Brakes!

After a lot of fussing the car finally has brakes! But before that happy result, there were a lot of little problems - leaks. At one point, a few weeks ago, we had the brake system all put back together and were in the process of bleeding the wheel cylinders. I was in the car. The car was up on the lift, and my helper/advisor was below doing the bleeding. I started to feel some pedal, finally, and just when I was starting to think that we were just moments away from having the brakes working, a leak occurred at the left rear wheel cylinder. Bummer.

We decided that I needed to buy a whole new set of copper crush washers and probably replace all of them. Since we were unable to continue working on the brakes we decided to start the car up and check out the carburetors. The engine started fine but shortly after starting, a lot of white smoke was coming out of the exhaust pipe. My first thought was that my rebuild of the brake booster failed and we were getting brake fluid sucked into the carbs. I disconnected the brake booster and plugged the vacuum hose to see if that helped. No. Still a lot of smoke.

Then we took the air log off of the carburetors so we could see better what is going on. Gasoline was pouring out of the carb throats and onto the exhaust manifold and we had a very short but scary fire in the engine compartment. Fortunately it was put out really quickly and no damage was done.

What we thought was going to be a good day, getting the brakes working, turned into a bad day very quickly.

The next time I went to town to work on the car I had crush washers, new gaskets for the carb float bowls and new bleeder screws. We replaced all the washers at the wheel cylinders and tested the brakes. Another leak! This time at the front left wheel. We took off the brake lines and discovered that the spot on the wheel cylinder where the line goes in was badly scored. We had to take the wheel cylinder out of the wheel, which meant taking the whole brake assembly apart. I ground the back of the wheel cylinder flat to take out the groove in it and put it back together. Finally no leaks. We got brakes working! Yay! Then I discovered a small leak at the brake booster.

The brake booster

We moved next to the carburetors. I took the float bowl covers off and removed the float valve assemblies. the valve was stuck. After soaking them in carb cleaner they moved freely and we put it all back together and fired up the engine. This time it took quite awhile before some gas started barely seeping out of the carburetor throats. There is a lot less smoke coming out of the exhaust, too. Progress is being made at least. There is still too much gas going in. We tried adjusting the mixture but that's not the problem. I need to soak the float valves some more to see if that helps. I also am going to hook up the diaphragm fuel pump to see if that is better. The idea is that the electric fuel pump is pushing just a little too much pressure for the float valve to stay shut. It's a low pressure fuel pump but maybe not low enough pressure.

While running the engine I thought I would check the charging voltage. Not charging. The generator is not generating or the voltage regulator is not regulating. Something wrong anyway. I looked down in there and could see that the wires to the voltage regulator look pretty bad. Maybe something is unhooked. We ran the engine for about 20 minutes until it got up to temperature. The cooling system seems to be good. It steadied out at about 170 degrees. We turned off the engine and then I noticed a leak in the cooling system. There is a fitting coming out of the middle of the cylinder head and there was a leak at the hose. I took the hose off and the fitting is mostly rusted away. I managed to push the hose on far enough to get it to seal so it's OK for now. Eventually I will have to replace the steel tube.

The day was over, though, and no more time to work on stuff. We got everything done that needs to be done from underneath the car so I figured I could finish working on the carburetors and fix the electrical problems at home since that can be done from above.

The next day I brought my trailer to town, loaded up the car and took it home. It is now safely back in its garage. Only now it has brakes! I figure half a day's work on the carbs might get them sorted out. Then generator charging issue is an unknown. the small brake fluid leak at the brake booster should be fixed by replacing the crush washers. I remember re-using the old ones at that spot when I put it together.

I am another step closer to driving the car, at least around our yard.

Nita ready to steer as I push it into its garage.