My daily driver (WATSDAT) is now sans refrigerant hoses &
dash assembly and parked in the "holding stall". Now queued
up in the operating stall is the organ donor. To bring it
back to live, I connected the water pump hoses together (so
that it don't run dry. Radiator is folded in half from
accident.) Then I poured some water in the header bottle
and heard it all run out the front. Duh-wee! Okay... I had
to rethink that. While I was pouring coolant in the water
pump, I noticed that coolant was going into the header
bottle through the heater bypass hose. So I had to block
that.
I start the car -- vroom! and then it stalls. Then it only
cranks. Give it some ether. That worked for a moment.
Huh, got ignition but no fuel? I go poking around some more
in the engine and noticed that there was no idle speed
motor. Duh-ah. Got one patched on there, and the car runs
good and sounds AWESOME. (I had previously taken the
muffler off to get at the cat bypass for use on another
car.) So with no exhaust system it sounded more like an air
boat.
I already had the brake master cylinder off, but that didn't
stop me from repeatedly using the pedal out of habit while
driving around the yard. The front wheel scrapes too much
to turn very sharp. Drove it into the garage and noticed
that even though the temperature gauge was just above the
first notch, the hoses felt hot & hard.
To my surprise, the AC is holding it's charge nicely. No
oily leaks around the compressor. So I'm using it on my car
since my rebuilt compressor leaks. Not sure what I'll do
with the evaporator yet. I might have my old one repaired
(again). Might get a new one if I can find one. Might use
the one from the donor car.
Next job tonight is remove the refrigerant hoses from the
donor car so that I can take them to Amazon tomorrow to have
two sets refurbished. One for my car. One for Rich's.
Mikes are already done. This time I'm going to see about
having the hoses sleeved with stainless steel braid. The
"bloke" said he does it for the ricers. It makes crimping
the ends a bit more complex, but not a big issue.
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