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unimogjohn

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Everything posted by unimogjohn

  1. It is Thursday. Sometimes it is two steps forward and ten backwards. Today was one of those days. Today was shock day. A week ago I ordered KBR shocks based upon information I gleaned from several interchange parts list, which gave me the part numbers. With the numbers in hand I ordered them, planning to install them when I got the chance. Well, today was that chance. It took me about two hours take off the backs, boy, everything was frozen solid, but got them off. Got ready to install the new shocks, and it was obvious that the mounting brackets were wrong. No good, wrong shock. Undaunted I went to the front, pulled off the old one and compared it to the old one, looked like a match. Wrong, the little feet on the bottom of the shock were too short to be securely held in by the mounting bolts. So again, no good, wrong shock. Now I am back to square one. Will head now to the local parts store to see what I can match up. My rear shocks were adjustable, Gabriel 45244-7LB My front shocks were Columbus HD 81582-106810 The shocks that did not fit were: KBR KG5507 Rear; KBR KG4550 Front Here are some pics. I quit for the day.
  2. Don, re replacing brakes. Yes, I agree and will replace everything necessary. But I have to get something working if I can to get it off the trailer and into the garage safely. Easier to work on while it is on the trailer for right now. Cannot pull the wheels/tires either until it is off the trailer and on jack stands. So I am stuck until I get the carb back from rebuilding and can get the old girl to start and run, and then off the trailer. Hopefully, that will be sometime late next week.
  3. It is Wednesday, and I got a few hours to work on the old girl. Decided today was brake day. So got out the Mighty Vac and broke both rear bleed screws free. Well, nothing came out, and the Mighty Vac was not drawing any fluid. Took a look at the master cylinder and attempted to bleed it, did that and went back to the rear brakes. Attempted to bleed them again, this time with a human helper, aka Alice, and again nothing. I figure that the Master Cylinder is bad so I have ordered a new one. All of this fussing, pumping and checking took about three hours. I did get a chance to really look around the underside of the car. I found a leaking power steering unit (well, somewhere around it), leaking rear end main seal, fuel line cut and suspended with wire in a couple of places, and everything is a tad rusty. On the plus side the hog channels look fine and are nice and solid. The rear round bar is about 1/3 gone, but is still solid for now. Here are some pics of the underside of the car. I do plan to paint all the metal with black rust encapsulator from Eastwood. Oh, and the light for the opening of the driver's door works almost all the time. Tomorrow is going to be shocks day, will try to get at least a pair on.
  4. Ernie, sprayed them down with Kroil. I want to see if I can get the screws loose and clean up the terminals. That is probably all it needs.
  5. It is Tuesday, finally a nice day. Had errands and farm chores in the morning, but was able to get on the Avanti by noon. I wanted to take a detailed look at the door and window assemblies to see what repairs are needed. Both looks good, but the grease is old and dry, and all the rubber pieces especially the outside weather strip between the door and the window are toast. To replace the rubber you have to remove the vent and window itself. I decided to leave that for another day. I did take the opportunity to at least lube the little plastic roller bearings. Both windows now roll up and down easily. I wanted to put back on the door panels. I hate to have a car partially deconstructed, and would rather put everything back together so I always have a complete car. So that is what I did. Both panels are now back on, chrome has been cleaned and the vinyl has a coat of special wax on it. At least it looks like I have an interior again. The new battery was dead and is now on the charger. I left the left turn signal on and while the horn was disconnected, the relay was not, so it buzzed itself until the battery was completely dead. I have disconnected horn relay so it does not happen again. I can see that the steering wheel is going to have to come off sooner than later. Oh well, a lesson learned. Also the light went you open the door on the driver's side does not work the light, so took it out. The terminals are all rusted, the button does push in and out easily. So will work on getting the screws out (rusted solid) to see if I can get it to work. The passenger side works fine. Tomorrow is suppose to be another nice day. On the agenda, bleeding the brakes. Pics are the reasons for the farm chores, the installed panels, and the rusty button.
  6. Bill, I have the factory repair manual. Send me your email address, and I will send to you. It is a 1.2 MB pdf file. unimogjohn@aol.com
  7. Forgot to say that your carb should not overflow with the gravity feed IF your float is shutting off the fuel via the needle valve. It is does not then you have fuel logged cork float or a defective needle/seat. Also it is easy to check your float level with the top off. I have rarely found the float level to be an issue. Let us know how it goes.
  8. Andy, I would first eliminate the fuel deliver system and concentrate on the carb and getting it running right. Take a quart container and mount it higher than the carb, use it as a temp gast tank. I put in a shut off on the rubber line going to the car. So now you have a gravity system independent of the old system. Now you can see if your carb has a problem or not. The marvel is prone to getting dirty. If you take it apart you will see a long and short tube. They easily get clogged and the result is poor running. As a general rule there are really only two adjustments, the air valve for high speed, and the low speed jet controlled by the wheel at the bottom of the carb base. For starters keep the air screw height level with the little stop arm on its side. The wheel valve is a bit more tricky. Turn the wheel counter clockwise to the valve closes, find the little cut out in the wheel, turn the wheel so the cut lines up with the little pole on the base. This is the factory setting. Usually, it is less than a half a turn. Let us know how she runs now and we can go on to the fuel delivery system. Your vacuum system works good if cleaned and in good order. Never had mine fail me. Here is a pic of the guts of a marvel carb. Take about an hour to disassemble and clean. Not a big deal.
  9. Leif is correct, turn the little knob counter clockwise. Also when it is off you can push it in, and it will light until you release the knob. The starter linkage is all mechanical. You are not pushing hard enough to engage the starter. Have someone push hard on the starter rod, look at the starter/generator. You should see the plunger being pulled out, and the third brush moving into position. If this is not working take the cover plate off the starter generator and observe the mechanical action and make sure things are at least moving. Next, take off the linkage over the flywheel starter drive and make sure things are lubed and move freely. It is a simple assembly once you see how it works. On the crank, you have to really push in to engage the dogs. You have a big heavy spring that you have to compress. Good luck, you are getting there, keep asking questions.
  10. October 18, 2009 It's Sunday, after finishing the farm and llama chores, decided to remove the other (passenger) door panel and strip the black paint. I figure I would have then two doors that would match, rather than one red and the other black. I am getting better at stripping and found the right tools to remove the black paint, as a result this panel only took two hours. Am I happy with the results, well yes and no. Will I continue to strip? I do not think so. Yes, the paint is off, that is the good. The bad is that it did remove most, if not all, of the little metal flake pink tone that covered the red vinyl. So while the panels are now original, they have lost their luster, and are just red. I did see that Studebaker International has some red vinyl paint, but if I sprayed that one I would be back where I started. I am leaning now to just starting to replace the vinyl at some point. But this is a long term investment, and it will not be done within the next year or so. There is just too much other critical thing that must be done. The same for the painting of the car. On the plus side, one of the screws that hold the chrome plate around the the door latch was sheared off at some point. I removed the locking assembly and was able to get the screw body without any damage to the assembly. So it was a happy fix. Here are before and after pics of the panels. Will post one back on the door when it has a chance to dry out in the house overnight.
  11. I appreciate everyone's comments re the radial tires and the Ford versus the Studebaker rim. I have not decided what to do yet, I have a few weeks to decide. It is Saturday, cold and wet, not a good day to be working on the Avanti outside. So decided that I would move inside. Spent an hour or so finishing the cleaning and polishing the air cleaner. It is now ready to go back on the car. Also decided to finish stripping the black paint from the one panel that I removed and started last week. I caculate that have four hours into referbishing just the driver's side panel. Looks better in the pics, but not bad. I will have to get a sample of the current available red to do a comparison. I have a ripped/torn driver's seat. I guess I could get a yard to use to fix that. Here are the before and after pics of the stripping. Dave (the carb rebuilder) wrote me back, he plans to start on the carb maybe next week. He says he has a number of them to do. So I am looking at three weeks before I will be able to start the car. No news on the supercharger rebuilt yet.
  12. Still Friday. Decided to brave the 38 degree weather in between rain storms to change the plugs. Figured I better do it now rather than later. PA is getting a big snow storm just a couple of hundred miles north from us, up to 12 inches. We are expected to get a few flakes mixed in with the rain over the weekend. All the plugs came out easily. A couple were not even tight and were blowing exhaust through the plugs. A couple also had debris between the electrodes so they were not even firing. None of them looked very good. No wonder the car did not run. In fact, on the bad gas I do not think I would ever get it started in the condition it was in. Put in the new plugs and made sure that I put anti-seize on the threads. At least the wires, distributer cap, and points were recently changed, errrr well, a few years ago, but they look fine for now. Done for today, put the cover back on, and heading back in to sit by the stove.
  13. It is Friday, cold and damp, but not raining. FedEx delivered the tires from Universal Tire this morning. Mounting will have to wait until we get the car running and off the trailer so we can remove the wheels and take them to town. Here are a couple of pics of the old tires. They are new with the nubs still on the tread, but they are starting to come apart. Since this is going to be a driver and not a display car they just have to be replaced. So will try the radials. I will give a tire drive report at some future time. Hope to get out if it warms up a bit and change the plugs. We will see, 38 degrees is a bit chilly right now.
  14. It is Thursday, and not much is going to happen today. It is cold and raining its brains out. An inside day. Bit the bullet and did order new radial tires from Vintage Tire in Hershey, PA; so they will be here early next week. Settled on the American Classic brand with the one inch whitewall. Universal Vintage Tire Going to stick with the rims that came with the car. The tire size is 205/75R15. It is suppose to rain for several days so I am stuck inside, as a result my progress will be slow or none at all. I may be silent for a couple of days.
  15. unimogjohn

    28 buick

    Gary, a few years ago I got mine from Welcome To Olson's Gaskets! Must just send them an email or call. They are very responsive.
  16. Sure looks like an early motorcycle lamp. The bottom would be red too for the running light. The stop is obvious, the stop light. I would say early 20s to late teens.
  17. Cannot seem to keep my hands off the car. So with it raining decided to take a look at the air filter housing, etc. Found two filters, stacked one on the other, and a paint can lid for the top. I am sure that the paint can lid must be stock, ha, ha, ha. Found part numbers for the filter so will pick up a couple tomorrow. Also the little flapper on the carb bonnet is not flush with the bonnet. Question, should it be or is mine correct, see pic. So will spend the evening cleaning up everything. Oh, the spark plugs arrived, and if it is not raining tomorrow I will put them on.
  18. John, good to hear from you. Bet your Avanti went to a good home. It was sure a great looking car. Mine certainly is not as nice as yours, it did not have a good father like you. Cold here this morning, but no rain yet. Started looking through the couple of boxes with the air cleaner/hoses, etc, and found the rear view side mirror. It was covered with some kind of green goo, looked like body filler. So spent a hour cleaning it, and installed it on the car. looks pretty good.
  19. We heard the weather report for tomorrow, lows in the 30s to a high of 53 with lots of rain. The Avainti is still on the trailer and covered so she is protected, but we are not. So it looks to be an inside day. Monday, looking at the weather report we figured that we would start cleaning the interior for a couple of hours. Alice and I scrubbed, rubbed, and polished as best we could. Dirt and grunge came off in buckets. We got the majority of the interior done, first time; and boy she is starting to look good. The stickey feeling on the seats, etc is gone, the mold has been scrubbed off, and the tarnish and rust on the gauge faces and controls are bright again. Looks great for an older girl. We have a few more hours to go before we are done with the interior, but we have gone a long way. Did not touch the headliner, looks to be very brittle. We do have a badly worn and torn driver's seat, and a gouge out of the back seat. But other than the ugly black vinyl paint, the vinyl looks pretty good for its age. Found a Duplicolor paint that could be a good match to my green paint. Since the car is not going to be painted this year it needs to have a few spots repainted to be presentable. So we will try it on a couple of small spots to see what we have. It is a Ford color, Dark Jade Metallic Green. Here are some pics of the interior after the cleaning.
  20. Mrspeed, no it will leak for sure. Call Olson's Gaskets, he has them all. Welcome To Olson's Gaskets!
  21. Don, thanks for the info on the light covers. Will look into it. Spent the afternoon working on the electrical system. Put in the new ignition switch, works great, now we have key that actually works. No more pushing, jiggling, etc. I also worked on the wiring for the brakes after draining the master cylinder of the old brake fluid. The old fluid was really nasty so will bleed all the brakes over the next week or so. The result is that I now have brake lights. Cleaned the contacts for the fuel gauge, and it now works. Played with the radio a bit. it is getting power, but nothing from either speaker. Next week I also plan on looking into tires. Thinking of going the white wall radial tires from Universal Tire in Hershey, PA. Can I run radials with my stock rims? Any recommendation as to size? Heading out this afternoon for an hour or so and will continue cleaning the interior. It is so dirty and full of mold. The dirt is giving up little by little.
  22. Had to do farm and other car chores (rear brakes and an oil change on our Chev Trailblazer) so did not get a lot accomplished today. But the new front and rear KBR shocks arrived today. They will go on sometime over the next few weeks. And then took the opportunity to try some "Goof Off" on a door panel. I tried several little different attempts to see what worked best before I invest in several bottles of the remover. So after about an hour of trial and error this is how far I got today. Figure that I will have many hours of investment in the process over the next few months. I am pleased at how it came out. It did not seem to damage the original vinyl, and I used a vinyl condition and polish after I used the Goof Off. What do you all think? A couple of the pics show the "before" to include the bubbling black paint.
  23. Auction closed. Went for $212.50. Way too rich for this kid.
  24. Returned home from our weekend in the mountains of PA. Had a dusting of snow in the morning !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We did have a package delivery on Saturday so now I have more parts to install. Took off the glass headlight covers as am going to replace the gaskets as they are all checked and torn. Boy, they were sure dirty inside. Look fine now with a quick wash. Also installed one of the new brackets for the battery. The back one as no attachment point for the back J hook as it has been cut out. I do think that the car has a replacement nose, I can see now a slight ripple in the fender glass on both sides where it has been cut and redone. Must have been done many years ago. Also, I am more and more certain that the car probably has more than 44K on the odometer, probably more like 144K. No biggie in the grand scheme of things. We have also decided to take off the black vinyl paint on the seats/interior to bring back the red. The black is nasty, ugly, etc. Anything would be better. Here are the parts that arrived yesterday. Will probably replace the ignition switch next. No news on the rebuilding of the carb and supercharger. I figure that it will be a couple of weeks before I hear anything.
  25. That does look a little rough on the outside. Good luck with your restoration and do keep the blog up to date. It is all interesting. I had a MGB in my youth, like 1968 or so. So I have an appreciation for the car. Even saved a couple of things all these years. Notice all the grease on the manual, I was forever working on her, even though she was only four years old. Ah, the good old days.
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