Christmas Eve morning, after dicking with the door locks for what seemed like a month, the remote keyless entry is working with perfectly all new door locks that match the glovebox. Now, I’ve only got to do the trunk, and run the wire for the popper.
Of course, I had Christmas obligations to attend to last night and today, so nothing today.
1967 Pontiac Firebird V8 400. The car I’ve always wanted and now I have it. I rule!
I decided to start this blog thing to keep a record of what I do, what I spend, what I mess up and what I learn about my car. I tried doing the same thing with the BSA I was restoring, but came up short, so wish me luck.
On Thursday, I was able to win the bidding on eBay for the car of my dreams. The bidding ended at $8211.14 and would have been cheaper if one asshole hadn’t kept upping it on me. Oh well, it’s worth every penny of what I paid, considering that a crusty, rusty rolling frame with no motor goes for around $3-4000 and the motor itself runs about the same. Here’s what caught my eye and stole my heart:
I suckered my buddy Joe to drive the 160 miles each way on Saturday morning with me (we had to leave the house about 5:30am). We picked up the car ran it around a little and I was both scared of it and impressed. There were things that were much better than expected, and some things that were worse – tires especially. The guy I bought it from noticed that I was a little put off by the tires, so he kicked some cash back to me and made it an even $8000. I was down for it and after a gas run, we were on the road.
The bird drove great on the highway and I was smiling the whole four hour drive back to Indy, except when we would pull in for gas and have a tough time starting it, and it started idling high and flooding it. I was starting to get really worried at this point, that I had just gotten scammed or something, since I know a little about motors, only whatever theory can be brought over from motorcycles. We stopped by a Pep Boys and I bought my first part for the car, a replacement air filter for about 11 bucks (total cost of car $8011). It was definitely needed since the old filter looked like a used cigarette filter, but over the next few hours of riding it around, didn’t really seem to help.
In the end, after a few grumpy swears and a few sweaty beers, we found the problem – a sticking throttle valve dumping too much gas into the engine constantly, which was flooding it and making my afternoon a pain. Lesson #1 learned – Always carry around a can of carb spray and a decent tool kit.
Over the weekend I also made my very first modification to the car. I replaced the stock nut that was holding down the air filter with a wingnut, since I was taking it on and off more than a excitable stripper.
Unfortunately, the gas gauge doesn’t work, so I rounded out the weekend by running out of gas a block from the house, and pushed the car down our alley. Of course, I’m used to driving a 1999 Tacoma 4-cyl, so I never think about running out of gas, ever. Lesson #2 learned – If you think you can make it another day without stopping for gas, be prepared to push.
