John S's Journal

After a short break to take advantage of some late season camping on the coast, it was time to get some new rubber on the freshly blasted and powder coated Rostyles. I got them fitted with some Hankook Kinergy ST
175/70R14’s and got the car back on the ground. I was hoping to drive it outside but the clutch is either fused to the flywheel or there is still air in the line. The push rod is moving around a half inch and I was able to go through the gears when it was up on jack stands awhile back so I’m a little puzzled that it won’t shift while it’s on the ground. I’ve had good success reverse bleeding and that’s what a did so I’m having a hard time believing that there is still air in the line. I may just buy a new slave cylinder as this one came from the donor car. It worked fine when I removed it but fluid seems to build in the boot so it might be part of the problem. I really want to be able to test the GT out a bit before I switch over to parting out the wrecked ‘70. I want the ‘70 gone before I start in on the gearbox swap and the suspension rebuild on the GT.

Well, I decided to take another shot at the clutch after thinking about it for an hour or so. I decided to get a jar of old brake fluid to immerse the tubing in and go back to the two person bleed method. As soon as I crackEd the bleed screw open, I got a bunch of air bubbles out. It only took a few minutes with my helper as the pedal firmed up right away. Success.
So it was time to get the car back down on the ground and see if I could get it to move a bit in the garage. That’s when I discovered that the clutch was fused from sitting so many years. As soon as I would depress the clutch, the engine would bog down and die. I decided to crank the revs up and see if I could engage first gear and after killing the engine a few times, I managed to get it to go into gear and then dump the clutch and cram on the brakes. Did this in reverse as well and managed to get the car to move front and back a couple of feet in the garage. Ran out of daylight at that point so tomorrow might be the day that I actually drove it at least out of the garage and back maybe.

Spent some time in the wrecked roadster removing stuff on the interior. Removed the recently refurbished pillow dash, center console, door panels and trim, wiper blades and escutcheons. Lots of good parts that will be going up for sale on the BST once I get organized. I was originally thinking that I would keep the dash but the one in the GT is in beautiful condition so I think I’ll sell the one out of the ‘70 roadster. I put a lot of time into re-doing it and when I removed it today, it brought back memories of all the work that went into removing it, stripping it, cleaning and painting the metal, fitting/gluing that new dash pad, fitting all of the switches/gauges back into it and finally reinstalling it back into the car. I only got to drive that car for a few months before the wreck but every time I did, looking out at and over that dash made me smile.

Lots more to remove from the car before I’m done with it but some progress on both cars today.