John S's Journal

It’s been a frustrating couple of days. After getting the rebuilt HS4’s installed, I’ve struggled to get them dialed in. I figured that putting them on a car that was running well would be a breeze but that was not the case. I went with the standard, two full turns below the bridge as a starting point but I wasn’t as sure about where to set the throttle adjustment screws which led me to multiple attempts and tweaking things to see if I could get it to start. I did manage to get it driving reasonably well on a couple of occasions prior to the weekend. Took Father’s Day off and then resumed on Monday. After endless disappointments, I went back to square one. Checked valve lash and made some minor adjustments. Checked and confirmed spark at the coil. Checked and confirmed spark at number one plug. Static-timed by grounding #1 plug at the block, rotating to 10 degrees BTDC. Still no joy. I had those suction chambers off so many times checking jet depth with a gauge, adjusting at different depths. Followed the S.U. recommendations for tuning and eventually I noticed the blurb about setting the throttle disk screws 3/4 turn from fully closed. Also advanced the timing by a couple of degrees. By that time, I had cleaned the plugs a few times and the last time could see they were wet so they got changed.

Fresh outlook today with fresh plugs, two turns down, and throttle disks adjusted a bit further open after reading old forum posts about 1 1/2 turns from fully closed. First crank of the key, it tried to run so that told me I was close but perhaps too rich so I leaned out the jets a little at a time and also had to open up the throttle a tad. Finally got it running again but unable to test drive because I had gotten my son-in-law to help me remove the hatch so that I could install the new body seal from Martin.
I talked my wife into helping me lift it and position it while I could get the screws and lift springs back in. Hoping to get some test drives in tomorrow to see how it runs. If it starts up that is…

Wednesday
Pulled the choke out fully with a little assist from the engine bay as the choke cable needs some work, and it fired right up! I have more work to do at idle as it isn’t as smooth as it should be so I’m getting close. Haven’t driven it yet so that should be forthcoming soon when I can find the time.

Came home from a camping trip and was happy to see that my Joe Curto rebuilt carbs made it safely and we’re waiting for me in the garage. Felt a bit like Christmas opening up the big box and then the separately boxed carburetors. Extremely well-packed in sturdy boxes with lots of packing material .

So today, I removed my stand-in HS4’s that were from my ‘70 roadster in preparation to install the freshly rebuilt ones original to the GT. The fact that everything was very clean made the process an easy deal since they’ve only been in use on the GT for a a couple months and hasn’t accumulated many miles due to an extremely wet weather pattern this Spring. The new ones are on now and plumbed up but a family birthday celebration this evening means the finishing touches will have to wait until tomorrow.

Got a call from Joe Curto today to tell me that my HS4’s are done and will be headed my way next week. What started out as an estimated 16 week timeframe turned into 6 months due to his popularity and a backlog of work. I’m glad that I had the spares from my wrecked ‘70 roadster to get me by. Good things come to those that wait they say. Love talking to Joe and can’t wait to finally get the original carbs back on my GT.

And that means more driving as I get more comfortable with it’s performance out on the road. It’s been running a bit lean as it has been a little hard to start and popping on deceleration. Finally got around to removing the Cooper cans and tweaked the HS4’s. Now it fires right up on the choke and seems to idle down pretty well. Still waiting on the original carbs to come back from Joe Curto. Six months and still not here. Glad I have my spare carbs to use…

Got the LED flashers installed last week and then the LED bulbs came in yesterday so I got those installed. Didn’t do a side by side comparison but they are definitely brighter than the old incandescent bulbs.

Just a couple more things remain on my immediate list. The front valance that was so badly mangled is getting closer. The large boo boos have been massaged out with the hammer and dolly, all the paint stripped and I used a 2K rattle can epoxy primer on the bare metal. I need to put a skim coat of mud next to smooth things out a bit more before painting it.
Still need to investigate the OD solenoid. It’s getting power as the indicator light comes on in my radio console. I need to jack it back up and do a little probing with the multimeter to see what’s going on. In the meantime though, I’m enjoying the driving experience in my GT.

Finished up with the carpet installation and got the seats back in place.
I ran a tap through all of the bolt holes for the seat tracks and then layer the carpets down and used a small screwdriver to punch through the carpet and insulation. Followed up with a hot soldering iron to make nice neat circular holes for the bolts. After that, I ran the bolts through the spacers on top of the carpet and snugged them up to located them over the bolt holes and then heated a piece of copper pipe that fit perfectly over the metal spacers. This made 8 perfect holes so that the spacers would sit flat on the floorboards. I haven’t put snaps on the footwell carpet pieces yet but that may happen yet. I still need to finish the speaker wire routing in the rear of the car and I want to see about cutting a spare battery box cover so that I can open up the individual sides separately but other than that, the interior work is complete.

The OD screen has been leaking since the install so after draining the gearbox a couple days ago, it had finally stopped dripping so after some a thorough wipe down with some brake cleaner, I re-sealed with some Permatex black sealant and hopefully that will fix the leak. Drying overnight before refilling. Fingers crossed.

Continued on with the interior refresh.while the seats, floor coverings, and radio console were out, I took the opportunity to coat the 4 areas of the floor where the seat tracks mount. Very light surface rust so after buzzing that off, I coated it with some Zero Rust and while that was drying, I gathered up the stuff I needed to wire up my little Bluetooth amplifier. The old AM radio was partially gutted so that I could wire the power through the radio on/off dial. Soldered in a fuse and the power lead from the amp to the back of the dial as well as a light and tied it to a green wire that was unused behind the console. Velcro’d the amp in behind the console where it can be reached and routed the wires down along the tunnel. Tested it with a couple of 6x9 speakers and it pairs easily with my phone and sounds pretty good. Don’t know how much I’ll be listening to music because I enjoy the sound of the Bell exhaust but the hands free phone capability will be nice to have.

While the console was out, I added another indicator light for the OD and also added another switch for a future driving light project. Changed the indicator bulbs to LED and also changed the flashers to CECEF32RL LED flashers.

Got the rubber shift lever boot installed and taped down to align the holes. I gave up on my attempt to incorporate a small light in the top of the gear lever so that was replaced with the late model OD switch even though I’m using the wiper stalk to actuate the OD solenoid. The tunnel carpet was next and even though there were 4 holes in the carpet for the chrome shift boot retainer, the holes weren’t all the way through the thick insulating pad so it was a bit of a struggle to get the 4 bolts located properly. I’ve been using the 3M 90 spray adhesive on the carpet install and it’s been working well but I didn’t want to spray the whole tunnel so I’ve been judicious about applying it. I don’t foresee having to remove it but only spraying it where it needs to be to look good seems like a good thing just in case. I ran the speaker wires down and back along the floor where it meets the tunnel and left plenty of wire because I’m not sure about speaker type and placement yet. All that remains to be done at this point is to locate the seat belt and seat track mounting holes and burn some nice neat holes through the carpet and mount the seats. Hopefully I’ll get that finished up this weekend. While the seats are out and I can stretch out, I’ll see if I can swap out some dash bulbs to LED while I have better access. Also need to attach the heater cable that I didn’t do after the heater box rebuild.

Last but not least, I drained the gearbox oil the other day and left a drain pan underneath so hopefully it’s done dripping and I can seal up the annoying leak. I spent too much time cleaning the gearbox and surrounding area to have that get coated again. Probably do the same with the solenoid cover too while I’m at it.