How'd I Do?

It's VERY sad that it took me so very long to get to all the items on my to-do list dated nearly two months old, but here's how it went (original list in italics slightly reodered for clarity). Much of the following activities are available for your viewing pleasure on Youtube.

Episode 11 of 1965 LeMans Restoration
Episode 12 of 1965 LeMans Restoration
Episode 13 of 1965 LeMans Restoration

Interior:

• Bolt down the driver's seat. Done without drama.
  
• Bolt the column support to the underside of the dash. I couldn't find the support, so I just tightened the rope holding the column in place - very sketchy, but it's not permanent.

Brakes:

• Check the  fluid level in the master cylinder. A little low, so I topped it off with Synthetic DOT 3.
  
• Inspect the lines. As I slid around the underside of the car, I noticed some of the metal lines looked new-ish, while others were probably original. All the rubber hoses were changed out when I was working on the car back in 2003. At some point, I'll replace the original ones with new, but for now they aren't leaking so they'll do.
  
• Do a hard, harder, HARDER test on the brake pedal. To check for a weak spot in the system, I jammed the pedal and, happily, it did not yield.
  
• Check the parking brake. Liberal amounts of WD-40 loosened up all the e-brake bits, and it now works smoothly and effectively.
  

Fuel:

• Come up with a temporary, gravity-feed gas tank so I can bypass the existing fuel lines and tank. Instead of going with something temporary, I attacked the stock fuel system. I replaced most of the rubber hoses adding a third fuel filter between the tank and the pump, blew out the supply and return metal lines, checked the state of the fuel tank (just a bit of old gas), dumped in about three gallons of 93 octane, and called it good.
  
• Install the rebuilt carburetor. The original Carter with it's compliment of new soft parts was bolted to the intake manifold and the fuel, vacuum, and hot air (for the choke) lines were all mated.

Spark:

• Find the ignition key. For those that don't know, I've had twelve Corvairs pass through my life. About half were parted out since they were rusty beyond saving. Needless to say, I've accumulated quite a few Briggs & Stratton ignition and trunk keys.It only took about five minutes to find a key that worked, so I was good-to-go.
  
  
• Clean the points and re-set. Carefully, so as not to lose them, I removed the two screws holding the points in place. After which I noticed I could've just loosened them and the points would have been removable. A quick rub of the contact surfaces with some fine sandpaper, and they were put back into their distributor home. The gap, rather the dwell, was set using the dwell-meter while cranking the engine with the plugs removed. This required me to finally break down and spend the twenty dollars on a used battery from my favorite pick-a-part.
  
• Clean the spark plugs and check gap. All the plugs were dirty, but not bad, so a quick trip to the wire wheel followed by a gapping at the manual's 0.035 inch and they were ready for re-installation, but I left them out initially so I could spin the engine without compression. This would, hopefully, get the oil pumped onto all the lube-loving surfaces. The plugs were eventually screwed into place and the leads were popped into place.
  
• Check the plug leads for damage. They all looked fine, so were reused.
  
• Clean and install the rotor and cap. They both looked brand new, so I just reinstalled.  Here's where I hit a little hiccup. I thought I had the cap properly seated when I twisted the hold-downs, but I was wrong - it ever so slightly askew. The following fifteen minutes of frustration finally ended with me discovering that this had been the cause of the intermittent spark. Once the the cap was seated properly, lo and behold the engine started right up.
  

So the engine runs without any scary noises or smoky emissions and the brakes brake without drama, and, with the car up on four jackstands, I was able to confirm the transmission goes into gear and will spin the rear wheels both frontwards and back. The car is now mobile.

Back to the smoky emissions, I will admit a faux pas. The non-functioning, disconnected A/C compressor hangs off the passenger front of the engine blocking easy access to the number two spark plug hole. While I was struggling to reinstall said plug, I decided to remove the compressor. Only three (or four) bolts, so it was easy to get it out of the way. In my haste to get the last plug in so I could try to fire up the engine, I didn't realize that two of the bolts were head bolts (DUH!), so the initial running of the engine wasn't without a little exhaust gas puffing from the front. Once I discovered my foolishness, I reinstalled just the bracket and torqued the two big bolts to 95 foot-pounds. I didn't re-start the engine after that, but I'm confident (actually hopeful) that I didn't cause a head gasket failure.

I have been out to the garage one time since that eventful weekend of engine startup. I returned to bodywork mixing up a few batches of Bondo and applying them to the passenger door that I

This weekend the lovely Loriann will be away with her church youth on a winter retreat, so I'll be stocking up on kerosene and Bondo to finish the bodywork on the passenger door and starting on the next body panel (a fender perhaps, or I might go big and do the hood).