Eric W

Insulated & drywalled - it's built like a house w/o any plumbing. Sure, a sink would have been great, but here on septic, to add another fixture would have cost more than I've got in the Healey... I did add a mini-split AC after all this was signed off.

Most of the build spent waiting for things to happen. Global pandemic supply chain interruptions, interest rates changing fast, so all builders needed to complete their housing projects ASAP before buyers disappeared...

Been ignoring this car for a while getting the shop building built. It's about as big as will practically fit with the constraints of this lot. Much more detail here, but here are just a few of the significant steps: Wall between front & back yards on the right side of the driveway. Hm - something better than just a yard wall could go here... From the backyard - behind that bush is an old hot tub pad. Hm - 80A at 220V power right there...

Been a while. Off on other projects around the house, mostly. Tried a couple more times / ways to bleed the clutch - replaced the master cyl and slave cyl, checked the hard line for flow, etc. I'm thinking there's something in the clutch itself that's rusted, so may need to replace the clutch. In order to keep making some progress, I decided to remove the surplus and abandoned wiring from under the hood, specifically on the right side. The original lead to the ignition coil is broken somewhere, and there's no way I can find anything with all the wires covered over and additional unused wires still in place. The car initially came with a generator, but now has an alternator, and I don't think I'm interested in going back. So cut off the electrical tape that was wrapped over the original cloth tape, and cleared off the wires. Removed 2 wires that were part of the generator circuit. Removed 2 other wires - will need to see what these were for, but they had open/exposed ends (potential shorts if they were hot). The car was originally the "square fender", so there was an extra 4-5 feet of headlight leads all wrapped around in there. Shortened 3 of these for the front turn signals / markers, and found that just by disconnecting at existing connectors and reconnecting, I could drop out a couple of feet for the high/low headlights. Also removed the voltage regulator. This caused the work-arounds that allowed the car to get power to the coil to drop out (before starting this wiring rework, the car would start / run), so I'll need to see what should be / needs to be retained from the original regulator connections. But this is progress for today. Unfortunately I didn't have a good "before" picture showing the piled mass of square-fender front light wiring.

Hasn't been much going on with this one. Brought it to the local cruise night a couple of times over the past year, and that's about it. Today, got to a show. This is to benefit my daughter's high school automotive program, so there's a personal connection for me. The trophies were from March 2020 - that show wasn't able to happen by only a week or two, and last year's was obviously cancelled.

I had Royal Plating do 6 bumper overrides and 1 bumper for me for the Studebaker (linked in sig, see page 6). If you're able to get the parts to Tucson, they did a great job. It wasn't months and months I'd heard some say about plating services. More like a couple of weeks. Chrome Plating | Tucson AZ | Royal Plating

Got the battery secured. The hold-down hooks from Moss were about 1" too short - need about 5" to the bottom of the threads, ~6" overall length. Modern battery maybe different size from the original. Found some 8" long hooks at the local store and cut about 2" off of them. (photos below) Master cylinder was delivered yesterday, so I got that installed today. Reminded myself of the incorrect order of doing this - needed to put the pedal pushrods into the cylinder before bolting the cylinder to the pedal box, but got that straightened out. Since bleeding the clutch has been the problem, decided to start with that. Decided to back-bleed from the bleed extension hose. Turns out the fitting on the Eezibleed exactly fits into the bleeder extension port, so would be perfect if this works. Put some fluid into the Eezibleed bottle (since the bottle would supply fluid back through the system to the master cylinder), applied the air hose to the tire (for ~20psi pressure), saw fluid leave the bottle a little, then stop. When I let off the air pressure, the fluid jumped back into the bottle. So it won't reverse bleed. Tried to forwards bleed. Added fluid to the master cylinder, drained out the Eezibleed bottle (since it wouldn't need to be the supply), applied the air pressure, pumped the clutch pedal many times, but never saw anything at the bleed hose (from driver's seat, can look under the hood and see the clear hose attached at the bleed extension). Tried this 2 more times, and one time, I thought some fluid left the master and stayed gone, but it's very hard to judge level looking inside the master fill port. Right now, this thing has me defeated. Clutch slave absolutely won't bleed from either end. Will try something like removing the bleed extension and putting the stock bleed fitting back in place, but that requires getting the slave cylinder back off of the transmission, which were a couple of the least-accessible fasteners I've ever had to work with. But I wonder if the fitting for the bleed extension at the slave cylinder is incorrectly blocking the bleed port or something. At least I modified the upper clutch slave bolt before I put it back (cut off about 3/8" of excessively long thread that just gets buried in the bottom of the hole, structurally doing nothing).

Worked on getting the cooling system closed up. Pulled the radiator to access the small hose between the head and the water pump outlet. This is a special tiny hose with an accordion center section and a chamfer inside the lower end. Tried pushing it up onto the port on the head, but couldn't get it to move very well. Heated up some water in a coffee cup to near boiling, and dropped the hose in there for a couple of minutes. Then it was much more flexible. It was still a struggle to push it up onto the port on the head, then maneuver it over the water pump port, but it's in. Then was working on the large hose between the pump and the bottom radiator port. There is almost no space at all to get this hose onto the radiator - just a little gap between the back of the radiator and the bottom of the front frame cross member. I fought with that for a while, with only fingertip access to the hose itself, and decided the hose needs to go on the radiator before the radiator goes in. So I pulled the radiator, mounted the hose to the lower port, threaded the upper end of the hose between the steering rack and the frame, and gradually worked the radiator back down into position (pull radiator down a little, pull upper end of hose up a little...). The upper end of the lower hose to the water pump was relatively easy. Then installed the upper hose - also easy. Then the tube to the heater core. This tube is quite a stretch into that port in the longer/lower radiator hose. Put some water on the hose to help. Probably should have added a little soap, but I got it together. Then added a small loop of 1/2" hose (about 18" long) between the heater port on the back of the head to the hard tube along the side of the head, bypassing the heater for now. Added just under 1.5 gallons of coolant. Started engine and let it run until the temp gauge was a little off the stop (~120F). The overflow hose was dripping, and I remembered that I'd bought a replacement radiator cap. So I swapped that on and ran the engine a little more. No major leaks spotted, so cooling is ready for at least some initial drives.

Didn't take video yesterday, but the engine was just as happy to start today. https://youtu.be/-cAZAleDbik

Got it started! Ok, I can get it driving from here. Earlier today, removed some tools that I'd set on the inner fender that I thought might be causing a short. The diagram indicates that the 3 things on the fuse that blew are the wiper motor, the fuel gauge, and the ignition coil. But for whatever reason, the coil still gets power. Tried cranking the engine with the #1 plug out to see spark and no good. Started thinking I'd be in for a big wiring project. Later today, decided to look through one of my old threads (the Buick 76R). In there, I had to rebuild ALL of the wiring firewall-forward. So I had a bunch of photos wire-by-wire of getting that back together. Noticed the wire between the distributor and coil. That's NOT what's in place on this car. So I looked at generic distributor ignition system wire diagrams, and yes, there's a wire between the distributor and coil. Coil isn't hot continuously, it cycles on/off with each spark. There's a wire in the bundle that goes to the distributor, so I've got that part, but where's the other end? I cut the tape covering the wire harness in that area to open things up. (There's old generator wires I should remove from this anyway, since it's been converted to alternator.) Found the other end. Put that to the coil. Key on, hit the starter, and engine ran almost instantly (on 3 cylinders, since I still had the #1 out). Could see the spark on #1. Not sure what it was running on, as I'd sprayed some starting fluid in there a couple of days ago, but must be some of that & maybe some ancient gas still in the carbs. Pulled the + wire off the coil to kill the engine, and put the #1 plug back in. Started it again, and it runs much smoother on all 4 rather than just 3. Just ran it for a couple of seconds to show that it works, as there's no coolant, but it wouldn't have run much anyway, since I haven't worked out any fuel delivery either. Waiting for replacement clutch / brake master to be delivered, but now I can work on fuel delivery knowing this engine will run. For those wondering about no mention of oil pressure in today's progress - I'd done that earlier. The engine makes oil pressure.

While the master cylinder is out, I decided to see if I could get spark. Pulled the distributor, swapped out the condenser, and cleaned the points. Put the distributor back in. Checked that the coil is getting power, then engaged the starter switch (no solenoid, just a cable-actuated mechanical switch above the starter). Had the #1 plug out and held against the engine for ground. Saw a spark on the fuse block, but no spark at the plug. The spark I saw was a fuse. I'll check the diagram to see what that's for.

I did try the piece of hose over the master fill port (gravity bleed) before giving up on this master cylinder. Though before doing this, I swapped out the lower segment of clutch hose because I had made that with not the bubble flare, though it did seem to be leak tight (with no pressure). I had a piece with preformed bubble flares so swapped that in. Wouldn't want to go through all this to get the clutch bled just for it to leak. Got 7/8" ID rubber hose, cut about 8"-9" long. It pushed right onto the master fill port. I put a worm clamp around it just to put a little compression on the rubber so it wouldn't leak. Filled this up near to the top. Waited a while - no level change. Pumped the pedal many times - no level change. Realized the clutch side of the cylinder is leaking where the pedal pushrod goes in - that could be a problem. So I suctioned out the hose as best I could, removed the hose and got the master cylinder out, drained, wrapped up and packed for return.

Last couple of days - called Moss tech support about the master cylinder. They've agreed to a return / replace, so I need to get it back out. Took it out, moved the clutch side with a screwdriver (where the pedal pushrod goes), and fluid comes out the clutch port. So I put it all back in and tried again. Still no luck, so I think the cylinder may be leaky / not pushing with full power or something. I did adjust the clutch pedal pushrod to be longer, to be sure the pedal was getting a full stroke on the piston in the master cylinder, but still no results. Read numerous websites about bleeding these clutches. Seems people try every which way to get these done - one that I might try was to run a hose from the right front brake bleeder to the clutch bleed, then pump the brakes to back-fill the clutch. The clutch and brake reservoirs are common at the master, so fluid just circulates around (don't need a hose or something between the clutch and brake reservoirs). Another one that was kind of interesting is to get a piece of hose that fits over the master cylinder fill port threads and a worm clamp to make the hose tight on those threads, then flood the master cylinder to a level up in the hose that is higher than the clutch hard line. Then gravity should move fluid up and "over the hump" in the line down to the slave cylinder. I'll get that cylinder out today & maybe get to a shipping place to get it on the way back to them.

Re-bled the brakes and the pedal feels good! Now the clutch won't bleed at all. I'll go over that line again. Maybe I'll feel motivated to do something with it tomorrow. ... Later - I suctioned fluid out of the clutch side of the master cylinder and pulled the clutch line. Formed a new line section at the master from the segment left over from the brake line. Transferred the original line fitting to the new tube with the bubble flare. Should work better now.

Got the replacement brake line in with a pre-made bubble flared tube. I transferred the fitting over from the old line. Also got the clutch line reinstalled. I'll save trying the bleeding again for maybe next weekend.

Pulled out the clutch and brake lines. Clutch line looks good. I think it didn't bleed correctly due to the leak of the brake line at the master cylinder. After pulling the brake line, I could see that the bubble flare is cracked at the master cylinder end, so that would explain the leak. I've been researching replacement lines. From the AHEXP forum, they mention Fed Hill as a source (U.S. distributor for UK-made fittings and lines). Those posts were 9+ years old, but Fed Hill is still around and has fittings available, though it's quite possible that the fittings on the existing tubes could work, because all they do is hold the bubble flare in place. I may take a shot at re-using the fittings with a bubble-flared 3/16" tube from the FLAPS, and if that doesn't work, then order new from Fed Hill. The brake line is ~63.5" long Couple of photos of the line routing, though I got the old lines out in good shape for patterns.

Between being sick this week and trying to cover work as much as possible, I didn't get much done at all in the garage. Finally did get out for a fitting to put the new pressure switch on the compressor. Got that put on and nothing. Decided to look online for the instruction manual (I have an idea where I might have stashed the paper copy, but online search is very quick.) There it is, buried between the motor & the tank, a breaker for the the motor! Reset that, and compressor going again. Oh well, <$20 for the switch & fitting. Blasted and painted the passenger footwell cover plate. Watched a video about forming bubble flares on brake lines. Doesn't look too hard - just need the right die (which I don't have). In the interest of continuing to do what I can, I'll probably get a die set and take a shot at re-making the clutch and brake lines. Clutch line acts like it's blocked, and the brake line is leaking at the master.

Here's how that "30%" in Tucson turned out today (couple of streets north of mine):

Not such a good day today. I'm working in a fairly over-packed garage that only has 2 power outlets. One is on the other side of the garage behind a refrigerator. So the one I can get to is usually for a radio and light somewhere. So when using the media blaster, I plug in the light inside the blaster, and run an extension cord from near the front door of the house to the air compressor, then run the air hose to the blaster. So I got that set up this morning, heard the compressor kick on, then I was headed into the house for something. I came back out, went over to the blaster, and started the cover panel pictured above. Usually, the compressor kicks on almost instantly (it's a fairly small one), but it didn't kick on. Then I felt the pressure going down. Checked on the compressor and it's dead. So I did a little searching and I think it's the pressure switch that cuts the power on & off. Ordered another one of those. Then I moved on to getting the coil into the cleaned up bracket. The new coil is just the slightest bit larger diameter than the old one, so it was a battle to tweak the bracket's shape until the coil fit and the securing bolt also fit at the same time. Then I decided to move on to trying the Gunson Eezibleed. It's set up to replenish the fluid in the master, but one of the comments on the ahexp forum was to run the replenish bottle with only air, so it's just putting air pressure directly into the master. So that's how I ran it - as an air pressure adder only. Its air supply is a Schrader valve adapter to go onto a tire. I checked the tire pressure because it says to run the bleeder at 20psi or less - the tire was at 40psi. So I bled that down to 20. Got set up to bleed the right rear. Went through nearly every wrench to find that the rear bleeds are 9/32". Connected the bleeder to the master cylinder, then to the tire, then opened the bleed on the wheel cylinder. It pushed fluid through no problems. Close the bleed, disconnect bleeder from the tire, set up bleed on the left rear. Checked fluid level in the master, added fluid. Reconnected the bleeder to the master, then to the tire for pressure, bled the left rear. Then noticed drips below both front calipers. These are banjo fittings with a pair of copper crush washers. So I tightened those and set up to bleed the left front. Topped up the master again. Front bleeds needed 3/8" wrench. Bled left front, topped up master, then right front. Saw drips again at both front calipers, so tightened the banjo fittings a little more. Checked the pedal, and it didn't feel good. Checked the brake line at the master, and it's weeping there. Tried to tighten that fitting (on the back side of the master, buried in the pedal box, so you can't see it). This is probably the thing that will make me remove the front sheetmetal, because that brake line fitting is impossible to see and touch at the same time with the hood on. This goes back to the over-crowded garage - I don't have anywhere to go with the front sheetmetal if I pull it. I've seen others stand it up on the back edge - that's a vertical seam on the body, so maybe I can stand it up. Tried to bleed the clutch the same way (it's a single fluid reservoir for both the brakes & clutch). The first tire was down to almost no pressure, so bled another one down from 40 to 20, reconnected everything, but no fluid came out of the clutch bleed. Not sure what's going on there. Line may be blocked or pinched somewhere.

Did a little more disassembly not directly related to getting things going. Pulled out the heater fan & heater core. Pulled out the right side footwell cover plate. One of the fasteners was rusted to the point that the 7/16" wrench couldn't get a bite, so I cut a slot in the head for a screwdriver. That wasn't working, so I hit it with the torch for a few seconds. It lifted right out. I'll clean up the cover plate so things on that side look better, and come up with a heater block-off plate. I can add the heater back if/when needed.

Replacement coil showed up - another sign of the times, it was showing as "delayed" for the past 2 days. No big deal - it arrived. So this led me to pull off the old coil, which I should have done while waiting, because the bracket needed a clean-up. Couple of minutes in the blaster and the bracket's good - looks like it didn't have paint originally. The bolt will sit in the Evap-o-rust overnight. I put the coil in without the bracket and checked for spark - no good. Anyway, the coil I pulled out had a date code from 1973, and the car's been in storage 20+ years, so ~$15 for a new coil isn't a big deal at all. I also have a points & condenser set to install. The Gunson Eezibleed showed up today - actually ahead of promise date from the UK.

This afternoon, rolled the Sprite out to sweep the floor under the car. I'd been cleaning up near each wheel as I worked on it, but it's good to get the whole floor at once. Here's a few photos in the driveway.

Went to the Cars & Coffee this morning. More cars out there than I expected, but I guess people are looking for something to do.

Pretty light first week back at work, so I took off early and got the starter swapped out. This proved to be a good call. The starter that was on there would turn intermittently, and I don't know what would put it into the right position to turn. A reman starter was about $35 with shipping (when I get the core charge back), and it definitely has good power. Spun it for a couple of seconds, and I could hear the sound change as the oil pressure came up on the gauge, so that's good. I also swapped out the distributor cap and leads while in that area. Found clear steps on the ahexp.com site - remove ignition leads and distributor cap, pull out distributor, loosen top starter bolt, remove starter cable from starter, remove nut from bottom starter bolt, go back up top, finish removing upper starter bolt, pull starter out from top. Installation is reverse of all that - pretty easy. Coil might be bad. I'll check on how to check it.

Did some digging on the ahexp.com site, and the slave pressure line thread is supposedly 3/8 - 24, so I don't know what came off of the car, but it's not that. If the change to the front bodywork is any indication, this car has had some things changed around, so I'm not surprised the slave cylinder may have been from another year, model, or a totally different car that just happened to fit. Weather cleared up, so I got the differential oil changed. This also included thoroughly cleaning the drain & fill plugs - still a messy job, but maybe not quite so messy on reinstalling the cleaned-up plugs.