. The old ignition with the Pertronx worked so-so and the choke worked poorly. Now the choke works great and my HEI has all the power it needs Like the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. A hotter spark requires more power going in.

Slight hi-jack - Did you switch the relay with the original ballasted ignition wire or a new wire? I want to do the same thing on my Cutlass and was thinking the ballasted wire woudl probably be ok to switch the relay?

[Huskinhano]

Slight hi-jack - Did you switch the relay with the original ballasted ignition wire or a new wire? I want to do the same thing on my Cutlass and was thinking the ballasted wire woudl probably be ok to switch the relay?

There was a bullet connector off a short lead on the ignition switch that plugged into the resistor wire. I unplugged the resistor wire, used a bullet plug on the new wire going to the + side of the relay coil. You could try to see if using the resistor wire to the relay coil would pull it in. I've seen it done in machinery where a relay would be pulled in with the rated coil voltage, then be switch to a lower voltage to hold the relay in. Don't ask me why, I chaulked it up to the crazy Swedes that built the tube filling machinery

[racingsnake440]

Thanks, haven't checked yet to see if the Cutlass has a connector like that - be nice if it does. If not I'll try running of the ballasted wire first to see if it works.

[Huskinhano]

Thanks, haven't checked yet to see if the Cutlass has a connector like that - be nice if it does. If not I'll try running of the ballasted wire first to see if it works.

See if it works, you have nothing to loose. The voltage drop on the resistor wire will be different between the coil and the relay. The coil is constanly switched on and off and as the RPM (frequency) increases so does it's resistance increase and drops more voltage. The relay will be constant as well as it's voltage drop.

[pintoboy77]

I also use exhaust from my forklift and run a hose into the tank and welded and silver sodiered all kinds of gas tanks with out one blow up.

[mrocketscience]

The wagon got it's first trip out on the freeway today. Took it to a buddies party out in Rancho Cucamonga which is about a 50 mile round trip. No issues, temp stayed at just under 180 degrees all the way, so I'm pretty happy. One thing I do need are some freeway friendly gears, it's running about 2800-3000 at 60-ish mph(no speedo). I don't know what gears are in it now, but I'm sure some 3.00 gears would be better. Had a lot of cool cars at the party...

[Scott Liggett]

Right around the corner from the Chadster's place. Wagon looks great.

[Huskinhano]

Looks like a nice get to gether. Glad to see the car running on the road. The last time I was in CA was in Rancho Cucamonga. American Can had just built a new plant that manufactured plastic 2 liter bottles that I was installing a piece of machinery that wrapped pallets with plastic. I was staying at a Holiday Inn that was close to the old Riverside racetrack, they were demoing it. At the Holiday Inn, they were filming the last scene of Polerguist.