SU Carburetors

SU Carburetors are very new to me. I've never dealt with them. I've heard of those that hate them and those that love them and would never change. Jury is out.

That little hole you see here is aligned such that fuel will spit directly onto the exhaust manifold if the bowl over flows, which it did, rather profusely.



The culprit is this guy right here. The pivot is worn through! This will not due! Ordered anew :)

Amazon Electrical

I received my alternator bracket in the mail the other day. I've decided to go with the GM style two wire alternator due to it's relatively inexpensive and I can find one anywhere on the planet. The "kit" comes with a wiring diagram, bracket and a list of instructions.




Pretty strait forward, Installed if a few times to make sure that the alignment was good.


With the belt aligned I hooked up the electrical. This was the last step before giving my car the first start-up in 10 months.

She started just fine. Shut down due to a fuel leak from the carburetor but she did run.

Transfixed

So as soon as I found out that some goober had ruined the threads that retain the speedometer pinion I had to fix it. This feature resides in the rear main bearing housing for the transmission and pretty much requires full disassembly of the transmission. OK no problem.


This picture shows the 1st gear synchro where you can clearly see some damage.


Here is a shot of the synchro pulled out with the bad dog (the bar on the left of the screen). That notch is not supposed to be there. The piece was pulverized by the gnashing gears of the transmission. About 2 hours for disassembly. Now that I've done this and have a couple new tools, this should take about 30 minutes.


About $150 worth of parts and six hours later I have a rebuilt transmission. Another hour later I had it installed in the car. This is a major step toward getting the car out of the garage.

The transmission is installed in the car, prop shaft bolted on, new mounts and cross member installed. Tomorrow I'll install the clutch slave cylinder, starter motor, bleed the brakes and take her off of the jack stands for the first time since she went into the garage the first of the year.

Parking Strip - Weed Farm

What to do with that strip of land between the sidewalk and curb in front of your house? Well mine is a haven for weeds and, again, cat poo. The weed barrier was showing through in some spots and generally looked like hell.

Executive decision! Saturday I started to scrape off the top layer of dirt, poo, weed chaff & whatnot. Starting to look good you say? Yes I would agree. Of course J says I need to take the level down about 3" from here - oy my aching back. But lowering the grade will help with sidewalk runoff.

Sunday morning we wake to rain, torrential downpour, monsoon? Well at least it's a warm rain. Welcome to the mud flats of St Johns.

This strip is belongs to the City of Portland and they are particularly vague about what is and is not allowed to be placed here. Garden boxes you say? Well that's OK unless a neighbor complains about it and you might be on the hook for fines up to $1000/day. Are trees OK? An Oregonian article from earlier this year sheds a little light, or shade, in this area. I love tree lined streets even though the sidewalks suffer from root lifting and the home owner is responsible for the maintenance of a tree that benefits all on the street. The Portland Green Streets Program is great but it's pretty much reserved for professionals.

So no permanently installed structures, anything placed in the strip must be <3' tall and portable. Sand set pavers may be installed without permit provided you stay <50% of the strip area, yadda yadda yadda....

Maybe the weeds weren't so bad after all.

Gatos del vecindario

This is the window for our bedroom. Nice isn't it? I certainly think so.


Yes - it is exactly what you think it is and its right under the window shown above.

It's not so much that I hate cats, I don't. I just don't like that it's generally accepted that cats are allowed to run free throughout the neighborhood.

I cannot stand cat s*&t in my yard in general but directly under my window.... come on! We'll have that window open all summer long and the aroma from a freshly laid dooky is indescribable. The picture above is 1" hardware cloth, snipped and bent to make a carpet of standing spikes that will, I hope, will deter the little kitties.


This is the installed carpet. It is only about 6" wide so it doesn't cover everything that I'd like to cover so I may have to add more area.

Strategies others have used: Blender Defender, Motion Detector Sprinkler, Auto-Targeting Paintball Gun - I really like this one! Do you think Jacq will let me have it?

850 Glove Box

The glove box in Jacq's car broke about a month or two after we bought the car. It's repair was on my list now for six months (?) or so. I didn't worry about it because the glove box was closed and it looked OK closed. But while the car was in the shop last week, the wheels needed to be removed and the special lug nut wrench was inside the glove box. We told them to go ahead and hack the latch to get the door open and retrieve the special tool. This would have been a real pickle had she been on a trip and gotten a flat. Anyway - got around to fixing it today.



The pin in the circle had broken off.


Broken pin that I pulled out. This part is just cast and is not very strong.


A couple quick measurements and I came up with a game plan. The latch that was hacked out has the same (close enough) diameter as this pin. I drilled out the location of the broken pin then pressed in a section of the latch wire cut to size. The extra length to the right is not a problem as there is nothing there anyway.


I ordered a replacement latch from PartsGeek.com for about $6.00 that should be here later in the week sometime and the project will be finished.

Refer Madness

The other day I got home to find J clearing out the fridge. I ask her what's going on and she tells me that it is 60 degrees in there and apparently not working. I jump into troubleshooting mode. I futz with this and that but nothing is readily apparent. I check the web for info, finding some good and some crap.

I'm wary of appliance repair people (persons?) in general ever since I saw a report about appliance repairmen that gouge you. Appliance repair is seemingly a black art but it's just switches, timers, motors and the like so what's the mystery?

Well I was about stumped in this endeavor until I had a chance to peruse the electrical schematic stuffed inside an interior panel. Then it dawned on me! The freezer fan isn't running at the same time as the compressor fan. I check line voltage at the motor connector - 120V good => motor shot.

I found some information on the web for the motor that I pulled out and I was able to cross reference it to 5 other motors. Time to make some calls. A couple places in town that are supposed to be appliance part distributors and they would only give me the OEM fan for $85, $101 & $105 - that's way too much! I call a guy down at Ankeny Hardware on SE Stark & 11th and he was able to cross my motor to an aftermarket one. Yeah!

After about 30 minutes working with the guy at the hardware counter, we got the correct motor. The great thing about his particular motor is that it's reversible and I can make it turn in the direction that I need for this application.

I installed the new motor and fan blade. Of course, it's going in the wrong direction. Quick fix and I reassembled the refrigerator and it works. We closely watched the temperatures and adjusted as needed. Freezer at 0 degrees and fridge at 38.