Monday, February 7, 2005

I looked at the car. Yeah, this will do. It needs quite a number of things, but most are on the small TLC side. The intermittent heavy smoking (in conjunction with poor acceleration) is the only worrisome item. I'm hoping it's just a too-tight rack damper screw, since the car also has great difficulty in starting cold. (Not glow plugs, it won't stay running unless you keep your foot heavily into the throttle. But I'll check that, along with the valve lash.)

I bought the car (in Olympia), and my wife drove it home (to Spokane). We went in caravan, using CB radios to chat. (I was towing an unrelated parts car on the trailer.) She said it drove well, except for the smoke/power thing. Oh, and the heat was either full on, or full off. Probably needs a PB array resoldering, and some foam hose. And the mirror was loose, and the lights are aimed badly.

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

All I did was to open up the trunk to dry out. (It rains a lot in Olympia, and there are definitely seal/drain problems to sort out.) I'm not going to get to work on this car much at first, as I have basically promised not to until other, more pressing issues have been dealt with.

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

The inside rear-view mirror was broken, and floppy on its neck. It was my wife's worst complaint about the car. This morning I removed it and replaced it with a spare 123 mirror I had. A perfect fit! It was very difficult to get the original loose, I had to practically chisel it out of there. The replacement was oiled before installation, and snapped into place easily.

February ??, 2005

I put on an inexpensive solar panel to keep the battery charged while the car sits.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

I went to move the car today, in order to make my wife happier by putting it around the side of the house so she doesn't have to look at it quite so much. Anyway, as the car has difficulty in starting cold I tried a couple of tricks. I removed the vacuum shutoff hose, and I backed out the rack damper screw a turn or two. But nothing doing, it still started with great reluctance. Many glow cycles and extended cranking were required before it would run on its own.

Next time I'll back out the screw much more. I also need to check the glow plugs, and the valve lash.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Moved the car down out of sight of my wife. It actually started pretty easily, but it was warm. I bet the valves are tight!

Friday, June 8, 2007

Mouse nests in the trunk. I put D-Con in the footwell and the trunk.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

It's been seven years and I've done nothing, nothing except put the battery on charge once in awhile and pump up tires on occasion. The statute of limitations on this car is up. I don't want to sell it but I got an offer, and it needs to move on, it's clear that I won't be doing anything soon and the car's just rotting, and in the way. Daniel, when queried, expressed zero interest in it for his future driving days, so that's it.

Today I pumped up the tires, the RR is shot, blown open, and won't hold air. The battery also didn't want to take a charge, but I'll leave it on charge overnight to be sure. I sprayed wasps, the filler hatch was full of a drowsy colony.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

It took me a fair amount of time to locate the key, and to find the paperwork. Things do migrate over a span of time like this one! Turns out the battery is not quite dead, but it has nearly no capacity left. It was unable to quite make a full glow cycle before the dash lights dimmed. Not gonna start that way!

Using the Unimog and 190D batteries (the car's immediate neighbors) and three sets of jumper cables I was able to get enough juice into the car to get it started. (I also used the block heater to ease the job, and used the primer pump to get things going.) Rough running at first, and a lot of smoke, but it soon settled down. I had Daniel pump up the tires, and I then put it in gear and took it up the hill. The bad RR tire will hold air for a couple of minutes—long enough to get the car to where I wanted it. We then spent the next couple of hours washing it off and out, and vacuuming out the crud. I left the car idling that whole time. We hosed off all the carpets and left them out to dry, and I removed the solar charger. Just about done here.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Dave came by and bought the car, $2500. We had trouble getting it started as it was colder today, but eventually we prevailed. We changed the two rear wheels to spares he'd brought, and drove the car onto the dolly. He then disconnected the driveshaft and took it all away. A sad and ignominious end to my abortive coupe project, but I was obviously unable to complete (or even to start) it.

The project wasn't a total loss, I used the profit on the sale, along with the proceeds from the sale of my old C trumpet, to finance my new C trumpet.

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