Hey Fran, what a coincidence. Thanks for checking up on me.
UPDATE....
Well, the stars finally realigned.
I finally found a lull in all the action (work + health + weather + ok,
nerves) and went out to fire the thing up this morning.
It has been back together pretty much for a while now; it just would have broken my heart to fail yet again, given what's going on with my health and all - so as much as I've been working my *** off for money AND around the place here, I've also been procrastinating as well.
Anyways, I doused the carb with some old gas from the can and jumped in and hit the key. She fired right off and after the usual pedal babysitting (no choke), settled right down to an idle.
I let it run a while....then it got to be 15 minutes and played with the mixture screws a little....then more idling....20 minutes pass and
still no water flowing visibly in the radiator!
The dash factory gauge wasn't even up to the left side of the "normal" range and even the screwed up aftermarket gauge was reading 30 degrees cooler than before.
Of course, now I was worrying about things being "wrong" on the
other end of the scale....
Keep in mind, I drilled 3 pretty good-sized holes in the 180 SuperStat before I installed it and I did see some burping at first, but finally I saw the water level start dancing a little bit at 25 minutes...
Figured it was time to hit the road, so I slapped the new Mr Gasket thermo-whatever radiator cap on it and took off.
I took the exact same route as last time the car was out (and overheated), a mixture of 2-lane and then 4-lane highways. I buzzed it up over 80 a couple times, let it cruise at 60 (3.55 gears, so like 3k on the tach) for a good while and....
the temperature actually
dropped with airflow through the radiator.
She had some extended time at the one red light we have on the 4-lane and didn't even get past low end of "normal" on the factory gauge, then dropped a couple needle widths once I took off again.
Oh....and she ran smooth with the corrected carburetor I had jetted back to stock.
Real smooth. Almost docile even.
Getting to where I'm really liking this clutch.
Got it back up the ridge and pulled into the garage; this is where she usually pukes her guts, as the climb back up usually is enough to get her hotter.
This time....not so much.
Jumped out and took this pic of the radiator cap immediately:
That says something like 160. That's probably low, too, but I'll take it as further evidence things are looking good.
(I marked the 180 with a pen smudge for reference).
Conclusions:
1. Thank you God!
2. I think she's ok to resume local cruises and shows. That's the next step in her progress/diagnostics now.
3. She has a nasty drivetrain vibration over 70mph under throttle which clears up if you lift off the gas - I assume that's probably a u-joint?
4. I'm pretty darn close to closing this thread I think?!
*CROWD GOES WILD!!*
Ed
Congratulations !
