John S's Journal

I’ve acquired a couple of S.U. fuel pumps from forum members that switched over to different brands plus I had the one from my wrecked ‘70 roadster that I parted out so it was time to rebuild a couple of them. One of the pumps came with some new bits installed and the rest of the rebuild kit but it wasn’t working. I also had recently ordered a rebuild kit from Burlen and it had arrived so the plan was to make two good ones with the best of the pump parts.

First up was the one that wasn’t working but had some new parts installed. While stripping it down, I could see that one of the posts wasn’t assembled properly and the coil wire wasn’t secured properly which no doubt was the problem. Opened up both the inlet and delivery chambers and removed all of the valves, screen, gaskets, etc and put the pump body into the ultrasonic cleaner along with the covers, screws and other metal bits. Installed all of the valve parts once out of the cleaner and and moved on to the rocker assembly, coil housing, and diaphragm assembly.

I cleaned up the coil housing and hit it with a coat of satin black and after that dried, it was time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
It’s a fiddly job getting the diaphragm and armature in and properly adjusted and the plastic armature spacers in between the diaphragm and the armature plate. The rebuild kit has 11 brass spacers/guides but the thought of trying to maneuver 11 of those in without them falling out seemed daunting so I reused the 5 figure-eight plastic guides. Better but still a PITA. Definitely fiddly. After rotating the diaphragm so that the rocker throw over was set properly, I got the pesky guides in place, mated the pump body with the coil housing and mounted the pedestal/rocker assembly, points, and varistor. Made all of the wire connections and then powered it up with a battery charger. Success!

Rinse and repeat on the second pump and had to open it up a second time and make a diaphragm adjustment to get it to work. All that’s left is to wait for the blue S.U. sealing tape to arrive so I can get the pedestal cap sealed up and then rig up a test rig to run some mineral spirits through both pumps. One of the two will get swapped into the GT and I’ll see if someone on the forum wants a rebuilt pump.
The one that I remove from the GT will get a refresh for a spare but I probably won’t buy the whole kit. $100+ for the kit is crazy when you can buy a Hardi for not much more.

I’ve been putting up with a fuel pump inlet banjo bolt weeping lately and the new fiber washers arrived along with a new electronic voltage stabilizer so yesterday I took a few minutes to attend to both.

The fuel pump is easy to get to with the back raised up so the washer replacement was relatively quick. From what I’ve read, you really have to torque those down tight to get them to seal. Time will tell if the problem is solved.

The voltage stabilizer is mounted so high up that I just left the original one in place and mounted the new electronic version down lower on the bulkhead and just moved the wires down. Easy peasy.

The last job was to actually wire up the speakers to the little Bluetooth amp that I mounted in behind the radio console quite awhile ago. I thought it might be nice to have some tunes on my 160 mile round trip for today. The speakers came with the ‘70 roadster and never got used before it got wrecked. They are pretty decent JBL speaker wedge shaped box speakers and sit nicely on the back seat. I just need to put a charge port for my phone now. Between the streaming music and the Google map, the phone juice goes down quickly.

The trip to Amity and back was great. Met up with some familiar faces, car ran great albeit with an occasional alternator light flicker on the way home so that needs to be sorted. Loose belt, loose connection, old diode pack? I’ve got a 105 amp replacement that I fixed up if nothing else so we’ll see how that all shakes out.

Had some time to get back to the gauge installation. With the old one out of the way, I started looking for the best place to find the various wires needed. Dash light wire and ground wires were right there at the opening but the power wire was going to take some sleuthing. I thought about attaching it to the double spade terminal on the 12v feed to the voltage stabilizer but was convinced that it probably wasn’t the best choice. In the end, I had everything I needed to run a dedicated wire from the fuse block green circuit. Almost everything. A quick trip to buy an inline fuse holder and a few fuses and then I had everything.

Pulled the green wire off, slipped a double spade connector on and reattached the green wire with an open male spade for my inline fuse and power wire. Ran the new wire through the heater cable entrance in to the area behind the dash and then over to the speedometer hole in the dash. Temporarily connected the wiring to determine if the gauge was going to work and once that was done, proceeded to run a rotary stone around the inside of the opening to make room for the slightly larger than factory gauge diameter. This was probably the most time consuming part of the install but still not bad. The next thing to figure out was a place to position the antenna. Speedhut suggests placing it with an unobstructed “view” of the sky such as on top of the dash. I didn’t want to put it up on the dash as that would probably require drilling a hole or having the antenna wire exposed, neither of which appealed to me. I ended up sticking it to the top of the steering column cowl which worked great and I was able to gather all of the extra wire and tuck it out of the way.

Got it out for a test drive and it works flawlessly. I went with the basic features for my gauge and it has all I need but you can spend more and get more features. I went with a red needle as opposed to the white as it stands out better. The old speedometer bounced around so much when it did work but this one is perfect. Happy boy!

Took advantage of the recent sale and ordered one after dealing with a non-functioning speedometer. The phone app has worked in a pinch but having to look down to the console isn’t ideal.

Took the heater control switch out to make it a bit easier to reach up behind the gauge cluster and managed to disconnect the speedometer cable and remove the knurled nuts on the back of the gauge. Retained all of the skin on my hand in the process. That’s a win in my book. The original gauge light wire is accessible as are the black ground wires. Just need to source a power wire and locate the antenna. My thought is to mount the antenna on top of the steering cowl. Not sure if the old gauge light wire will do the trick since it needed a case ground. Don’t know if the new gauge ground will complete the circuit. Will find out when I can get back to it.

…that there isn’t much that I need to do which is kinda nice. Out in the garage for a spell this evening finishing up a non-car project when I remembered that I had purchased some window crank extensions from Jim Miller (Modern Touring) quite awhile ago but hadn’t gotten around to installing them. Well, I can cross that off the list now. What a great idea he had to produce those and keep the door cards from getting any more wear. As I closed the passenger door, I looked at the wing mirror that’s been loose since I acquired the car and decided that today was the day I was finally going to do something about it. A couple of back and forth trips from the driver’s seat and a little snugging up on the nut underneath and at the back of the mirror and job done. About 15 leisurely minutes and a couple of little jobs off the list. Another one awaits but that’s for the next time I’m motivated. The footwell carpet pieces move around a little now and then and I got the snaps along with the carpet kit from Prestige but once again, I just haven’t taken the time to install them. I remember a time that my list comprised of more serious matters that needed to be done to make the car roadworthy and look presentable. Now it’s mostly these little things that don’t have to be done. Drive more and work less is a good switch.

Hopped in the GT yesterday with my clubs riding shotgun since it’s that time of year to play some golf. Decided to take the freeway as opposed to the back roads and it almost turned in to a disaster. Running great until about a mile-ish to go to the course and it started struggling to maintain speed. I limped to the golf course and decided to let it sit for awhile while I hit some balls on the range. It seemed like it was starved for fuel during the last bit of the trip into the parking lot so that’s what I focused on when I opened the bonnet. The clear glass filter showed some particles but overall, nothing that would cause too much of a flow issue. After sitting for about an hour, it started but was still running rough and really struggled to build and maintain any rpm’s especially on the uphill sections of the back roads. I was very thankful when I crested the last hill and had a downhill stretch back into Eugene where after cruising slowly through a stop sign it died as soon as I turned onto a side street and rolled to s stop.
I didn’t have much in the way of tools but enough to pull the Cooper’s cans and check the float bowls for debris or other issues. Nothing wrong there so I pulled the cap off the distributor and didn’t see anything amiss. Plug wires were snug but couldn’t pull the plugs without a few tools. A call to my wife for her to bring a few things and then started chatting with a guy about the car. I was in the process of discussing what I had done to the car when I noticed a coil wire had come off. It was probably barely on when the trouble started and I might have finished it off when I reached in to take the cap off. Plugged it back in and told the guy that it’s going to fire right up and that’s exactly what it did. Called the wife back and told her to look for me and the car ran perfectly once again.

Today, it got a bath and I dried it off on a nice spirited drive out in the country. Still no speedometer but I’ve been looking at the Speedhut website and have one all picked out. About ready to pull the trigger…