FW: Hornet -- RUNS! DRIVES! Retains all parts.

["MArion Almy" <malmy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Jennings [mailto:tomj@xxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 12:46 AM
To: AMC List
Subject: Hornet -- RUNS! DRIVES! Retains all parts.

First, thanks to everyone on this list that helped me out with
answers to my often stupid questions.


Drove the damn thing today! What a relief!

Engine started right up -- water did NOT shoot out all the holes
-- had timing off one tooth, fixed that quick enough, Pretty much
everything worked fine. It's not idling very well, and I didn't
find the ported-vacuum spigot on the DGEV 32/36 Weber carb after a
thorough 30 seconds of looking, but I'll just add that to the 1000
To Do list.

I did make a big mess by overfilling the P.S. pump, which vomited
foamy pink goo over the engine, hood, fender, and nearby fence.
Seems happy now.

Didn't even have to move the radiator, after shifting the engine
forward yesterday. I've got one inch between the blades and clutch
and the radiator fins, just enough margin of safety.  No shroud
installed since I have the wrong (short) radiator, but that's 1
out of 1000 remaining; cooling is adequate (only).

Trans no problem, though I have the cable shifter off one detent.

Started right up on 2+ year old gasoline. The brand new tires,
Nittos, that have been sitting for a year, thumped for five
minutes but seem fine now.

The brakes however... I've got one leaking line (stupid coupler,
"fixed" twice, of course it lives under the master cylinder) I'll
replace with a one-piece line this weekend. The front rotors,
brand new, had rusted over the winter, were very grindy and
grabby, after the mainden voyage I took the wheels and calipers
off and sanded them to metal, and scuffed the shoes. I'll try it
tomorrow.

The Hansen's soda can holding the exhaust together (junk exhaust
saved for the initial trip to the muffler shop) tore, so I wrapped
it with folder-over aluminum foil! wrapped that with rusty bailing
wire!  (it was actually fun to make such a spectacularly crappy
fix), it'll live long enough.

My biggest problem now are the seats. I've got 64 Classic two-door
seats. They fit fine, the problem is the seat is too high after
being reupholstered. It's two factors: one, I didn't compensate
for the fact that during the trial fit, the seat weas blown out!
duh! and two, the upholsterer made them quite comfortably full. My
head hits the roof!


The worst thing, if I can't re-do the cushions to lower them, is
to reupholster the 73 split-bench (my favorite seat config), which
will certainly work.

TOmorrow I'm gonna see if I can get an exhaust system installed,
and Monday I'll go to Spence Wheel ALignment, they're worth
waiting for.

Only drove about 15 minutes total -- first stop the car wash,
where I squirt off all the P.S. fluid and the thousand black-widow
webs. (I should have photographed this: we live in a heavy spider
area, so many that I have a special stick I used to clear the webs
out every car-work day. On the rare times I'd look under the
chassis at night all the black widows, big huge shiny nasties,
would be out, all with red houglasses underneath.) Up to about
40mph no bad noises, filled the tank (14 gal) with high test,
stopped for coffee.


It's a relief that the thing is intact end to end and no big parts
fell off or changed shape. When I spun up the oil pressure again
this morning, there was a bit of mayonaise on the tool end, but
after 15 minutes running the dipstick was normal. I'll change out
the cheap oil and good filter in there this weekend (hopefully
taking out accumulated storage dust and grit) and put in the
decent dinosaur oil, change that after 500 - 1000 miles then
switch to fake oil.