Old automobiles are wonderful things. Among the grime and rust are decades-old examples of engineering and craftsmanship, and even though they've got a gizillion little parts, odds are pretty good that nearly everything on the car still largely functions, to some degree. Sure, the window regulators may be a little worn out and the exhaust system has a few holes, but often there aren't many parts that don't work at all.
The interesting thing is that even though the car works fine as time goes on, it's not that things aren't going wrong. Parts are failing left and right all the time but the built-in redundancy means the car can adequately (and sometimes imperceptably) operate just fine even though things are tragically broken.
That's not to say that catastrophic failures don't occur—they most certainly do (and how!) but since a car is typically such a utilitarian item, owners tend to get those catastrophic problems fixed quickly...although it's usually just enough to get the car back in service.
So what's left is interesting: you've got a bunch of parts that are all halfway broken, and which complement each other's failure modes. It's sortof like a big Jenga tower of car parts. Fixing one problem only exposes a bunch of others as you work through the myriad interlocking failures.
And at times that tower comes crashing down, which is sortof what happened to take the 914 out of commission for two weeks.
All said and done, fixing a poor idle required:
- Valve adjustment
- Entirely new ignition system (sans distributor)
- New fuel filter and some fuel lines
- A handful of vaccuum lines
- Reseating the air cleaner gasket (it was attached completely wrong and sealed only if you got lucky)
- Cleaning a bunch of crap out of the throttle body keeping me from getting good butterfly closure
- Fixing the bypass valve setting which was compensating for the butterfly
- Fixing the mixture setting which was compensating for the bypass valve
It's been fun.
I can honestly say that I get as much (if not more) pleasure out of working on my Mustang than driving it. This holds true to everything but carburator tuning, which is why there wont be one on this engine build. It has been down for quite a while now, going on a year, but that is beacuse of money, not time or interest. Plus, its a hobby car. When my truck started running bad, it was fixed within a week because I NEED it to function. I couldve dropped in any Ford engine and had it running within a week, but that wasnt my primary concern. I am doing what I can to piece together my dream car, and would rather take the time to do it the way I want it than rush though it and have to go back later to make things the way I wish they had been to start with.
True that. But when it does run...
--D
Last time it ran it was almost scary to drive, partially because it would accelerate so violently, and partially because it made so much noise you just felt like yo were going fast. This time around, I am hoping for more of the same, but with overdrive so I can continuously scare the crap out of myself while cruising down the freeway.
Aiming for capability of continuous evacuation? Gross.
--D