Major fixes

It's been 1 year since we trailered the roadster out to California and quite a fun and challenging year it's been.

The car did require a few minor tweaks to get it so I could drive it around town. It had a pretty severe front-end shimmy which wanted to bounce me off the road if I hit just the wrong bump, plus it backfired and overheated.

But even before I tackled those problems, my dad strongly suggested I clean out as much of the rust from the gas tank as I could. This required emptying the gas tank, taking out the bottom shut-off valve, and with a wooden dowl, scraping and pushing large blobs of rust out the bottom of the tank. I managed to collect almost 1 full cup of rust from the tank. I also rinsed the tank with a couple of gallons of kerosene just to flush out any remaining large pieces. I then replaced the gas float so I had an accurate gas gauge.

The next problem was trying to figure out why it overheated. I could drive it about a mile, then Mr. Steam wanted to make himself known. I flushed the radiator/engine a couple of times and noticed some strange 'stuff' coming out of the drain spigot. It looked like hair or stuffing. Turns out that when I looked closer at the radiator, that there appears to have been a mouse nest built in there many many years ago which was clogging the tubes. Once I cleaned this out, I've no problems with overheating that weren't of my own creation..

So, the backfiring was scaring the neighbors. What to do, what to do. I didn't know, so I managed to drive the car to Alfi's house, a local club member, for him to take a look at the engine for me. He quickly diagnosed the problem which was the condenser wasn't properly grounded. I bought a new condenser and lo-and-behold, no more backfiring.

Then the last major problem was the front-end shimmy. To this day, I haven't completely solved the issue, but it's mostly gone. What I did find was that the radius bolts were loose and wouldn't tighten any more. Turns out they were stretched and almost ready to shear off. I replaced these, tightened up the tie rods, adjusted the tow-in, replaced the pitman arm, and tightened the front axle bearings just a tad. The only time I get a shimmy now is if I hit a big bump when I'm stopping, and that's because the sector gear in the steering box is very worn and needs replacing. Some day soon I'll get to it, but that puts the car out of commission while I wait for a new steering rod.

Oh, the brakes, they also needed pretty severe adjustments. With the advice and help from club members, I was able to adjust them to a usable state. I still need to have the roller bars welded and ground smooth to completely fix it.

Those were the major tweaks I did on the car during the first couple of months I owned it. The fix rate has dramatically decreased, but I'm sure there will be something big soon. Tiz the nature of the beast.