It's Getting Cold

Last weekend Ariel's dad, Tom, was busy working on me. He reinstalled the repaired passenger window mechanism and door panel. He also upholstered my rear seat bottom and swapped it in place of the black one I was borrowing. Now my interior is complete and matching.

The last couple of mornings have been quite cold and my heater fan still does not work, so before Ariel agrees to drive me, Tom's got to fix that problem.

My Heater is Controllable Again

Ever since I was put back on the road, the two cables controlling my heater have been non-working. Last night, Ariel's dad put me up on jackstands and replaced the broken cables with GUOs (good, used ones) from the Corvair Ranch. The procedure was not without it challenges. First, all three tunnel covers (one on the inside under the front carpet, two on the underside) had to come off. The new cables had to be threaded in and around suspension stuff and finally the cable ends (small loops of the wire) had to be popped on to the small posts on the control levers and door levers. The whole job took a couple of hours. While he was under there, he tried to remove the heater fan. With all the attaching screws out, the motor (with fan) will not slide far enough out of the heater box to be removed. So Tom took a wire brush to the rusty mating surfaces. It's his intention to improve the contact to ground and stop that circuit's fuse from continuously blowing due to high resistance. He didn't take the time to test his adjustment, so we don't know if he was successful.

It's Been A While

I know, I know. A car shouldn't be so busy that he can't write a few lines of blog occasionally. No excuse.

I'll catch up in reverse order. Last night Tom pulled all my spark plugs and gave them a good cleaning. My blow-by fouls up the right side and every thousand miles or so, the plugs need a good cleaning to get the burnt oil off them. He also replaced my oil pressure switch that had developed a leak. In order to do that he had to remove my generator and input fuel line to get a straight access for the big socket that fits over my switch. Finally, he cleaned the terminals on my battery connections.

Last week, Ariel ran me out of gas. I did what I could to stretch the fumes, but near the top of an incline, I had nothing left. Fortunately, there was gas can in my trunk, but unfortunately it was empty. After a two-mile walk, I had a gallon of gas in my tank. After some cranking, the fuel finally made it my cylinders and I was running again. She won't let the gauge needle get that low again, nor will she drive around with an empty gas can in my trunk.

About a month ago, my passenger front window mechanism broke. Tom and Ariel disassembled the door and removed the mechanism which had a broken and missing pivot pin. Without any replacement part, they put the window up and it's being held in place with a tie-wrapped 1X2 piece of wood - so high tech. Tom has since bought the bolt, washers, and lock-nut and they've put the mechanism back together. They haven't had the time to re-install the mechanism. Fortunately, it hasn't been so hot that passengers are melting (thank goodness for the air vent).

Also around then, Tom changed my oil and filter and replaced the two oil cooler seals. That will hopefully slow down my oil consumption rate.

I'm still waiting to have someone fix my two leaks so that I can stop having wet floors every time it rains. I've been glad that the weather's been so dry. I'm also glad that it's been warm because no one's replaced my heater cable - the one that opens and closes my heater box door. I don't like listening to Ariel and her passengers complain.

Other than that, I've been behaving quite well, not giving my owner much to deal with other than gas and oil.