It is getting colder and the Jeep is a car again so I want to get the heat working. These little tiny levers control both the temperature and the heat/defrost mix. They don’t right now.
Author: nvonada
Odds and ends
This mirror came with the Jeep. I am pretty sure it is a mirror that used to be on my Dad’s 65 Pontiac Tempest when I was a kid. I think it is less of an ideal match for a Jeep. Plus the holes are half stripped an the mirror is flopping around banging on the already decrepit body of the car.
Tune up and shifter work
fI took the car for a drive to warm it up then hooked up the tach and vacuum gauge to adjust the idle mixture. I turned the mixture screws 1/4 turn at a time adjusting the idle as needed. I think I found where the vacuum is highest, but it seems like the screws are awfully far in.
The vacuum also seems a little low. The car has a really lumpy idle, which I sort of expected from the odd-fire engine but I suspect I might also have a low-speed miss. I will have to check compression. I might have a sticky ring or something.
The car pops out of first gear, which according to the manual is most likely the shifter out of adjustment. That bolt in there is 5/16″ in diameter which fits in two adjustment holes in the shift levers.
Here is the bottom of the shifter. That bolt is going in through the hole you can see up top.
To adjust the linkage I need to loosen the bolts at the bottom of the shift levers on the transmission. Then center the transmission shift levers in neutral and tighten the bolts. The problem is I can’t get the levers to move on the transmission. I think I need someone to hold the clutch in or maybe jack up the back wheels. But I am alone and it is getting dark so I just tightened the bolts back up and took the car for a test drive. No improvement 🙁
Jeepster lives!
I went out this morning determined to get the timing set up on the Jeepster. I got so into it that I neglected to take many pictures. I did take this one. I was very proud of getting the dwell dead on at 40°. There is only one problem, the dwell is supposed to be 30°. I don’t know where I got 40° from but I had to do everything over again.
Safe for winter
When I got the Jeep engine put back together I figured there was a better than even chance I would have to take something apart again so I just filled it up with plain water.
It is a car again!
The carburetor came back from National Carburetors yesterday. They turned it around in about two weeks after I shipped it. The carb came back vacuum wrapped to cardboard like you see here. It was not gently handled and the plastic was tearing away from the cardboard. But the box is intact and the carb looks fine.
Wired the top up
I picked up some more shrink tube and finished up the harness. Time to put this in.
Top wiring
Time to wire up the top motor. This is where I think I want to put them. This up under the dash on the left side above the kick panel. The main circuit breaker is just over on the right with all those red wires going into it. That reinforcing bar running across there looks like a fine place to mount some relays.
The thing is I would rather not drill any holes to mound this. So I dug around in my scrap metal and found this bit of sheet steel. I think it is part of an old floppy drive of all things. I measured out a strip about two inches wide.
The idea is to make a hook that clamps to the top of that reinforcing bar. To give it some spring I mounted a long screwdriver in vice and bent the strip around it.
After some bending and cutting I ended up with this. I test fit it and marked the length so screws would not interfere with the structure of the car. I marked the holes and drilled them.
Two sheet metal screws and the mounting is done.
I am putting the wiring diagram in here so the kids can play at home.
The first two wires are the wires that will run from the coils of the relay (86) to the switch. These will route power to the up or down relay depending on which way the switch is pulled. Here are the spade connectors that will connect to the switch. I only had one insulated connector. I will put shrink tube over the other one.
Notice the relay sockets are marked down and up. Next I need to hook up the leads for battery power. The two yellow wires tie to the normally open contact of the relays (87). The yellow wires will get power from the circuit breaker via the red wire with the inline fuse. Here I have the wires stripped and twisted together.
I soldered the wires. I used that pair of forceps to keep the shrink tube from getting too hot. Then I put the shrink tube in place and got it too hot 🙂
The other end of the power wire gets a ring terminal to tie to the circuit breaker.
Next are the ground wires. The black wires are the coil grounds (85) and the red wires are the normally closed contacts on the relay (87a). Those contacts will provide the grounds for the motor.
I soldered all these wires to a foot-long 14 gauge wire. Eventually that wire will go to some handy ground under the dash. The problem is I don’t have any shrink tube the right size to insulate this joint. I will have to get some.
The two blue wires will connect the normally open contacts (87) to the existing power leads going back to the pump. These make spade connectors will attach to the connectors that used to connect to the switch.
Here is the end result. I taped up the wire bundles and as soon as I get some more shrink tube I will install and test this. I am pretty happy with it.
Top progress
I finally got back to work on the top tonight. I installed the cylinders and hooked up the lines.
New pump!
Well, newer. This shiny pump is out of a 1998 Ford Mustang. $65 from the local scrapyard. While it is not exactly the same as the old pump they are definitely first cousins. Lets see how close…