[Lynn]

Not a lot going on with the 57 until Thursday.
Busy with Museum stuff when the weather was warm. We had a new record high on Monday Feb. 3rd.

Spent a lot of time down around zero since then. You Canadians need to keep that cold air up there where it belongs!!!!
Hard to get motivated in this cold weather.

I did get the PS control valve rebuilt (NO pitting on any of the mating surfaces… WOW) and installed new hoses. Glad to report I have not seen one drip of oil, trans fluid, or PS on the floor since the rebuild.

Hey Charley, now I can come visit and won’t leave any drips on your clean floor. Not bad for being such a “pile”.

My scissor lift is downstairs in my garage. Been doing some work on it, as I can get the garage up to 65F in about 10 minutes. My workshop, not so fast. Too much cubic footage.
Rebuilt the Quadrajet. Block, intake, carb and distributor are all from a 68 Chevy, 275 horse 327. I am shocked this thing even started. 1/8 inch of sediment in the float bowl. Power valve was stuck in the UP position (meaning it ran REALLY rich. NO accelerator pump action as the rubber had come loose. One of the air bleed tubes was completely blocked with a white chalky residue (usually means water). Had to get the pin vise out with tiny, tiny drill bit. Took about 10 minutes to get through.

The well plugs were not leaking, but I epoxied them anyway, as the plug on the fuel filter housing had a very slight leak (no drip, just fuel residue) so I had the epoxy out anyway. Let the epoxy set 48 hours under a heat lamp.

Fuel filter was completely clogged. Also has an in line filter. Could barely blow through it.

Good news? Other than a defective choke pull off (which doubles as the vac secondary control) the carb is in really good shape after a long soak in the Chemdip. Nothing is worn out. Kit did not include the little rubber for the idle vent valve. Found some on Ebay. Whittled on the original one to make it functional, and will replace today, as I just got the part yesterday.
Distributor wasn’t much better. Dwell was at 40⁰ and the vac advance was inoperable. Someone had stabbed it out of sync so No. 1 wire was not where it “belonged”. Am I the only guy who is OCD about #1 wire being where is SHOULD be?

Pulled it to put on my Sun distributor machine just to make sure all is good. Installed a new vac advance, and limited the vac advance to 12⁰. Will plug it in to manifold vac. The mechanical advance was actually pretty good. 26⁰ all in by 3000. Just disassembled, cleaned and lubed. Points didn’t look bad, but installed a new set… just because.

Will run 10⁰ initial, and see how it does. Turns out the heads are Power Pack heads, but not 1957 vintage. They are from a 65 283 engine. Actually have slightly larger chambers than the heads that would have been on the 327, so I don’t have to worry about too much compression for pump gas.

Changed the oil Thursday (if for no other reason to get that Fram filter off there… friends don’t let friends use Fram oil filters, and install a proper Baldwin filter, or at least a Wix) and will monitor oil usage. If it isn’t using oil, I MAY go ahead and change the heads to a set of 186 castings with 1.94 intakes. That’s down the road. For now, just want it driving safely.
Still doing some sleuthing on how the car came from the factory.

It does have the deluxe heater, back up lights (and they work) and even has the windshield washer set up, although the jar is missing. Also has electric wipers. I hated the vac wipers on my 210 in HS. They just stopped working when climbing a big hill.

I mentioned that it may have been a dual 4 barrel car originally. I have now confirmed, it has ALL the tells. It definitely was a dual 4 car. I had no idea. Sometimes we would rather be lucky than good.

I need to get some work done at the Museum today, but am going to try and figure out if this car came with a PG or a stick shift.