BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
She's a beaut! Look at the colour! Damn.
Yes indeed. The car is on the road! Registered and insured as of Monday, and aligned as of today. 90+ windshield goes in tomorrow. Inspection is Tuesday, and I'm rolling.
So, here's whats happened. Dale brought down a tank on the weekend, which had a pump and sender inside. I took the unit out of the tank, and the thing was whisper clean inside. Spotless. Craig re-wired some corroded bits on the harness, checked the sender resistance, and then I spent the rest of the weekend putting the tank in.
Couple problems:
-running hose from the top of the tank to the main pump at the side. Easily solved.
-wiring the in-tank pump. As the relay has no provision for a second pump, I ended up running a single wire from the pump to the fuse box, fuse #5, so the pump will run whenever the key is in position 2. Not ideal, but I just won't leave the key there for long. In retrospect, in might have been easier to just splice into the main pump wire for power, and then the in-tank would have been switched too. But I guess this way primes the pump a bit before the main pump goes off.
-vacuum lines. The '75 tank has a check valve on the top that junctions in the filler line, and the sender vacuum lines before they head to the charcoal canister. The filler line runs through a slight indent in the filler neck rubber gasket. Since I was switching to the later filler neck, it didn't have this indent, as the later cars had a rubber grommet through the sheet metal next to the filler neck which then goes to the canister. Since the '75 doesn't have this, I ended up just running the filler neck line to the butt check drain hole, and the sender line to the canister. Anybody know if I actually NEED both of these? I'm hoping to delete the filler neck line.
-filler neck has a different rubber seal at the gas cap which I still need to source.
At any rate, putting this all in took me a little while. Mostly getting the clamp where the filler meets the tank was a pain. After it was all in, the car started fine, but actually idled WORSE. Go figure. Throttle response was better, but off throttle it sounded like it was about to backfire....almost popping. The car was GUTTLESS. After a short drive over some rough ground, parking, and then starting again, the idle leveled out right around 1000 rpm, and the car felt like it had a lot more juice...98 hp worth of juice. Sweet! I dunno what happened, but something in the CPR got shook loose or something. Immediately things were better. It purrs quite smooth, and except for a couple small exhaust leaks, is really really quiet. The main pump is now quiet, and both pumps appear to be running good.
Since then, I've cleaned up some grounds, cleaned around the starter, cleaned up the idle control valve, and got the alignment...the car was wicked sketchy on ice. Scary times.
Alignment dude couldn't get camber to within spec which sucks. The HD springs are really high in the front, which I wanted, but they probably aren't helping the camber situation. If they settle at all (they're brand new) hopefully the camber will level out to a little better than +1 degree.
Oh, and here's the money shot....
That's the pickup tube in the '75 tank. I think Matt was on the money with the sheets of varnish coming off from the unleaded fuel. In addition to lots of corrosion, the whole tank is full of what appears to be large flakes of paint. And the majority of them were at the pickup, blocking....well...pickup. Glad I ditched that.
What's left? I've got a short that turns the seat belt light on and turns on the belt buzzer anytime I'm in gear. For a while today it was on constantly. Good times. Odometer and gas gauge work, although the speedo is at least 10 km/h off at this point. And a black leather interior should be in in the next couple weeks. I'll be sad to lose the blue, but the seats are pretty cracked, so they've gotta go.
I'm stoked.