Cops & Candles

This morning we got up early and headed to the Busy Bee for a kolache and coffee.  As mentioned in previous posts, this is the local morning gathering of car guys of all makes and models.  The truck was running quite well on the way there and at 8:00 Sunday morning, traffic was nonexistent.  We exited the highway on a clover leaf and caught a red light.  A quick look around, nobody in sight, stomp the gas at the green light.  Sweetness!  The truck laid out 2 perfectly even marks on the black top and launched fairly well without wheel hop or chatter.  I was jazzed that the posi trac was working even when I notice the police car sitting in my blind spot right next to me.

All I could do was laugh and if the guy was going to give me a ticket, I didn't care cause the posi was working.  Other than launching from a green light at an empty intersection on a early Sunday morning, there wasn't much he could ticket me for.  So I slowed way down so he had to pass me and when he got next to me I grinned real big and waved as though I knew he was there and was messing with him.  He smiled wave and rolled on down the road.  The rest of the day was just as awesome.  

We had a few on lookers at the Busy Bee and a fella with a '63 rambler shared an idea for the squeaky belt.  He said to use a candle and just rub the belt with it.  I did, it worked, and we drove the truck the rest of the day squeak free.

Later we discovered that this is a bad solution and had to install the A/C compressor to stop the speaking.

Open Throttle

I haven't posted in a while mainly due to the distraction of another project that has been unfinished since I started this blog.  It's still not done but because of the work we put into it over the last 3 weeks, it will be done in short order (I hope!)

So down to truck business.  Everything was running pretty good 3 weeks ago when the carburetor decided to have a mind of its own.  Now I am not going to detail this out, so lets just leave it as "I was uninformed to the fuel/air situation at hand".  So that you learn something from all my poorly written post;

1. Check the up and down float levels of any Carter carburetor, even if new.
2. Screen fuel filters are a waste of money, use paper.
3. Carter carburetors don't like fuel pressure over 6 psi.  
4. The hair pins on this carb are tiny.   Beware!

The throttle linkage was binding up going from the peddle end to the carb using the Lokar TV cable bracket.  The short distance for the cable was trying to bend around too many corners.  To put things in alignment, I made a bracket out of Stainless Steel (good practice for working with SS) and used the 2 holes in the gas pedal to attach it to.  Then I got rid of the short outer cable and cable nut.  

This works pretty well although I am not quite satisfied that it is functioning as well as it could be.  The last fraction of and inch of wide open throttle is hard to get to due to the spring tension and angle of the linkage.