Cold comes out the bottom for sure... I might have an air lock that I will try to track down. A bit of standing and chin holding for now.

As for the fueling issue, I took the offending carb's float out and cleaned the inlet ports, and checked the level and needle , all looks good there. I didn't have a ton of time (and I am not that familiar yet with the main jet area to take it apart for inspection), so I popped on the other HS6 carb that I had, and it runs great. Took it around the block and this thing MOVES. Or it could just be that I forgot how it used to move...

Good to hear...hopefully the HS6's will work properly!

Update: Car is totally road worthy.

I blew out the jet on my rebuilt carb, installed it, and it was good to go. Obviously a bit of swarf/goop stuck in the jet was preventing it from working properly.

I took the car into a local trusted garage (they used to work on my WRX when I still had it), to go over it, adjust where needed and to fit the exhaust. I think I could have tackled the list of items to do, but time is of the issue, and I wanted to drive it already. The owner is a real car nut, he has a 123GT he is trying to talk me into, along with factory fresh fenders and centre grill. We'll see if time and money allows it, we still have to talk on that.
The list of items done on my car was:
- check/adjust timing
- adjust/balance carbs
- adjust valves
- fit Simons sports exhaust - the Simons resonator wouldn't fit due to the header configuration, so he installed a different resonator. Not a huge concern for me at this time.
- check clutch engagement

Some things he did fix up but I didn't ask for, was:
- the O/D not working. I still have to fully test it.
- reverse lights not working - it's actually a joy to see them light up, as weird as that sounds.
- driveshaft centre rubber was misaligned (didn't even know about that)

As for the cooling issue, I installed a 13 PSI rad cap and that fixed the pressure issue and any leaks. the cap shipped with the rad was 1.8 bar, which equated to 26 PSI. I thought to try a lower one and see if it made any difference. No overheating, and no leaks. I can't argue with the result.

It has lots of pep, the real thing holding it back now is the suspension. It seems to roll quite a bit, but the ride is soft. Once that gets tightened up, I'll be very pleased with the overall package. To be honest, since I have not driven it extensively, it's hard to judge what is normal and what can be improved. I might chuck some carpet in to make it seem more civilized.
When I get it running and warmed up, I will get a video of the exhaust sound.

I am going through the thread to clean up the old decayed Photobucket links. Some pictures I haven't found yet, but I will update or remove them in time. For the most part, it's back in business.

As for the car, I have been enjoying it throughout this past summer. It's has been running way too rich, so that contributed to some rough running issues and fouled plugs. I put a separate set of carbs on to learn with, which came with the engine, and I trust those settings in the interim. I am starting to slowly learn through the 123igntion as well, although I haven't messed with it too much yet.

I also have what I believe to be jet issues. I started the car and fuel came spitting out of the rear carb's fuel bowl vent. I cleaned the jet and readjusted the float which was set way too high. Carbs are back on, but I haven't got back to it since the temps have gotten colder.

I took the car to one of Regina's largest car shows over Labour Day, and even got an interview in the paper (no picture though). The car did gain some interest, and I met up with a PV544 owner out of the Weyburn area, which was great to get in touch.


I had worked the day before with a friend to install indoor/outdoor carpet in the car to clean it up, since I removed the decayed rubber mats. It actually looked pretty good!


Speaking of the floors, I got an oscillating tool cheap From Can Tire and stripped off the factory isolation mats from the front and rear floorboards. They came off in nice big chunks, which was good. Bad news, it exposed a lot more 'ventilation' holes in the drivers floorboard. No huge surprise of course, I have both left and right front floorboards ready to go in. Not sure if I want to tackle that myself or pay the bucks to have someone else do it.


While driving the car around, I know I am getting some CO in the cabin, through various holes in the floor and other orifices. I read that the rear trunk seal might let exhaust fumes through the trunk area and back into the cabin, and since I have a new seal, I figured I would replace it. The seal area turned out to be 100% perfect, not a speck of rust.


I bought a tach from Princess Auto that resembles an old Sun tach, which I really like the style from. It's 4-6-8 switchable as well. I didn't want to drill holes just yet, so I used the lower A-pillar trim screw. All wires are hooked up with the exception of the trigger wire.I can't seem to figure out where that connects to. I hooked it up to the coil terminal, but that didn't produce any results. An open post one night on FB now prompts me to change my coil to the Bosch blue coil I bought earlier. So while it looks great now, it is just for show at this stage.




More updates to come.

It's so nice to see progress. What hosting site did you use? My issue is that most hosting sites produce a scrambled alphanumeric URL, so replacing dozens or hundreds of photos will be nearly impossible. I need a site that will allow me to create folders and subfolders and the structure of those folders stays in the URL so I can do a find/replace on my threads.

I used Imgur for the new photos. I looked at Flickr, but as they are a Yahoo company, and their systems have been breached in the past, I thought to give Imgur a try. Good thing that I named my resized photos at home before uploading them to PB in the beginning. The PB URL in the posts gave me a clue as to what files they were. Still a little annoyed as to why I can't find my pilot bearing removal pictures, I thought those were some of the most interesting ones!

Unfortunately Imgur does produce links like "://i.imgur.com/4W1FmQa.jpg". I am hoping I don't need to do this a third time.

David, nice work and congrats on having a running 122. Like Matt said it's nice to see some progress leading to a car on the road.

Curious about the metric speedometer on your car, did you find it that way or did you source it?

Thanks Jim, it felt good to get it back on the road. It's down once more for a fueling/ignition issue, hopefully if we get some nicer weather I can get out there. I am seriously contemplating getting some Grose jets for the SU's to see if they work better. I also managed to break my choke cables, so I got a dual choke cable coming from the ebay guy in Greece.

As for the metric speedo, it came with the car. This is a Swedish-origin vehicle built in Gothenburg, and all the bezels and instrumentation are in Swedish too. At least, that's the only clues that I have pointing me to that conclusion!

While waiting for glue to dry on fabric-backed rigid foam for a dartboard backstop I was making, I thought to myself "That dash looks terrible, I wonder what the metal is like beneath it? So sidetracking took precedence once more, down the rabbit hole I went, and the dash is out.

Before... the car came with a plastic dash cap, but it looked cheap. After I took that off, this was revealed. The PO had stuffed the cracks with paper towels. This is what I started with. The pictures give it way more justice.


Some ripping and tugging a few minutes later, and the metal underneath was revealed. It looked interesting, but I didn't see any corrosion.




I decided to show what the pad looked like underneath. It's been cooked and is quite brittle, which is completely expected. I still have all the bits just in case I want to do something with it, but I think it's too far gone.


I used a combination of scraping, heat gun, a very gentle application of a nylon wire wheel in a drill, and acetone to clean it up. The key for me was to get as much physical glue off first before trying to clean it up with chemical. The paint is stained with the glue, so I will likely have to take out the dash at some point to wire wheel it and get it painted if I want to go down that road.


Then I took apart my ignition switch to prepare moving over to a blue coil. I don't expect the car to leave the garage until spring, so I can afford to take a little more time.

That dash (steel) is in way better shape than mine. The ever-present leaking windshield gets under the foam and rusts the dash from in between. I had no perforations but yours looks sano in comparison.

Matt, that's what I was worried about, what lay in store for me under the dash pad. A few things I haven't been lucky with (that trans mount is a big to-do for this spring, and the floorboards, but those is pretty much par for the course), but other items I thought might surprise me with damage, haven't been an issue.

I figured I would work on the coil for a bit more today, here's some pics for progress.

It should eventually look like the image below. I got the Greece coil holder, I thought it looked pretty sharp. Trial fitment went fine, no issues there.


Once I took reference pictures, and unhooked the wires on the back of the ignition switch, I undid the bolts to the old coil. I then pulled the whole assembly out through the coil hole in the firewall.


I thought I would try something that I had seen on a Facebook page, that used the armored cable from the ignition switch, to the new coil. I thought if I could keep the ignition switch stock, that might save me some time in the long run. If it doesn't, then this can be a first stage to something further on.

I drilled out the weld points of the coil cup to the coil itself:


Once that was done, I had to massage the flange away from the coil. I could have used a bigger drill bit to completely get rid of the small spot welds, but I didn't want to go too big right off the hop.


Ta-dah! The goal is in sight. As you can see, a few of the holes could have used a bigger bit to fully drill them out. Since I didn't know exactly how the cup was attached to the coil, I use a bit extra muscle to separate the two parts. I plan to initially de-solder the connection and attached the same gauge of wire to extend the 12V switched power to the '+' side of the new coil. If that proves to be too painful, I'll just cut the wire, there is enough sticking out to attach a wire to.
I didn't think too hard about essentially wrecking the coil, it's long past its life, and with technology getting better, I think it makes sense to upgrade to a new coil. I wanted to save the armored cover in any case. My initial thought is that I might try to attach (maybe epoxy) the cup onto the bottom of the chrome coil holder, and route the cable through a newly grommeted hole near the coil to keep it as clean as possible. I'lll mull this idea over for a bit, maybe crawl the web for some ideas.

It's a lousy picture, I'll get another one posted if I have the time. Suspension bits for the springtime have arrived.

Do yourself a favour and don't install the IPD rear bar until you REALLY drive the car. It'll depend on your alignment, your tires, and your spring package, but you may find the rear bar is completely not necessary. In fact, some find it detrimental to coming out of tight corners. Plus the mounting system is truly terrible, and you'll hate yourself for drilling those 10 holes in the floor of the car. The front camber curve is so bad stock that the car loses camber exactly at the rate it leans, so anything you can do to get the car to corner flat improves front grip... even if this means only using a front bar.

For reference: on my car I run 16x7 wheels and 205/55 tires, about -1 degree camber front, and had the (too soft front, stiff rear) VPD progressive springs on my car. I had it at the autocross track once set up like this, and I had very little understeer and still had trouble putting "power" to the ground out of the corner. Anything over about 2/3 throttle in 2nd gear would just wrap and hop the rear axle, but this is a 1966 and has much less compliant suspension. I had the IPD front bar, no rear bar in this tune. With the rear bar I'm guessing it would have balanced out a little more in steady state cornering but it would have just burned the inside tire on corner exit.

I think the rear bar on the stock IPD package would make the car ride better. Less like the front end is locked together while the rear is flopping freely. I think it's got less to do with handling than with ride balance.

My next move (done, but haven't driven it because bodywork and paint) is actually to install the IPD bar in the rear, but with slightly longer arms (making the bar softer) and proper mounts welded to the body. To balance this I've got much stiffer linear rate front springs and recurved camber gain, and the stock front sway. The theory is that the stiffer front springs will match the stiff rear springs better, and the stock front sway will match the IPD rear sway better. The camber gain I've built into the front end will provide grip while allowing a little more roll. The tradeoff will be a slightly choppier ride on undulations, but it should ride a lot better on single wheel bumps and not have that "old car" feel as much. I've done some maths on this, so it all works in theory. What I don't know is how bad it'll do the one-wheel peel.

Thanks for your input Matt, I really appreciate the time and experiences you have provided.

I honestly got the kit because I was waiting on their Black Friday sale, and the dollar wasn't as horrible as it had been over the past few months, so I took a stab at it. The popular opinion was that it helped the handling greatly, so I figured what the heck. I agree wholeheartedly, their rear bar mounting system (if it can even be called that) is horrible. So while the bar could potentially provide some assistance at the rear, I'll definitely defer to your advice and look at the suspension as a whole and not just on their own. I am actually hoping the new front bar doesn't interfere with the drain on the radiator I have. It is darn close to the stock bar now.

Concerning the suspension overall, I haven't looked at springs yet, since all situations are different for everyone, and there seems to be a few different suppliers out there to choose from. Not to mention, lowered springs versus progressive/linear, spring rates and the like, so there definitely needs to some chin-scratching going on around that. I don't look to do any competitions, but a 'fast road' setup seems to be the way I am headed.

Speaking of the rear end, it just occurs to me that I should have looked into new bushes for the rear end. My bad on that. That'll wait for the winter to get ordered up. I figure the rear end assembly should be tightened up to spec and back to baseline before any modifications take place. I got plain rubbers for the front suspension, I think I will stick with stock rubber at the back as well. I have heard that the poly bushes squeak and may contribute to a stiffer ride.

The ride doesn't suffer much, the poly is pretty compliant and both the shock and spring work directly on the axle so the effect of the poly on little bumps is reduced that much more, but you'd be wise to install grease nipples so you can maintain them once in a while. Rubber is good, though, as long as you're getting quality stuff (which is really the problem these days, making poly much more attractive).

If you're doing springs, consider Classicswede springs. They make stiffer, standard height "rally" springs and 40mm lowering springs and I believe they're linear rate front & rear, but you should ask them about it if it's important to you. Keeping the standard height with stiffer springs and wider track would be an excellent choice, lowering it too far with linear springs means you're sacrificing some ride comfort, but you're getting back the handling you are sacrificing with progressive rate springs.

https://www.classicswede.co.uk/Rally_Sp ... 76724.aspx

Dave Clark (RSReady) used the rally version of these (stock height) on his Shell 5000 car and he had nothing but good things to say. They tightened up the ride & handling but still allowed him to hammer through a bomb range. I can't endorse them myself but I'd personally try them over IPD or ESPECIALLY VPD any day.